FYI, I’m off MSN

Posted on February 18, 2006
Filed Under Technology, Computing, General |

Some of you who know me might think this is because of my general despise of Microsoft (I don’t despise them, I just don’t believe that a sustainable business can succeed long-term by screwing your customers), for example I cannot reset my MSN password.

I have not been able to login to the MSN instant messaging (IM) for sometime now, it keep giving me a password error problem. So I follow the links to reset my password, type in the characters that appear in the image to validate the request…. it says that I typed it in wrong, ok try again… same… try again a few days later…. same. Instead of Safari, I try with Firefox…. and then Camino… same. One of the first things I did was remove Internet Explorer, didn’t need it taking up disk space…. so if I’m getting screwed because I’m not using IE, it is simple… I’ll stop using the service.

I never used the email service, but my IM account mhp__ (2 underscores) AT hotmail should be considered inactive. If you only have me on your MSN IM contact list, then contact me for my AIM/ICQ, GTalk, Skype, or Jabber accounts.

Comments

2 Responses to “FYI, I’m off MSN”

  1. psidlon on March 2nd, 2006 6:47

    I understand your frustration. I have noticed the same thing with Microsoft generally. That is that they deliberately prevent their systems working with other browsers.

    However, I would recommend keeping IE available. Many other web sites are using ASP pages that tend to only work correctly when accessed via IE.

    My strategy is to use the far superior Firefox as standard and only revert to IE as required. It’s the pragmatic approach. In the meantime I am telling everyone I know to switch to firefox!

    The web is all about ease of use and standardisation so I think Microsoft are taking a very bad approach. Thay are big… but the web is a lot, lot bigger.

  2. mhp on March 2nd, 2006 14:41

    The way I look at it, if a company does not “get it” about only supporting online services with IE, what else don’t they get and do I really trust doing business with this company if they don’t. In the online game, it is not hard to find a competitor that provides the same service (or better), so I just move right along (in this case, ICQ/AIM, Jabber and Gtalk)

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