My poll on this subject is still running (see right), but so far about 2/3 of respondents rate AutoCAD 2011′s new browser-based Help system as 0, 1 or 2 stars out of 5 (total fail, very poor or poor). Frankly, I’m surprised it’s doing as well as that. Have a look at this discussion [...]
 23 April 2010, 3:48 pm |  9 comments | Tags: 12-Month Release Cycle, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Cluelessness, Comments, Fail, Help, Newsgroups, Rant | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Cloud, Comments, Fail, Rant, Web Stuff Credit where credit is due. Following my rant about the uselessness of using a 16-minute YouTube video as the AutoCAD 2011 system requirements resource, the relevant people at Autodesk quickly fixed it and let me know. Now we just need the other releases covered and we’ll be all set. Autodesk is still officially supporting [...] 16 April 2010, 1:46 pm |  One comment | Tags: Communication, Documentation, Feedback, Knowledge Base, Positive feedback, Rant, Win | Category: AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Customer Service, Web Stuff, Win This evening, I needed to know exactly which operating systems were supported by all AutoCAD releases from 2004 to 2011 inclusive. I have a pretty good idea, but I needed to confirm that my mental picture is completely correct. So I hopped over to the Autodesk Knowledge Base and entered “system requirements” in the [...] 14 April 2010, 10:35 pm | 7 comments | Tags: Documentation, Fail, Knowledge Base, Rant | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Other Sites, Rant, Video, Web Stuff One of the blogs I read regularly is Photoshop Disasters, which recently posted a picture of a Ralph Lauren ad. In common with many fashion photos, this showed a skinny model that appeared to have been further skinnified on somebody’s computer to the point that the poor waif was ridiculously deformed. Like this:
8 October 2009, 2:50 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: Dolts, Fail, Idiots, Image manipulation, Legal, Morons, Other Blogs, Pictures, Ralph Lauren, Rant | Category: Advertising, Fail, Fun, Image manipulation, Legal, Other Blogs, Photography, Pictures, Rant, Thoughts Most of you reading this blog are fortunate enough to live in democracies, and can only look on with sympathy at those who are denied the right to choose who represents them. What must it be like to live under regimes where the people are denied basic rights such as a free choice over [...] 23 June 2009, 2:28 pm | 6 comments | Tags: AUGI, AUGI Election, AUGI Forums, Democracy, Freedom of speech, Rant | Category: AUGI, Fail, Rant, Thoughts I was horrified to learn (in this Autodesk Discussion Group thread) that Autodesk has changed the rules as far as the way Raster Design licenses are handled. It’s quite possible that Autodesk has also done this with other products that I’m not yet aware of. If so, please comment and let me know. If [...] 20 April 2009, 4:40 pm | 10 comments | Tags: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2010, Autodesk, Idiocy, Licensing, Rant, Raster Design | Category: AutoCAD 2010, Customer Service, Interoperability, Other Autodesk Products, Rant, Raster Design The responses to Carol Bartz’s blog post are an interesting read, and not just because of the astonishing amount of attention being paid to her language. One person pointed out how irritating it was to be “helped” by Yahoo’s dumb automated “support” system: I have never – repeat, NEVER – had a human response [...] 5 March 2009, 2:57 pm | 3 comments | Tags: Customer Service, Parcelforce, Rant, Web Stuff, Yahoo! | Category: Customer Service, Rant, Web Stuff Just when I thought it wasn’t possible for my Autodesk discussion group experience to get any worse, it has. Much worse. I stated before that in the 15 November update, some Einstein decided it would be fun to copy my private work email address over the top of my public user ID, automatically making [...] 17 November 2008, 9:57 pm | 8 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Newsgroups, Rant, Web Stuff | Category: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Rant, Web Stuff After an extraordinarily long period of total silence about the dreadful state of the appallingly-updated Autodesk discussion groups, it seems that the sleeping monster has raised an eyelid. Although it unfortunately indicates that Autodesk intends to try to patch up the new system rather than throwing it away, there is now a “sticky” post [...] 30 October 2008, 10:58 am | Leave a comment | Tags: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Feedback, Newsgroups, Polls, Rant, Web Stuff | Category: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Rant, Web Stuff Yes, the Autodesk discussion groups are still awful. In other breaking news, the Pacific Ocean continues to be wet. I seldom visit them any more, but I just hopped on to the Autodesk discussion groups to see what progress had been made in fixing the many problems that have been pointed out here, on [...] 21 October 2008, 2:38 pm | 3 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Feedback, Newsgroups, Polls, Rant, Web Stuff | Category: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Rant, Web Stuff I just tried out the new discussion groups to see if anything has been fixed. After entering my password (yet again), instead of placing me back in the discussion groups with my 100-topics-per-page settings, I was transported to the main Autodesk page and given the chance to provide feedback. I was informed that a [...] 13 October 2008, 10:12 pm | 3 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Feedback, Newsgroups, Polls, Rant, Web Stuff | Category: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Polls, Web Stuff While almost all of the problems with the Autodesk discussion groups remain, there are some signs of movement in one area at least. The search facility, which until recently refused to find anything from before the update, now finds some earlier posts. It would appear that some kind of search index is very slowly [...] 8 October 2008, 5:55 pm | 2 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Feedback, Newsgroups, Polls, Rant, Web Stuff | Category: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Rant, Web Stuff The Autodesk discussion group editor inserts spaces into URLs longer than a certain size (about 70 characters, it seems). It will insert spaces in one place for the URL that it says is displayed on the screen, in another place for the URL that’s actually invoked when clicked, and sometimes in even more places [...] 3 October 2008, 4:15 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Feedback, Newsgroups, Polls, Rant, Web Stuff | Category: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Polls, Rant, Web Stuff The Autodesk discussion group search facility is still impersonating an industrial suction pump in a puddle. It sucks very hard and produces little useful output. In addition to the problems already mentioned ad nauseam (apparently there have never been any posts made containing the word “AutoCAD”, but 34 have been made in the past [...] 3 October 2008, 11:54 am | 3 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Feedback, Newsgroups, Rant, Web Stuff | Category: Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Rant, Web Stuff If you’re a major company and your various web-based services have evolved over time, you may have a proliferation of user IDs and some other issues to tidy up. You may be tempted to have a major overhaul. If you think your reputation among your customers isn’t low enough and you desperately want this update [...] 1 October 2008, 3:44 pm | 4 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Bug, Cluelessness, Customer Service, Feedback, Newsgroups, Ouch, Rant, Sarcasm, Web Stuff | Category: Autodesk, Autodesk University, Bug, Customer Service, Performance, Rant, Tip, Web Stuff When you start using the new AutoCAD discussion groups, in addition to the broken search facility, you will have other issues to deal with. There’s a new editor with lots of features and lots of problems. Quoting formatted messages results in a mess. Switching from one tab to another messes up your text. Submitting [...] 24 September 2008, 4:14 pm | 3 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Customer Service, Newsgroups, Rant, User Interface, User Reaction, Web Stuff | Category: Autodesk, Customer Service, Rant, Web Stuff I’ve been dealing with Autodesk in various ways for 23 years and have had a variety of experiences as a result; some good, some bad. The provision of the license codes needed to keep AutoCAD running has historically been pretty good. No longer. I’m currently going through the worst Autodesk customer service experience in [...] 25 June 2008, 11:59 am | One comment | Tags: Autodesk, Customer Service, Incompetence, Policy, Rant, Registration, Subscription | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Customer Service, Rant In a recent blog post, Roopinder Tara included this throw-away comment: Pure bloggers don’t do advertising, so no worry about advertising pressure — the secret and unstated fear of us all in the trade press. I respect Roopinder, but this kind of “pure blogger” label irritates me. I have an ad on my blog [...] 25 March 2008, 9:12 pm | 19 comments | Tags: Advertising, Blogs, Ethics, Journalism, Matt Lombard, Rant, Roopinder Tara | Category: Advertising, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs, Rant What’s the longest you’ve waited on hold? I broke my own personal best last week when I rang my bank. I phoned up, went through the menu system, typed in my account number and was advised that there could be “some delays” due to “technical difficulties”. I left the phone on speaker and went [...] 2 March 2008, 4:23 pm | One comment | Tags: Bank, Customer Service, On Hold, Rant | Category: Customer Service, Rant |
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Censorship on the Autodesk discussion groups
The Autodesk discussion groups have quite a few problems at the moment, which I will discuss at length in future. One unnecessary problem that has been added to the mix is censorship. Having praised Autodesk in the past for allowing discussion to go unhindered, it’s only fair to slam heavy-handed moderation when I see [...]