One reason (possibly the reason) Microsoft produces so much bad software: the various parts of the company often work at cross purposes. As with any large organization, a lot of it is just poor coordination -- but former Microsoft VP Dick Brass, in this New York Times Op-Ed piece, claims that his own work on ClearType fonts and Tablet PCs was sabotagedby people who put their own empire-building over the more obvious priority of producing good products.
I just got bit by this very syndrome after installing a lot of updates on my LE1700 tablet. (Irony alert!) One of these updates seems to have broken Windows 7's ability to identify USB devices and match them with the appropriate drivers. I need to roll the system back to an old restore point to verify this diagnosis. But System Restore won't let me do this until I repair some file system errors. So I schedule a boot-time repair (you can't repair the system drive while the OS is running). Which fails, because of one of these same updates. The repair utility suggests that I use System Restore to fix the problem!
OK, I know what to do next: boot a rescue OS and use it to repair the system drive. But not before I register my disdain with a blog entry...
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