[rcb]

Nearly a year ago I posted a positive comment on HN about Windows 8, and was then accused (by TWO individuals) of astroturfing.

The anti-M$ hate & paranoia that HN seems to have inherited from /. seems so beyond antiquated in this day and age.

On topic: This is great news. Congratulations to MS.

[criley2]

I get the same thing from geeks on Reddit regarding Windows 8. Usually a fair bit of nasty language clears up any /r/HailCorporate connotations.

It's so sad to see people who, on one hand will wax poetic on the subject of rationality and open mindedness,will turn around and join a tech bandwagon with no real reason and certainly no real knowledge.

Win8 is better than 7, even if you hate Metro. Objectively, statistically, the OS is more performant than 7.

Of course, openminded geeks never let data and stats get in the way of the anti-ms bandwagon. I'm sure they'll come around for the next windows, "because Windows is good every other release, donchaknow"!

[microtonal]

I get the same thing from geeks on Reddit regarding Windows 8.

Yeah, some people seem to be so blinded by hate towards Microsoft (yes, they behaved notoriously bad), that they can only judge whatever comes out of Microsoft based on that.

I like what they are doing with Windows Phone, Skydrive, Outlook.com, and web-based Office (and I am a UNIX user). But any such comment is usually with by vile reactions.

Yes, you may not like Microsoft and object to using their product because of their moral behavior (ironically, they seem to be one of the least walled-garden-ish company these days). But can we at least judge their products by their technical merit?

[sesqu]

> I like what they are doing with Windows Phone, Skydrive, Outlook.com, and web-based Office

I don't. It's entirely possible that you confound the company-directed hate with the product-directed hate, simply because you have neither.

[300bps]

Which model of Windows Phone did you own? How long did you use it? How big of a SkyDrive did you own? Did you use Outlook.com or Hosted Exchange/Office 365?

For me, I'm very happy with my Lumia 928, 125 GB SkyDrive and the 400+ users I set up on Office 365 love the email system and web based Office.

[Samuel_Michon]

Sorry, but after trying Windows 8 for three weeks, I had to go back to Windows 7. The experience was just too frustrating. I'll try again when Windows 8.1 comes out.

[criley2]

Without the use of software like Start8, I admit that the UX experience would be inferior to Win7, even including the greatly improved SSD and overall performance.

With the use of something like Start8 (or 8.1), the experience is largely identical and the extra performance and improved ui (task manager, etc) become highlights.

[Samuel_Michon]

> posted a positive comment about Windows 8 [...] was then accused of astroturfing

> great news! Congratulations to MS.

You’re not helping your case ;)

Anyways, I've been a member of many tech fora over the years. So far, I find HN to have the best balance between defenders of Microsoft, Apple, Android, *nix, and BSD. If you know of a better forum, I’d love to hear about it.

[corresation]

The anti-M$ hate & paranoia that HN seems to have inherited from /.

Are we all to feel embarrassed? Maybe next you'll start flicking the lights?

How is someone pointing out what seems to be a really obvious setup indicative of "anti-M$ hate and paranoia"? It sounds like you're the only one who is paranoid.

Such setups are common, and in this case it does look like an employee on the group remembered an old account they had (the "it's the only thing you're missing" then a gratiutious link to marketing material). No harm in that, really, it's just a bit funny to see. Is it hateful to point out what is obvious?

[jmcintyre]

I think the announcement was a setup, but not the person who asked the question. It was pretty obvious that someone was going to ask that question, you could bet on it.

The person writes this:

>Skepticism be damned, I'm actually an actual person who asked an actual question. I saw on Twitter that Outlook.com would be doing an AMA, and nobody asked the IMAP question yet, so I did. I've been a lurker on Reddit for several years.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1m926j/we_are_the_outl...

Now, it's possible it's an employee, but I wouldn't rate it as "most certainly" like you did, it was obvious that someone was going to ask this question.

[skafka]

Hey everyone, I'm the person who made the announcement on Reddit this morning. I can assure you that we did not go ask anyone to give us that question. But, did we know someone would? Of course. Every single blog post we've done for the last year has asked about it. If you look at our twitter account, it only took one minute yesterday after we announced the AMA session for someone to ask. We thought it would be a fun thing to do for the Reddit community.

[Samuel_Michon]

This is one of the things I love about HN. People we talk about here actually read the articles and comments.

Feature request: like they do on Reddit with iAMAs, give posters the opportunity to verify with staff that they are who they say they are.

[microtonal]

I love what you did! Of course it is set up, as you say, by waiting until someone asked the question. But it's refreshing compared to corporate-speak announcements that we tend to get bombarded with ;).