In the beginning of this year I had posted about Microsoft Fix It initiative to provide easy to use utilities for fixing common issues, described in Microsoft Knowledge Base. One of main issues at time was lack of centralized list of issues for which fixes are available.
In following months Fix It managed to get centralized (and fall apart a bit) into few hub pages.
Microsoft Fix It Solution Center
Mentioned most often as home page for Fix It. This one lists dozen of links to Knowledge Base articles with Fix It solution, separated in few general categories with occasional sub-categories.
There is no centralized search and seemingly no order to links, so might be hard to browse. At moment of writing this post pages were marked with August 7 for last update, so they will lack recent fixes.
Link http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_fixit_main
Microsoft Fix It solutions page
Less of a site and more of a database, this site offers highly structured view of Fix It solutions. There are no categories, but extensive list of tags plus search, filters and sort.
Pagination is bit clunky, but overall this one is much easier to navigate and everything is marked with dates. Latest included fixes are from end of August. I wonder if program went on some kind of hold after that, or there are simply delays with sites update.
Link https://fixit.support.microsoft.com/reporting/
Microsoft Automated Troubleshooting Services
This one seems to be latest addition to Fix It sites. It also puts a spin on overall concept and is dedicated to more of general-purpose diagnostic routines, rather than fixes for precisely determined issues.
Unfortunately whatever I tried told me that my OS (XP SP3) is not supported, so my guess is site is and will remain Vista/7-centric.
Link http://support.microsoft.com/gp/mats
Overall
Fix It project managed to keep momentum, but for now it all still seems work in progress. Addition of hub pages makes it much easier to search for fixes deliberately. On other hand slow pace of updates and no timeline (original blog seems dead) make it hard to gauge how active project actually is.
SpecialFoldersView shows all system folders
Parted Magic – LiveCD partition manager and more
Desktopwallpaper.org – another wallpapers site
Sysinternals – freeware admin-related utilities set
The Portable Freeware Collection
TestFreaks.com – hardware reviews aggregator
Microsoft seems to finally getting its act right.
@Ishan
Was there something wrong with their act? :) Aside from usual giant corporation crap from no such company is safe.
Man.. You are forcing me to write a long answer.. so here you go:
1) For a long time, Microsoft just believed that whatever it does is correct, without listening much to consumer demand. I don’t think it ever expected competition from likes of Google, Apple, Firefox, Ubuntu, and Open Office to be so extreme that it would completely change the market dynamics. These guys hit Microsoft where it hurts most. Here is a comment that I made in a recent article of mine regarding Microsoft Security Essentials:
“My simple mind has always wondered that why is Microsoft not at the forefront of providing best antivirus software. Wouldn’t they know best how viruses infect the Operating System that they created, and what should be done to prevent that?”
Now, Microsoft seems to be waking up to the competition.
2) Regarding Google, I have just one belief about that: Google is the evil GOD of Internet. As long as it likes you, you are fine. If it decides to reduce its love for you for any reason, you are doomed.
@Ishan
Well, it’s natural to be lazy when there are few reasons not to. And Microsoft indeed looks at serious trouble with Google sharping its claws.
Not so sure about rest of named.
Apple sits in niche and more bark than bite.
Firefox is nice but it’s “home” browser, its share in corporate is grim as far as I know.
Ubuntu seems to gain issues faster than solve, few recent releases are nothing but tale of problems (may be mistaken with big picture here).
Open Office is good but lacks leverage and its’ MS Office compatibility is far from perfect.
I agree with you that Micorosft is more about corporate clients, and there isn’t much dent in Microsoft’s share there. However, I am going to disagree with you on a few things:
Apple is really not a niche anymore. iPhone and iPod have been game changers. For any smartphone that comes out now, it is benchmarked against iPhone. There is still no music player out there that can even think denting market share of iPod.
Firefox does not have just a small market share. It has a big market share of browser market now. Agree that its still not accepted a lot in corporates, but that is changing (slowly, though). Let me mention about Chrome also here. I downloaded it for my review, and since then I use only this. It is amazing – everything that IE is not.
Open Office is being widely used, and is very stable now. Corporate acceptability is still now, but that is also changing slowly.
I had a chance to try Ubunu as well, and believe me, it rocks! It breaks all the notions that people have about Linux, starting right from installation.
All in all, these guys have managed to shake Microsoft’s position as the king of software market. It still retains the thrown, but needs to do a lot to hold on to it.
@Ishan
Apple is really not a niche anymore.
You are telling this to person from country where iPhone isn’t even sold officially. I am sorry but I feel like people from Apple home market (pro- or anti- Apple either) had completely lost perspective in all that hype.
iPhone is very niche device from company that has no real mobile lineup and share of mobile market that is best describes by word miniscule.
Yes, it is compared with stuff a lot. But from where I stand that is just bunch of trendy crap we techies like [to hate] so much. :)
There is still no music player out there that can even think denting market share of iPod.
Really? :) Trick question – do you know what company releases most music player devices worldwide?
It’s not Apple, it’s Nokia. Nokia ships more phones that can be used to listen to music than iPhone and iPod combined.
Again – perspective check. Around here market is historically dominated by iRiver. I rarely even see iPods.
On Chrome
Ubuntu did a great job with bringing Linux to almost consumer level. Still it remains Linux with all issues of such. There are objective reason that Microsoft dominates OS market for so many years after all.
I think we have reached a stage where our comment stream has become longer than the post itself. I guess we will just have to agree to disagree :)
@Ishan
>longer than the post itself
Which is not entirely untypical around here. :)