VPC Officially Dead

Helpful Harry · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 324

In article , "Colin
Barnhorst" wrote:

> VPC 7 is as dead as a G4 or G5 PPC Mac. The owners of those would not call
> their systems dead. They do know that there will not be any more new PPC
> Macs, but that's all. If the Mac isn't dead yet then neither is VPC7. We
> just know that there won't be a VPC8.

Good grief! Last time bothering with this. Surprised

\

Some people are still using Mac Plus computers, but that doesn't make
it any less of a dead product. I'm still using Virtual PC 3 on a G3
PowerMac under Mac OS 9.2 ... it doesn't mean any of that is any less
of a dead product.

Microsoft do still offer some suport for Virtual PC, but only as a
legacy product and eventually even that support will disappear too.
(It's likely that there is already little / no actual training of new
staff on the Mac version of Virtual PC, and they simply look up stuff
on the website.)

Microsoft do not officially make or update the Mac version of Virtual
PC any longer - they have officially ended the product's life, so it
*IS* therefore a dead product.

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

Archived from group: microsoft>public>mac>virtualpc

Colin Barnhorst · Joined: 21 Aug 2007 Posts: 758

That's a stretch. I think we are talking about support from MS in one form
or another.

"Helpful Harry" wrote in message %helpful_harry@nom.de.plume.com...
> In article ,
> Barry Margolin wrote:
>
>> In article ,
>> Steve Jain wrote:
>>
>> > On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 06:35:15 -0600, Richard Cardona
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > >Helpful Harry wrote:
>> > >> And hence the product is dead.
>> > >
>> > >VirtualPC for Mac is DEAD, Long Live Virtual PC Technical Support!
>> >
>> > So what is a product that a company no longer provides technical
>> > support for, if a dead product still gets techical support?
>> >
>> > A really dead product, a really, really, really dead product, an
>> > undead product, a double-dead product?
>> >
>> > It can't be dead if you can get help with it. In my experience with
>> > VPC-Mac over the past 6 years, MOST of the problems MOST users faced
>> > didn't need patches or updates, but just config help.
>>
>> I used to work for Symantec, as a senior technical support engineer for
>> Symantec Gateway Security and Symantec Enterprise Firewall. In 2006
>> they decided to discontinue the product, and laid off many of the
>> developers. They kept some of them for bug fixing, and all the
>> technical support staff, but made it clear that they were planning on
>> transfering them to other products -- they expected the customers to
>> migrate to other products as their support contracts expired, so there
>> would be fewer support calls over time, and thus fewer support engineers
>> needed.
>>
>> Most of us were not interested in hanging around, working on a dead-end
>> product, nor were we interested in supporting any of Symantec's other
>> products (many of my coworkers had been part of the Axent acquisition
>> several years earlier -- they had little experience or interest in the
>> Norton side of the company). I was one of the first to abandon ship,
>> but several others left within months.
>>
>> The point of this is that even though the company may officially be
>> providing technical support, it's likely that the quality of this
>> support will fall off drastically. Most highly skilled engineers are
>> interested in working on active projects. So the people you'll find at
>> the other end of the line for a dead product will be entry-level, or
>> people who are supporting a variety of products; either way, they're not
>> going to be experts on this one.
>
> "Support" can stay around for decades, especially in an unofficial or
> semi-official form (just look at the Amiga computer) or simply in a
> companise web-archives, but once a company decides to stop making a
> product it is officially dead ... no matter what a few hard core
> fanatics on the Internet like to fool themselves into believing or how
> many largely pointless petition attempts to have that decision revoked
> are created. You see this all the time in the TV newsgroups - the
> network decides to cancel a show and all the loonies come out of the
> woodwork with "Save the show" petitions. Surprised

\
>
>
> Helpful Harry
> Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

Colin Barnhorst · Joined: 21 Aug 2007 Posts: 758

You are right, of course. That's the only sensible way to think about it.

"Fred Horvat" wrote in message %fmh@copper.net...
> Maybe DEAD was the wrong word I used when I announced Microsoft's decision
> to no longer create patches. Regardless on how it is said we are using
> machines (PPC) that Apple no longer makes and a piece of software that
> Microsoft no longer (software) supports.
>
> I guess it is dead when I no longer use it...
>
>
> On 12/23/07 2:48 PM, in article
> 241220070848387325%helpful_harry@nom.de.plume.com, "Helpful Harry"
> wrote:
>
>> In article ,
>> Barry Margolin wrote:
>>
>>> In article ,
>>> Steve Jain wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 06:35:15 -0600, Richard Cardona
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Helpful Harry wrote:
>>>>>> And hence the product is dead.
>>>>>
>>>>> VirtualPC for Mac is DEAD, Long Live Virtual PC Technical Support!
>>>>
>>>> So what is a product that a company no longer provides technical
>>>> support for, if a dead product still gets techical support?
>>>>
>>>> A really dead product, a really, really, really dead product, an
>>>> undead product, a double-dead product?
>>>>
>>>> It can't be dead if you can get help with it. In my experience with
>>>> VPC-Mac over the past 6 years, MOST of the problems MOST users faced
>>>> didn't need patches or updates, but just config help.
>>>
>>> I used to work for Symantec, as a senior technical support engineer for
>>> Symantec Gateway Security and Symantec Enterprise Firewall. In 2006
>>> they decided to discontinue the product, and laid off many of the
>>> developers. They kept some of them for bug fixing, and all the
>>> technical support staff, but made it clear that they were planning on
>>> transfering them to other products -- they expected the customers to
>>> migrate to other products as their support contracts expired, so there
>>> would be fewer support calls over time, and thus fewer support engineers
>>> needed.
>>>
>>> Most of us were not interested in hanging around, working on a dead-end
>>> product, nor were we interested in supporting any of Symantec's other
>>> products (many of my coworkers had been part of the Axent acquisition
>>> several years earlier -- they had little experience or interest in the
>>> Norton side of the company). I was one of the first to abandon ship,
>>> but several others left within months.
>>>
>>> The point of this is that even though the company may officially be
>>> providing technical support, it's likely that the quality of this
>>> support will fall off drastically. Most highly skilled engineers are
>>> interested in working on active projects. So the people you'll find at
>>> the other end of the line for a dead product will be entry-level, or
>>> people who are supporting a variety of products; either way, they're not
>>> going to be experts on this one.
>>
>> "Support" can stay around for decades, especially in an unofficial or
>> semi-official form (just look at the Amiga computer) or simply in a
>> companise web-archives, but once a company decides to stop making a
>> product it is officially dead ... no matter what a few hard core
>> fanatics on the Internet like to fool themselves into believing or how
>> many largely pointless petition attempts to have that decision revoked
>> are created. You see this all the time in the TV newsgroups - the
>> network decides to cancel a show and all the loonies come out of the
>> woodwork with "Save the show" petitions. Surprised

\
>>
>>
>> Helpful Harry
>> Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)
>

Fred Horvat · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 69

Maybe DEAD was the wrong word I used when I announced Microsoft's decision
to no longer create patches. Regardless on how it is said we are using
machines (PPC) that Apple no longer makes and a piece of software that
Microsoft no longer (software) supports.

I guess it is dead when I no longer use it...

On 12/23/07 2:48 PM, in article
241220070848387325%helpful_harry@nom.de.plume.com, "Helpful Harry"
wrote:

> In article ,
> Barry Margolin wrote:
>
>> In article ,
>> Steve Jain wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 06:35:15 -0600, Richard Cardona
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Helpful Harry wrote:
>>>>> And hence the product is dead.
>>>>
>>>> VirtualPC for Mac is DEAD, Long Live Virtual PC Technical Support!
>>>
>>> So what is a product that a company no longer provides technical
>>> support for, if a dead product still gets techical support?
>>>
>>> A really dead product, a really, really, really dead product, an
>>> undead product, a double-dead product?
>>>
>>> It can't be dead if you can get help with it. In my experience with
>>> VPC-Mac over the past 6 years, MOST of the problems MOST users faced
>>> didn't need patches or updates, but just config help.
>>
>> I used to work for Symantec, as a senior technical support engineer for
>> Symantec Gateway Security and Symantec Enterprise Firewall. In 2006
>> they decided to discontinue the product, and laid off many of the
>> developers. They kept some of them for bug fixing, and all the
>> technical support staff, but made it clear that they were planning on
>> transfering them to other products -- they expected the customers to
>> migrate to other products as their support contracts expired, so there
>> would be fewer support calls over time, and thus fewer support engineers
>> needed.
>>
>> Most of us were not interested in hanging around, working on a dead-end
>> product, nor were we interested in supporting any of Symantec's other
>> products (many of my coworkers had been part of the Axent acquisition
>> several years earlier -- they had little experience or interest in the
>> Norton side of the company). I was one of the first to abandon ship,
>> but several others left within months.
>>
>> The point of this is that even though the company may officially be
>> providing technical support, it's likely that the quality of this
>> support will fall off drastically. Most highly skilled engineers are
>> interested in working on active projects. So the people you'll find at
>> the other end of the line for a dead product will be entry-level, or
>> people who are supporting a variety of products; either way, they're not
>> going to be experts on this one.
>
> "Support" can stay around for decades, especially in an unofficial or
> semi-official form (just look at the Amiga computer) or simply in a
> companise web-archives, but once a company decides to stop making a
> product it is officially dead ... no matter what a few hard core
> fanatics on the Internet like to fool themselves into believing or how
> many largely pointless petition attempts to have that decision revoked
> are created. You see this all the time in the TV newsgroups - the
> network decides to cancel a show and all the loonies come out of the
> woodwork with "Save the show" petitions. Surprised

\
>
>
> Helpful Harry
> Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

Barry Margolin · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 186

In article ,
"Colin Barnhorst" wrote:

> That's a stretch. I think we are talking about support from MS in one form
> or another.

But some forms of support are useful, others are just lip service. In
the case of a cancelled product, it's more likely to be the latter.

And it's not even cancelled products that are like this, it also often
goes to products that are not part of the company's main product line.
If you have Comcast as your ISP, try getting technical support for
anything related to Usenet -- virtually none of the phone-line or live
chat techs have even heard of it, yet it's an officially supported part
of their Internet service.

Part of the reason may be that they out-sourced this service several
years ago, so few people in the company have had to have expertise in
it. And the same thing happens with cancelled products -- if there are
no developers, knowledge about the product tends to evaporate. Even if
you have support techs trained on the product, there's no one they can
consult with who knows details about how it works; all they know is
what's in their support knowledge base, which is no help when a new
problem arises.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

Helpful Harry · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 324

In article ,
Barry Margolin wrote:

> In article ,
> Steve Jain wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 06:35:15 -0600, Richard Cardona
> > wrote:
> >
> > >Helpful Harry wrote:
> > >> And hence the product is dead.
> > >
> > >VirtualPC for Mac is DEAD, Long Live Virtual PC Technical Support!
> >
> > So what is a product that a company no longer provides technical
> > support for, if a dead product still gets techical support?
> >
> > A really dead product, a really, really, really dead product, an
> > undead product, a double-dead product?
> >
> > It can't be dead if you can get help with it. In my experience with
> > VPC-Mac over the past 6 years, MOST of the problems MOST users faced
> > didn't need patches or updates, but just config help.
>
> I used to work for Symantec, as a senior technical support engineer for
> Symantec Gateway Security and Symantec Enterprise Firewall. In 2006
> they decided to discontinue the product, and laid off many of the
> developers. They kept some of them for bug fixing, and all the
> technical support staff, but made it clear that they were planning on
> transfering them to other products -- they expected the customers to
> migrate to other products as their support contracts expired, so there
> would be fewer support calls over time, and thus fewer support engineers
> needed.
>
> Most of us were not interested in hanging around, working on a dead-end
> product, nor were we interested in supporting any of Symantec's other
> products (many of my coworkers had been part of the Axent acquisition
> several years earlier -- they had little experience or interest in the
> Norton side of the company). I was one of the first to abandon ship,
> but several others left within months.
>
> The point of this is that even though the company may officially be
> providing technical support, it's likely that the quality of this
> support will fall off drastically. Most highly skilled engineers are
> interested in working on active projects. So the people you'll find at
> the other end of the line for a dead product will be entry-level, or
> people who are supporting a variety of products; either way, they're not
> going to be experts on this one.

"Support" can stay around for decades, especially in an unofficial or
semi-official form (just look at the Amiga computer) or simply in a
companise web-archives, but once a company decides to stop making a
product it is officially dead ... no matter what a few hard core
fanatics on the Internet like to fool themselves into believing or how
many largely pointless petition attempts to have that decision revoked
are created. You see this all the time in the TV newsgroups - the
network decides to cancel a show and all the loonies come out of the
woodwork with "Save the show" petitions. Surprised

\

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

Tim · Joined: 27 Jan 2008 Posts: 1

Virtual PC for Mac won't be dead
Until this forum is dead.
"That's rather scary,"
Said Harry and Barry.

Concerned recycler · Joined: 27 Jan 2008 Posts: 1

In article , Tim wrote:

> Virtual PC for Mac won't be dead
> Until this forum is dead.
> "That's rather scary,"
> Said Harry and Barry.

Harry can talk to Barry who talks to Harry. < Smile