I've not perused these types of websites, but couldn't you post anonymously? To come after you, the doctor would have to prove that it was you posting, wouldn't they?
Another thing that occurs to me: Say you sign the paperwork in order to get service. The doctor botches it and you post an unfavorable review. The doctor sues you for breach of contract. Then the doctor has to see evidence of the botched procedure brought up in court and perhaps in the media. It seems like suing a patient would be a very dangerous thing to do. You might win the suit, but be left with no way to salvage your reputation.
Cancel your account! If enough people do that, they'll either change their policy or go out of business. Either way, problem solved. You can always re-join later. They even keep your old queue around for awhile. You get it back when you re-activate.
Seriously, everyone who thinks this sucks, cancel today, and tell them why.
I thought the old "play it now" quality was pretty crappy, and quit Netflix over it a few months ago. I can't imagine what you-all are putting up with now.
Geeze, talk about shooting one's self in the foot.
> If you value your time at all, you should realize that spending an extra $100 on a Mac is well worth it if it improves your productivity.
I agree wholeheartedly. And if it were only an extra $100, my house would be full of Macs. We have one Mac for the stuff that runs best on the Mac. (Anything by Adobe, Garage Band, etc.) We also own three laptops. I've never paid more than $500 for a laptop. The last laptop I bought (mid-February) was right around $350 new in box preloaded with Vista Home. And I'm here to tell you, the very moment Macbooks are in that price range, Microsoft can kiss my shiny metal ass. But until then, well, we have one Mac. For the stuff that runs best on the Mac.
> the iPhone was the first to offer a touch screen based UI
Huh?? Handspring Treo 180, released Feb 2002. Available with or without keyboard. The 180G was entirely touch based, including dialing the phone and entering text. There may be earlier examples.
I think you mean "the iPhone was the first to offer a phone with the look and feel of the iPhone". That's what people usually mean when they make statements like this.
> a solid internet browser, a usable mobile calendar, and a viable iPod replacement
"solid" is relative... The browser's limitations have been widely reported.
Both Blackberry and Palm (and I believe Symbian) were all over the usable mobile calendar years before.
As far as an iPod replacement... you can put a 16 gig memory card in a Blackberry for about $50, try that with your 8 gig iPhone. And -- listen, this is important -- Blackberry supports stereo bluetooth, (as did Palm with a third party app) an area where Apple is *way* behind. When I get into my truck, the phone automatically pairs with the radio and I can play music on the stereo directly from the phone wirelessly, *and* control the phone from the stereo console. No fumbling in the glove compartment for the proprietary adapter cable, no putting up with fiddly, low-fidelity FM transmitters.
But what you say is technically correct, -- a viable iPod replacement -- as no iPod has this feature natively.
What *I* want in an iPhone is something at least as good as I can get in a competing phone. What you actually get is a somewhat innovative GUI on a substandard platform.
I'm not anti-Apple. We own a Mac and three iPods -- (two -- a 3rd gen and Classic -- have been retired) including a Touch. The Touch is a lot of fun. But the iPhone just isn't that special. I'm sorry. Cellular phones just aren't Apple's core competency. I mean, yes, it beats the hell out of Windows Mobile, but what doesn't?
Seriously, this is a little suspicious. That's at least 36 features that weren't beta tested. I ran the beta for a few weeks, and thought it was pretty solid; was actually considering adopting Windows 7 (having decided to skip Vista). Now I'm worried. More worried, I mean. If these are new features and not just last minute fixes, at least some of them won't be usable until the first service pack, if past history is any indication.
Oh well, it's not like XP is suddenly going to stop working.
The reasons cited (aside from the TV tuner -- who needs that?) were the same reasons I passed on the iphone. I keep hearing about coolness and "the experience" on the "jesus phone" but beyond the GUI -- seriously, now -- it's a mediocre phone, even by American standards, let alone what they have over there. I suspect the difference between their consumers and ours is that ours are more likely to buy into mindshare. Hmm. Maybe that's why in so many cases they're the producers, and we're the consumers.
It's a phone. It's an appliance. You shouldn't have to reboot your phone any more than you should have to reboot your TV or your car. It boggles the mind why anyone would put up with this.
This isn't about porn or criminal information -- any sensitive information shouldn't be kept on your laptop, especially if you're going over a border. There are so many simple solutions -- keeping it somewhere "in the cloud" and fetching it on the other side, or putting it on a chip and mailing it to yourself. You don't even have to resort to exotic technical solutions like hidden partitions or steganography. There are so many simple solutions that don't involve having the information actually on your laptop... It's astonishing that this even comes up.
> That sounds like a list of wants, not a list of needs.....
Don't be disingenuous. "Need" was your word, not mine. Throwing out a technically incorrect term and then pouncing on it after I let it slide is a really nerdy, socially inept thing to do. Just thought you should know. Not the way to impress the girls.
> but true Ubergeeks tend to sacrifice a lot (like a social life and even personal grooming habits to varying degrees) to get to and stay on top of their game.
I'm not sure about the part about personal grooming habits. It doesn't take that long to shower, and itching all over detracts from concentration. Rather, I suspect that poor grooming habits and lack of social skills are parts of the geek subculture and in most cases are an affectation rather than a characteristic.
That said, as a kid, it grated on me that the top shirt button appeared to have no purpose.
Having the ability to do very basic (computer related) things is not, in my experience, related to gender. Even (male) friends who are mechanically inclined are not necessarily computer literate. Part of this is training, part is inclination, but I think there really is something to having
"The Knack".
My wife literally can't figure out a cell phone. We tried several different models and finally got her one of those completely mindless do-nothing phones with big buttons that you only have to open to answer the call, and she still can't answer the phone two times out of three. Even if she manages to connect, you often hear "Hello? Hello? If you're talking I can't hear you. I'm hanging up now." (I suspect she's holding the phone upside down but haven't been able to prove it yet.) If she's on the road and needs to use a phone, she'll stop somewhere so she can use a "real" phone. I put a charger in her car and by her side of the bed, and her battery is still dead half the time. Computer? Anything more complicated than bringing up Spider, forget it.
Daughter is polar opposite. At 14, she's a power user of her Blackberry Curve and iPod Touch, owns a thinkpad (XP) and ASUS netbook (Linux) and has a KVM on her desktop so she can access both PC (XP Pro) and Mac (Leopard). She goes to art school (currently doing photography (film), ceramics and painting with acrylics) and is adept at Photoshop. She plays with Garage Band for relaxation. Her Christmas list is a dog-eared ThinkGeek catalog (the "mana" potions taste terrible) and her favorite T-shirt says "No, I won't fix your computer". (She wanted "slide to unlock" but I don't want her boyfriend to get ideas.) She has an intuitive grasp of computers that still startles me. When I'm stuck on a project (I often work from home) she'll walk by, make a seemingly random comment and later I'll realize that was the missing piece. When I ask her how she does it, she just shrugs. Last year when we visited my mom, she was complaining how her combination copier/fax/printer wouldn't work. Daughter borrowed a screwdriver, took it apart, found the paper guide that had popped loose, restored machine to operation. Mom was amazed. I said "yeah, get used to that".
I've read the pages of this book that Amazon has made available, and it strikes me as a way for a bright woman with an open mind to become a competent user, but not a geek goddess in any sense of the term of which I am familiar. I think true geek goddesshood is something you're born with. (See above.) However, although the title may be hyperbole, the book appears useful.
I think your specs may be on the high side for an office machine, but it raises an interesting scenario -- have we reached the point where a new computer (minus peripherals) with the new OS already installed is about the same cost as the retail price of an OS upgrade? Has the pain of upgrade and the falling cost of hardware forced an environment where consumer desktop computers are completely disposable? What do we do with all those old computers? (I know I know, run Ubuntu... Ask a silly question...)
> Microsoft has stated that the best option to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 is by not skipping the upgrade to Vista.
Taken on it's own, this statement means little. Microsoft would say this in any case -- not from any evil conspiracy, but simply because it's in their best interest. If a credible M$ source said the migration path of XP directly to Windows 7 worked just dandy, they'd never work in Redmond again. Note to ChannelWeb: Analysis is incomplete without trying this.
I'm looking at upgrading my media center from XP Media Edition to Windows 7, but that'll be a complete reinstall, so it doesn't count. I was flirting with Windows 7 for my other machines, but lacking official support of an upgrade from XP to Windows 7, they'll have to stay on XP. There's no way in Hell I'm going to pay a couple hundred to upgrade to Vista just so I can pay another couple hundred to upgrade to Windows 7. Nice idea to back-door some additional Vista purchases, but would it really work? What person in their right mind would do this?
For that matter, what company in it's right mind would do this? Especially in this economy?
Having to debunk obvious hoaxes is part of it. It's interesting to observe that since I started doing that, oh, 10 years ago, I've dropped off the "worst virus ever" and "gang poppers kill people who flash their lights" list. They're still being sent out, but no longer to me. I think this is because there's some satisfaction in thinking these things are true, and I was spoiling it by debunking them. But that's fine, as long as they don't get to my mailbox anymore.
Here's the main problem with forwards: They waste my time, and I can't ignore them. I don't have a car analogy, how about a phone analogy? Let's say you get regular calls at 3:00 AM from some drunk who keeps dialing your number instead of the all night liquor store. (Side note, this happened to me when I was in college.)
Usually when you get a call in the middle of the night, you have to take it, in case it's a genuine emergency, especially if you're on-call like many of us here.
Let's say you can avoid answering these bogus calls with caller ID. Or, let's say you have one of those wonderful intelligent phones that only ring if the number is on a list of friends and relatives, or you can block certain problematic numbers. Got it?
Ok, now, let's say it's all of your friends and relatives who are trying to call the liquor store at 3 O'Dark and getting you instead. How long before it stops being cute? Caller ID doesn't help, because if it's your mom's number you need to answer in case she's in the hospital or something.
Forwards are like that. It's spam for which spam filters are useless. It wastes your time in a very special way that even spam doesn't, because you have to evaluate the message in case there's something you need to know from your relatives. My mom was especially bad about this -- she'd bombard me with huge amounts of crap -- she used Incredimail which apparently makes this easy to do -- and at the very bottom of megabytes of drivel, hoaxes and cute pictures of kittens and puppies, would be "Had a mild heart attack, spent two days in the hospital but ok now love Mom." And believe me, you don't want to be the only offspring at Thanksgiving who didn't know Mom had a heart attack last March, you insensitive clod.
It's seldom just one. Forwards tend to cascade. Most non-geeks don't have the sense or don't care enough to take you off their list if you were on the same list they were, so by the time it gets to me, I've gotten one from mom and one more from everyone on her distribution list and a few from people I don't even know, who have gleaned my address from previous forwards and added to their own lists.
Side note, my wife's mom has never sent me a forward. In appreciation, she gets free in-home computer care. I charge my other relatives for parts and labor plus a modest mark-up. How modest depends on how much they've pissed me off lately.
Yeah, I'm a little militant about mail forwards, and my family knows it. The good news is that friends and family no longer put me on their forward lists. Some family members no longer speak to me, an unexpected bonus.
Mail forwards are not like social grooming. Social grooming is people interacting in their own words, even if it's pointless tweets. Forwards give the illusion of social interaction without all that difficult, time consuming, you know, writing. It's the difference between having a conversation and watching one on TV.
Not that I'm opinionated or anything.
In other words, write your own material, monkey boy!
> Some of them [the average person] even view email as a nuisance they were better off without.
I've been using email since 1982, and I sometimes think it's a nuisance I'd be better off without. I get this feeling most often right after my friends and family send me fifty copies of the same mail forward. Some people should never have been introduced to email.
On topic, when I left a certain company in California years ago, I was grappling with the right wording for the goodbye mail, as I was having trouble finding something positive to say about my time with the company. I asked my admin for advice, and she said "all you're legally required to say is 'I quit'". It worked.
It could be that what was lost wasn't some partner's phone running 6.5, but an original device commissioned by Microsoft. This actually makes sense, as I could see an exec arguing that many of the problems with Windows Mobile is imperfect implementation by the cell phone manufacturers. (Clearly this is an oversimplification, but you could see that being put on a PowerPoint slide.) A closed architecture would allow Microsoft to make sure that the hardware was tightly and properly integrated with Windows. So, for instance, you potentially wouldn't have the issue with some Windows Mobile devices locking up when the user put it in "vibrate" mode. (I had a phone that would consistently do this.)
Of course, as someone else pointed out, Microsoft has no history of making cell phones, so the results would probably be ghastly. But you could see them making the attempt.
Something like that actually happened to me. I picked a custom ring tone for calls from home, and the only time it would play correctly was just after a fresh reboot. If an audible alert - say, from the calendar - had previously sounded, a call from home would lock up the phone. I'm told it was something about part of the OS not releasing the audio driver or something. The solution was not to use custom ring tones.
I understand how this could be considered a feature, but you have to go home sometime... If wife can't reach me on the phone during the day, I pay for it that evening. And the next day, and the following weekend...
Slashdot Mirror
I've not perused these types of websites, but couldn't you post anonymously? To come after you, the doctor would have to prove that it was you posting, wouldn't they?
Another thing that occurs to me: Say you sign the paperwork in order to get service. The doctor botches it and you post an unfavorable review. The doctor sues you for breach of contract. Then the doctor has to see evidence of the botched procedure brought up in court and perhaps in the media. It seems like suing a patient would be a very dangerous thing to do. You might win the suit, but be left with no way to salvage your reputation.
> Are they telling us we stink?
Geeks with poor personal habits. Who woulda thunkit.
Cancel your account! If enough people do that, they'll either change their policy or go out of business. Either way, problem solved. You can always re-join later. They even keep your old queue around for awhile. You get it back when you re-activate.
Seriously, everyone who thinks this sucks, cancel today, and tell them why.
"How was your visit to Epcot?"
"I don't remember."
I thought the old "play it now" quality was pretty crappy, and quit Netflix over it a few months ago. I can't imagine what you-all are putting up with now.
Geeze, talk about shooting one's self in the foot.
> If you value your time at all, you should realize that spending an extra $100 on a Mac is well worth it if it improves your productivity.
I agree wholeheartedly. And if it were only an extra $100, my house would be full of Macs. We have one Mac for the stuff that runs best on the Mac. (Anything by Adobe, Garage Band, etc.) We also own three laptops. I've never paid more than $500 for a laptop. The last laptop I bought (mid-February) was right around $350 new in box preloaded with Vista Home. And I'm here to tell you, the very moment Macbooks are in that price range, Microsoft can kiss my shiny metal ass. But until then, well, we have one Mac. For the stuff that runs best on the Mac.
> the iPhone was the first to offer a touch screen based UI
Huh?? Handspring Treo 180, released Feb 2002. Available with or without keyboard. The 180G was entirely touch based, including dialing the phone and entering text. There may be earlier examples.
I think you mean "the iPhone was the first to offer a phone with the look and feel of the iPhone". That's what people usually mean when they make statements like this.
> a solid internet browser, a usable mobile calendar, and a viable iPod replacement
"solid" is relative... The browser's limitations have been widely reported.
Both Blackberry and Palm (and I believe Symbian) were all over the usable mobile calendar years before.
As far as an iPod replacement... you can put a 16 gig memory card in a Blackberry for about $50, try that with your 8 gig iPhone. And -- listen, this is important -- Blackberry supports stereo bluetooth, (as did Palm with a third party app) an area where Apple is *way* behind. When I get into my truck, the phone automatically pairs with the radio and I can play music on the stereo directly from the phone wirelessly, *and* control the phone from the stereo console. No fumbling in the glove compartment for the proprietary adapter cable, no putting up with fiddly, low-fidelity FM transmitters.
But what you say is technically correct, -- a viable iPod replacement -- as no iPod has this feature natively.
What *I* want in an iPhone is something at least as good as I can get in a competing phone. What you actually get is a somewhat innovative GUI on a substandard platform.
I'm not anti-Apple. We own a Mac and three iPods -- (two -- a 3rd gen and Classic -- have been retired) including a Touch. The Touch is a lot of fun. But the iPhone just isn't that special. I'm sorry. Cellular phones just aren't Apple's core competency. I mean, yes, it beats the hell out of Windows Mobile, but what doesn't?
Seriously, this is a little suspicious. That's at least 36 features that weren't beta tested. I ran the beta for a few weeks, and thought it was pretty solid; was actually considering adopting Windows 7 (having decided to skip Vista). Now I'm worried. More worried, I mean. If these are new features and not just last minute fixes, at least some of them won't be usable until the first service pack, if past history is any indication.
Oh well, it's not like XP is suddenly going to stop working.
The reasons cited (aside from the TV tuner -- who needs that?) were the same reasons I passed on the iphone. I keep hearing about coolness and "the experience" on the "jesus phone" but beyond the GUI -- seriously, now -- it's a mediocre phone, even by American standards, let alone what they have over there. I suspect the difference between their consumers and ours is that ours are more likely to buy into mindshare. Hmm. Maybe that's why in so many cases they're the producers, and we're the consumers.
It's a phone. It's an appliance. You shouldn't have to reboot your phone any more than you should have to reboot your TV or your car. It boggles the mind why anyone would put up with this.
This isn't about porn or criminal information -- any sensitive information shouldn't be kept on your laptop, especially if you're going over a border. There are so many simple solutions -- keeping it somewhere "in the cloud" and fetching it on the other side, or putting it on a chip and mailing it to yourself. You don't even have to resort to exotic technical solutions like hidden partitions or steganography. There are so many simple solutions that don't involve having the information actually on your laptop... It's astonishing that this even comes up.
I did the analysis, and it was much cheaper to upgrade the phone. (Blackberry Bold -- rings every time, and I've never had to reboot it.)
Sigh. Geeze, this is geeky. Very well, please allow me to modify.
> Why does a 14 year old need a blackberry?
I never said she did.
> That sounds like a list of wants, not a list of needs.....
Don't be disingenuous. "Need" was your word, not mine. Throwing out a technically incorrect term and then pouncing on it after I let it slide is a really nerdy, socially inept thing to do. Just thought you should know. Not the way to impress the girls.
> Why does a 14 year old need a blackberry?
For the usual reasons (media, PDA functions) but primarily because it has the best keyboard for texting.
> but true Ubergeeks tend to sacrifice a lot (like a social life and even personal grooming habits to varying degrees) to get to and stay on top of their game.
I'm not sure about the part about personal grooming habits. It doesn't take that long to shower, and itching all over detracts from concentration. Rather, I suspect that poor grooming habits and lack of social skills are parts of the geek subculture and in most cases are an affectation rather than a characteristic.
That said, as a kid, it grated on me that the top shirt button appeared to have no purpose.
Having the ability to do very basic (computer related) things is not, in my experience, related to gender. Even (male) friends who are mechanically inclined are not necessarily computer literate. Part of this is training, part is inclination, but I think there really is something to having "The Knack".
My wife literally can't figure out a cell phone. We tried several different models and finally got her one of those completely mindless do-nothing phones with big buttons that you only have to open to answer the call, and she still can't answer the phone two times out of three. Even if she manages to connect, you often hear "Hello? Hello? If you're talking I can't hear you. I'm hanging up now." (I suspect she's holding the phone upside down but haven't been able to prove it yet.) If she's on the road and needs to use a phone, she'll stop somewhere so she can use a "real" phone. I put a charger in her car and by her side of the bed, and her battery is still dead half the time. Computer? Anything more complicated than bringing up Spider, forget it.
Daughter is polar opposite. At 14, she's a power user of her Blackberry Curve and iPod Touch, owns a thinkpad (XP) and ASUS netbook (Linux) and has a KVM on her desktop so she can access both PC (XP Pro) and Mac (Leopard). She goes to art school (currently doing photography (film), ceramics and painting with acrylics) and is adept at Photoshop. She plays with Garage Band for relaxation. Her Christmas list is a dog-eared ThinkGeek catalog (the "mana" potions taste terrible) and her favorite T-shirt says "No, I won't fix your computer". (She wanted "slide to unlock" but I don't want her boyfriend to get ideas.) She has an intuitive grasp of computers that still startles me. When I'm stuck on a project (I often work from home) she'll walk by, make a seemingly random comment and later I'll realize that was the missing piece. When I ask her how she does it, she just shrugs. Last year when we visited my mom, she was complaining how her combination copier/fax/printer wouldn't work. Daughter borrowed a screwdriver, took it apart, found the paper guide that had popped loose, restored machine to operation. Mom was amazed. I said "yeah, get used to that".
I've read the pages of this book that Amazon has made available, and it strikes me as a way for a bright woman with an open mind to become a competent user, but not a geek goddess in any sense of the term of which I am familiar. I think true geek goddesshood is something you're born with. (See above.) However, although the title may be hyperbole, the book appears useful.
I think your specs may be on the high side for an office machine, but it raises an interesting scenario -- have we reached the point where a new computer (minus peripherals) with the new OS already installed is about the same cost as the retail price of an OS upgrade? Has the pain of upgrade and the falling cost of hardware forced an environment where consumer desktop computers are completely disposable? What do we do with all those old computers? (I know I know, run Ubuntu... Ask a silly question...)
> Microsoft has stated that the best option to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 is by not skipping the upgrade to Vista.
Taken on it's own, this statement means little. Microsoft would say this in any case -- not from any evil conspiracy, but simply because it's in their best interest. If a credible M$ source said the migration path of XP directly to Windows 7 worked just dandy, they'd never work in Redmond again. Note to ChannelWeb: Analysis is incomplete without trying this.
I'm looking at upgrading my media center from XP Media Edition to Windows 7, but that'll be a complete reinstall, so it doesn't count. I was flirting with Windows 7 for my other machines, but lacking official support of an upgrade from XP to Windows 7, they'll have to stay on XP. There's no way in Hell I'm going to pay a couple hundred to upgrade to Vista just so I can pay another couple hundred to upgrade to Windows 7. Nice idea to back-door some additional Vista purchases, but would it really work? What person in their right mind would do this?
For that matter, what company in it's right mind would do this? Especially in this economy?
> it's possible for the home network to specify some limits in advance which gives full real time billing control.
Certainly. But what is their motivation? It's additional cost for no real gain. The occasional multi-thousand-dollar windfall is a bonus.
Feel free to mod this off topic.
Having to debunk obvious hoaxes is part of it. It's interesting to observe that since I started doing that, oh, 10 years ago, I've dropped off the "worst virus ever" and "gang poppers kill people who flash their lights" list. They're still being sent out, but no longer to me. I think this is because there's some satisfaction in thinking these things are true, and I was spoiling it by debunking them. But that's fine, as long as they don't get to my mailbox anymore.
Here's the main problem with forwards: They waste my time, and I can't ignore them. I don't have a car analogy, how about a phone analogy? Let's say you get regular calls at 3:00 AM from some drunk who keeps dialing your number instead of the all night liquor store. (Side note, this happened to me when I was in college.)
Usually when you get a call in the middle of the night, you have to take it, in case it's a genuine emergency, especially if you're on-call like many of us here.
Let's say you can avoid answering these bogus calls with caller ID. Or, let's say you have one of those wonderful intelligent phones that only ring if the number is on a list of friends and relatives, or you can block certain problematic numbers. Got it?
Ok, now, let's say it's all of your friends and relatives who are trying to call the liquor store at 3 O'Dark and getting you instead. How long before it stops being cute? Caller ID doesn't help, because if it's your mom's number you need to answer in case she's in the hospital or something.
Forwards are like that. It's spam for which spam filters are useless. It wastes your time in a very special way that even spam doesn't, because you have to evaluate the message in case there's something you need to know from your relatives. My mom was especially bad about this -- she'd bombard me with huge amounts of crap -- she used Incredimail which apparently makes this easy to do -- and at the very bottom of megabytes of drivel, hoaxes and cute pictures of kittens and puppies, would be "Had a mild heart attack, spent two days in the hospital but ok now love Mom." And believe me, you don't want to be the only offspring at Thanksgiving who didn't know Mom had a heart attack last March, you insensitive clod.
It's seldom just one. Forwards tend to cascade. Most non-geeks don't have the sense or don't care enough to take you off their list if you were on the same list they were, so by the time it gets to me, I've gotten one from mom and one more from everyone on her distribution list and a few from people I don't even know, who have gleaned my address from previous forwards and added to their own lists.
Side note, my wife's mom has never sent me a forward. In appreciation, she gets free in-home computer care. I charge my other relatives for parts and labor plus a modest mark-up. How modest depends on how much they've pissed me off lately.
Yeah, I'm a little militant about mail forwards, and my family knows it. The good news is that friends and family no longer put me on their forward lists. Some family members no longer speak to me, an unexpected bonus.
Mail forwards are not like social grooming. Social grooming is people interacting in their own words, even if it's pointless tweets. Forwards give the illusion of social interaction without all that difficult, time consuming, you know, writing. It's the difference between having a conversation and watching one on TV.
Not that I'm opinionated or anything.
In other words, write your own material, monkey boy!
> Some of them [the average person] even view email as a nuisance they were better off without.
I've been using email since 1982, and I sometimes think it's a nuisance I'd be better off without. I get this feeling most often right after my friends and family send me fifty copies of the same mail forward. Some people should never have been introduced to email.
On topic, when I left a certain company in California years ago, I was grappling with the right wording for the goodbye mail, as I was having trouble finding something positive to say about my time with the company. I asked my admin for advice, and she said "all you're legally required to say is 'I quit'". It worked.
It could be that what was lost wasn't some partner's phone running 6.5, but an original device commissioned by Microsoft. This actually makes sense, as I could see an exec arguing that many of the problems with Windows Mobile is imperfect implementation by the cell phone manufacturers. (Clearly this is an oversimplification, but you could see that being put on a PowerPoint slide.) A closed architecture would allow Microsoft to make sure that the hardware was tightly and properly integrated with Windows. So, for instance, you potentially wouldn't have the issue with some Windows Mobile devices locking up when the user put it in "vibrate" mode. (I had a phone that would consistently do this.)
Of course, as someone else pointed out, Microsoft has no history of making cell phones, so the results would probably be ghastly. But you could see them making the attempt.
Something like that actually happened to me. I picked a custom ring tone for calls from home, and the only time it would play correctly was just after a fresh reboot. If an audible alert - say, from the calendar - had previously sounded, a call from home would lock up the phone. I'm told it was something about part of the OS not releasing the audio driver or something. The solution was not to use custom ring tones.
I understand how this could be considered a feature, but you have to go home sometime... If wife can't reach me on the phone during the day, I pay for it that evening. And the next day, and the following weekend...