the dark side.

the saga continues with fighting the dark side.

i had a very odd – and quite specific – problem happen today within microsoft entourage v 10.1.1. i sent an email and the recipient told me that there was a string of other emails attached to it. (thankfully, the content of the mysteriously-attached emails was benign!) the strange thing is that the other emails were never opened and were in my deleted items folder. i don't understand how they could have been automatically attached to the original email.

so, i searched in entourage/help. nothing. figures. this is a pretty weird bug. then i went to entourage/help/send feedback and reported the problem. easy enough. now how do i fix this and more importantly, ensure it never happens again? the implications of this bug could be enormous. i hate a lot of my clients and frequently vent to my partner via email. i guess i can’t do that anymore. or what if i had sent something personal or confidential? i have to have an answer, right?

i visited microsoft.com’s support area/contact us. i wanted to request online help. signed in with my passport (they are so evil) and hit “ask a microsoft support professional for help.” entourage isn’t even in their product list. hmm.

so i go back and try again. maybe i’ll try “phone numbers, support options and pricing.” yeah – that sounds good. entourage is listed – great. since this is sort of a complicated problem, i select “advanced.” oh, super – my options are: “online support: $99 offer! receive an online response within 24 hours” or “phone support: speak with a support professional for $245.” yeah – that’s gonna happen. i then try the “free of charge” communities area. i click. nothing. click again. nothing. click-click-click-click-click-click-click. nothing. broken link. ugh!

back to the beginning. support/microsoft public newsgroups. ok – i want microsoft, mac products, entourage. oh yeah – i’m in safari so i can’t see anything. let me open explorer. cut and paste. nothing. i can’t even get free support??? so, i need to turn on my relic of a pc and post to the “free of charge” community board there.

all of this because their product has a bug that caused me to send an inaccurate email. is this what i get for using their products? does microsoft do this to its mac customer base on purpose? having already switched once, i think i might have to switch again – to mail.