First, my hourly rate is cheap when compared with the rest of the industry averaging $250/hour. But never mind that, how exactly do you expect to run virus scans (60-120 minutes), apply supposed fixes (60 minutes), re-run scans to see if fixes worked (60-120), backup user data and email (30-60 minutes), reformat and reinstall windows (60-120 minutes depending on the speed of the machine), download updates (60-120 minutes), install SP3 (60 minutes), download more updates (60-120 minutes), reinstall antivirus software (30-45 minutes), MS Office (30 minutes), office updates (30-90 minutes), reinstall other applications and printer connections (60-120 minutes), restore user data (60-120 minutes). That's 10 items, most of which all take over an hour. You have to also remember that in a typical office, most people are still running XP on P4 or CoreDuo machines with 1g memory and the slowest hard drives money could buy. Granted they could just buy a new machine. Than have me remove the bloatware, reinstall their applications and reconfigure to work in their custom networking environment.

Now that I've given a sane answer, here's the smart ass answer: I understand why you are called the logic assassin, you are completely devoid of any. Moron!

If they are including spyware/virus in their "cybercrime" definition, the numbers make sense.

Consider this:

I've got a customer who had two of their machines taken out by viruses. At a billable rate of $180/hour, it took approximately 10-12 hours to try the cleaning solutions (which of course did not work) and then reformat and reinstall Windows and the five-million updates to updates to updates. So that's just two occurrences in one week costing the client $4,000.00 for actions due in large part to whoever it was that sent the virus to them in the first place (bogus PDF attachment). This was just for this week. Annually they probably have 3-4 incidents like this per month at a company of just over 50 people. You could point the finger at the bonehead who opened the attachment or the non-functioning antivirus software, but the root cause was the sending of the virus in the first place. Doing the math, that's $2000*4*12 or $96,000.00 not including the costs of the antivirus software and other preventative measures which need to be taken.

Just the annual cost for this one company alone could justify extrapolating the seemingly over-inflated costs of cybercrime.

And who is it that created the dev system used by these "incompetent" "programmers"? 90% of .NET code that actually executes on computers belongs to MS and "programmers" just sort of fill in the blanks. Not to mention that MS still allows an App to reinstall major OS libraries as part of their runtime installation (e.g. replacing the critical MSVCRT*.DLL libraries sometimes with one two years older than was installed because the developer is using the old version of the DevSoftware because they can't afford or refuse to upgrade to the latest and greatest). BTW, doesn't R&D mean Reverse-Engineer And Disassemble in Microsoft parlance?

As for faked spam, I received a letter from Microsoft informing me that I won the Microsoft Sweepstakes. If "Sent By Yahoo Android" is believable then perhaps I actually am a millionaire :)

/troll

If the UI is the part of the OS that is crashing, then yes, a new UI will be a great update. However, as is usually the case with MS, adding a new UI when the base OS is crashing, is simply putting perfume on a turd.

And nowhere did it say in TFA that only people who have objective facts should respond to this post

And BTW, you question my experience? I'm 47 years old and have been programming for well over 30 years, and have experience with Microsoft as a company from their BASIC on paper tape days and I feel that their products are bloated, bug-ridden and antiquated junk with a really cool paint job, I've said previously that I have experience, both programming and as an end-user with 5,6 & 6.5. And my beef with Windows Phone is that my perception is that it is a piece of crap. So for that reason, I will not buy a Windows Phone phone, I will not program for a Windows Phone phone, I will not recommend a Windows Phone phone and I will provide my experience with previous versions to perspective customer's as evidence as to what kind of crap to expect from a Windows Phone phone in the future. I will always feel they're products are junk, until Microsoft themselves create something, from scratch, that is worth my time and money. I support their garbage on a daily basis because they have lot's of marketing money and in turn I have lot's of customers requiring support (most of them in fact), but I don't have to spend my money on any of it nor am I required by any laws of the slashdot gods to tow the party line.

Thanks for making one of my points.

The only forking going on is the back door job Microsoft marketing people are trying to do with the phone buying public.

And you keep evading my main premise that on a Windows based phone THE PHONE APP CRASHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally, who made you the SlashDot cop? Do yourself a favor and STFU before the entire world recognizes you for what you are.

TFA was "What's your beef with Windows Phone?". If the beef is that "previous versions sucked and I'm not even going to bother with Windows Phone 7", then that's their beef. Just because you think WP7 is a new O/S, don't spout off at folks just because they differ in their opinion. And by the way, if Windows Phone 7 is so new and different why is it Windows Phone SEVEN (a notch up from 6.5) and not Windows Phone 1.

That's just like saying that Windows XP was new simply because they called it XP (or Vista or Windows 7 or Windows 8 for that matter) instead of NT, which is what all they are. UI changes do not a new os make.

Just sayin.....

No more food for the troll here./troll

Why is it no matter what I post there is always a member of the peanut gallery with an asinine response?

What else do I have to judge WP7 by? Purchase another crap phone to test it? Not going to happen my friend.

I used and wrote programs for WinMo 5, 6, 6.5.........All junk, IMHO! Three strikes, they're out! Not going to waste any more time on their new UI written to their new API which is probably just an additional layer to the previous API which is another layer to the previous API and so on and so on. Android and IOS have proven to be far superior and modern and Microsoft is well.............Microsoft, LOL. I wrote a program with Microsoft's API to pull up a dialog with a folder listing, all correct parameters, BSOD. How am I supposed to fix my code when the stinking API crashes when somebody sneezes? If MS wants to continue to be relevant, they need to stop putting patches on patches on patches on patches and write some modern code, compatibility be damned. What I'd like to see in the latest dictionary is: deprecated: no longer relevant (i.e. Microsoft Operating Systems have been deprecated).

Unless you have physical proof it is completely rewritten, all I have to go on is MS' reputation. And on that note all I have to say is Metro

Seriously, when has Microsoft written any code from scratch? Everything since their humble beginnings acquiring DOS has been a bastardization of someone else's code. Why on earth would you thing they rewrote the Phone app? I bet you all the tea in China that it's the same POS with a new coat of paint on it.

And never mind all of that, The stinking >>>PHONE APP CRASHES IN THREE VERSIONS<<<!!!!! Why in God's name would I spend any more money to see whether they fixed it or not? They are no longer relevant and are trying to play catch-up. Great for them, though, not with my stinking money.

Wave hello to Bill for me on your way back to your cubicle.

which was running 6.5 was replaced with Android Frodo thanks to the talent and generosity of the folks at xda-developers.com. Granted it was still not the speediest demon, but at least the phone app didn't crash as was typical with MS' garbage. I think they forgot that the device is first and foremost a phone. Just sayin.........

Couldn't agree more.

Who do I see about getting my freaking 20 minutes back and the fee for my dogs' vet visit for their hearing being bugged by this moron listening to digital data that sounds like my old CoCo tapes. The point could have been made in a two paragraph article. The only thing viral about this video is the effect on the viewer.....headache, earache, chills.

What a waste of time, brain cells and bandwidth.

Sorry for the second post, but I forgot another point.

Actually, their advertising did offer "Unlimited 3G Service" with lot's of visuals of people watching streaming videos.

Actually it's not the competition as much as the ability of a large corporation to lose a ton of money in killing the competition because they know they'll make up for it once the competition is gone. There was an interesting article a few weeks ago here on slashdot about a Euro country ( don't remember which) taking Google to court over offering google maps for free and the country assumed that google would start charging for the maps service (they already started in some cases) once the existing businesses charging for similar services are no longer able to keep their lights on.

It's my contention that this is exactly what AT&T & Verizon have done.

You're kind of picking nits though. Their use of the term 'unlimited' has certain implications that may actually negate parts of the contract that are in conflict with those implied terms of service. Such as while there is no guarantee of a certain amount of speed 100% of the time, there is a guarantee that the company would not purposely degrade your service simply for using it.

If they wanted the ability to throttle a customer's throughput, it should have been spelled out in the contract. The reason they did not is that it would have put a limit on their "unlimited" service. The bean counters made a choice that any lawsuit would be less costly than losing customers for lack of having an unlimited plan. The only difference between this and what Ford did with the Pinto is that nobody will probably die from having their internet throttled.

I sense a class action in their future.

I completely agree with you on your point. But.....

They should not have marketed and sold unlimited accounts offering the 100/100/100 knowing full well they could not provide that. If I were to sell you a car that you can take anywhere for $10,000, sign a contract and take your money only for you to find that the car is a matchbox, I'd probably go to jail.

They know their capacity better than any of us. If we know they could not provide this type of service, I'm sure they knew this as well and IMHO feel that they have defrauded their customers and should have some cost for that fraud. I can guarantee that the average non-techie user has no clue about the limitation/cost. All they know is that they signed up for unlimited access and expect it to be unlimited. Anything else is......well, limited.