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Patch reliability is unclear, but widespread attacks make patching prudent. Go ahead and patch, but watch out for potential problems. |
Just the other day some of my fellow geeks were asking where people went to ask questions. We lamented that it was getting harder and harder to find
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – issues with consumer support?]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
When I have to dial 911, I go to Spiceworks or Stack Exchange.
Related? Snip from Google News / Technology Section / Full Coverage
Mary Jo Foley:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-cloud-services-outages-continue-into-week-two/
What, you meant Microsoft’s vaunted “AI” wasn’t able to help all these people?
My Office 2010, installed on my computer, still works. And the Office 2016 on my Mac also.
Thunderbird still delivers my mail routinely.
All my data on my C: drive is reachable 24/7.
Amazing!
India is being hit pretty hard lately with COVID-19. With working conditions as they are, I suspect their call centers are also impacted.
Just my 2 cents.
Byte me!
As one who is just old enough to remember working in the “Mainframe Cloud”, I am constantly reminded as to why the arrival of the Personal Computer revolution felt so extremely liberating at the time.
When I read about events like this, it feels like Deja Vu all over again. We learned nothing.
/rant
Spent way too much quality time supporting CICS on hundreds of in-house green-screen IBM terminals. In addition, there was a network of remote terminals and printers running on 4800 baud bi-sync modems all over the US. I can still remember chapter and verse of the systems programming for the communications servers which enabled this network.
I have never had any desire to relive that experience.
Our approach to using outside consumer support is to avoid it by keeping things simple.
We purchase HP business laptops and workstations because they have proven to be reliable.
Each of our computers operates as standardized standalone unit that is frequently backed up.
We do not use cloud-based applications and only use cloud based storage to share files with our people who are working remotely.
We minimize the amount of software that is installed on each machine – MS Office, WordPerfect, Firefox, Acronis, MathWorks, and the utilities provided by the computers manufacturer or other widely recognized, mature apps.
Updates are installed consistent with guidance provided by the ask Woody website, i.e. Windows 10 updates wait about 29 days before installation – likewise MS office updates. Other updates are installed when pushed by the software manufacturer.
Internet use is restricted to business related email, data collection, and web surfing is restricted to well-known business-related websites such as the New York Times, Bloomberg, BBC, and well-recognized and time proven trade and government organizations. No Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
If things do go bump in the night, we try to recover the computer from a restore point, then the backup on the machine’s second drive, and then recovery from an external drive. If all else fails we pull a backup machine off the shelf, update it with files recovered from one of the failed machine’s backup drives. Then we take failed machine and try a fresh Windows install, run diagnostics, recover the lost applications, and if all is well put the recovered machine back on the shelf so that it is available for the next PC failure.
If we cannot recover a bad machine, and it is not covered by warranty, we simply order a new computer, configure it, and put it on the shelf as a backup. If it is covered by a warranty that provides on-site support we call the vendor let them worry about fixing it.
This approach works for us. It results in a minimal amount of time waiting for someone to answer a customer service call, and saves us a undetermined amount of time trying to tweak a misbehaving computer.
In the end it all comes down to cost-benefit, sometimes it is simply less expensive not to fix a misbehaving machine and replace it.
Was also wondering if this issue was related to the potential of customers contacting Microsoft about their cloud service problems? Probably goes a bit deeper than what Microsoft admits too. It does seem nobody wants to admit that cloud services has its share of drawbacks. Because it is so centralized and interconnected when it goes down, it really can go down.
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