As technologies converge and feature sets grow, your life will get easier, promises Microsoft Corp. The company is on a crusade, preaching a vision of computing's future that can be summed up in one word: simplicity.

Earlier this month, CEO Bill Gates outlined a feature-rich but easy-to-operate Interactive PC for consumers, and a nearly glitch-proof Zero Administration Windows network for businesses. In Gates' idealized future, computing will be less about fiddling with configurations, plugging security holes and rebooting frozen systems, and more about getting some work done.

It sounds great, but the reality is that in recent weeks, there's been a parade of bugs in Microsoft products. Holes were found in the Outlook E-mail and scheduler program; the mail system for the company's online service, The Microsoft Network, had a two-day meltdown; and security breaches were discovered in its Internet Explorer 3.0 browser, delaying the 4.0 release. Not to mention the rash of flaws uncovered in Windows NT.

This from the company with unquestioned command of desktop operating systems and applications. It has 20,000 workers, $9 billion in liquid cash and a staggering $120 billion market valuation. So why all the bugs?

"The challenge we have in front of us is very significant," said Jonathan Roberts, Microsoft's director of desktop marketing. "There are thousands of variations on the types of PCs this stuff has to work with."

Microsoft realizes users are frustrated. In fact, six staffers work full-time perusing the newsgroups in search of bug reports about Microsoft products, Roberts said. While the past few bugs have exposed chinks in Microsoft's armor, Roberts said the company's extensive beta testing machine will help deliver on Gates' vision.

Hence the deployment of legions of beta testers--somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 developers kicking the tires on Memphis, the Windows 95 successor, plus a weekly influx of technologically green consumer users, invited to the Redmond campus on Saturdays to take the product through its paces and offer suggestions.

"There's no operating system in the history of the world that has had more beta testers" than Windows in its various configurations, Roberts maintained.

That doesn't mean future applications and operating systems are going to be 100 percent bug-free. "We hope it's not going to happen again because we're working so damn hard to fix it," Roberts said.

A number of factors make it difficult to see how Microsoft can avoid more such problems. For instance, Microsoft's plan to bring together the browser and the desktop, designed to simplify life for users, in fact may make the behind-the-scenes action more complex.

"As these systems get more complex, they will break more often," said Dan Miller, principal consultant at Opus Research, in San Francisco.

So what's a consumer to do? Be patient, and bring any and all questions to the vendor, said Microsoft's Roberts.

"We're very keen on making the PC relevant and usable for the 60 percent of U.S. homes that don't now have PCs," he said. "Consumer beta testers say they want more integration. They don't want to have to go to multiple places to do different functions."

Source: ZDNet