Dylan Greene dot com

May contain nuts.

Maybe Microsoft wants to confuse us

January 28, 2004 2:26 PM

I figured out how Microsoft makes so much money: By reusing the same word to mean multiple things. Lower unique word count must mean lower overhead.

I personally think that Microsoft should spend some of it's cash on investing in new words.

Examples of overused words and terms:

Various variety and version vexations:

  • 95, 98, 2000, XP
    • Versions of Microsoft Windows for desktops, laptops, and servers
    • Recent versions of Microsoft Office
  • 2003
  • Windows

Prefixes for products that have nothing in common:

  • Active...
  • Intelli...
    • IntelliMouse - Microsoft's line of Optical Mice
    • IntelliPoint - Software for Microsoft Mice
    • IntelliType Pro - Software for Microsoft Keyboards
    • IntelliSense - Name of the auto-complete feature in Internet Explorer, Windows XP, and Visual Studio (but they all work differently)
  • Direct...
    • DirectX - Development framework for optimal usage of today's hardware
    • DirectX - Free download for running games that use the DirectX framework
    • MSN Direct - Online service for radio-based devices like the SPOT watches

My point is... Stop making the world of computing more confusing by overusing names, terms, and abbreviations. Please start creating new words, preferably words that aren't in our dictionary to make our searches for products, support, and recommendations easier. This goes for everybody, not just Microsoft.

Comments

(1) Tim
http://www.timmacrina.com
Posted January 28, 2004 3:27 PM

I agree with you. A while back I was researching datacenters and I wondered what datacenter(s) Microsoft uses. So I Googled Microsoft Datacenter and Google returned 10,000 hits for Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter edition.

(2) AEB
Posted January 29, 2004 10:49 AM

Don't forget Visual...SourceSafe, C++, VB, VBA, Studio, Modeler, and so on.

(3) Craig
http://www.cpfeifer.org
Posted January 29, 2004 1:43 PM

And the whole flip-flopping between version numbers and years. If someone asked me which is more recent SQL Server 7.0 or SQL Server 2000, I'd be clueless. NT, XP or 2003? Just from the names I have no idea.

(4) Bill Brown
http://www.bbrown.info/blogs/bblog/
Posted January 30, 2004 10:51 AM

And don't forget the appropriation of common terms to muddy the waters. XP was eXtreme Programming long before Windows XP came into being. CMS is Microsoft's Content Management Server and the generic content management system. SQL Server coopted SQL and made searching for SQL information impossible for a long time. .NET information was impossible to find through Google until it came to market. Don't even get me started about Windows.

I just wish Microsoft would come up with interesting product names that aren't like anything else.

(5) Ian Hickson
http://ln.hixie.ch/
Posted January 31, 2004 8:50 AM

I always thought XP was Cross Platform... as in "XPCOM", "XPConnect", "XPFE", "this app is XP", etc. I remember the Mozilla community being somewhat confused when Windows XP was announced...

(6) oob
Posted January 31, 2004 4:31 PM

And they use generic words. How can can we find anything doing a web search on "Office", "Word", or "Access"? The codewords they use internally are much better. "Longhorn" will probably end up being called Microsoft System 2007 ! Can't search uniquely on that either. (They're doing OK with the recent OneNote, though.)

(7) Dylan
http://www.DylanGreene.com
Posted February 2, 2004 1:00 AM

Here's one I forgot: MSDE. It stands for Microsoft Desktop Engine, which is as generic as it gets, but it really should be called something like MS SQL Server Lite.

Speaking of which, SQL Server is too generic of a name too. Well at least IIS isn't called HTML Server.

(8) ommer
http://www.geocities.com/poonder84
Posted February 15, 2005 4:01 PM

are u sure about these Mr blog..if u know the real tactics of microsofts customers,,and earning methology..plz mail or iinform me,,ur cooperation is higly appreciated

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http://www.startpcupgrade.com/
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