Thank you, MSN, for taking away My MSN

Anonymous

Thank you, MSN, for redesigning your website to cater to touchpad users. I applaud the demise of the old My MSN and its individuality and welcome my new role as a happy little clone in your Brand New MSN touchpad-friendly world.

Thank you, MSN, for your insistence on catering to an inferior interface like the touchpad, so that now instead of having dozens of links easily visible and accessible on one page, each a headline link made up of one or two compact lines of type, giving me a myriad of choices easily with a mouse and cursor, I now only have to worry about half a dozen or so clunky boxes taking up the entire screen so your beloved touchpad users can navigate the web using their precious chubby little fingers while smiling and drooling gleefully at all the pretty little thumbnail pics they get to point at and touch and even, if the mood strikes them, drool on.

Thank you, MSN, for getting rid of all that pesky customizable content, like the sports scores to my favorite teams, four-day weather forecasts, Fark and the LA Times feeds, and that rollover feature that would tell me more about the story in a small popup window. I’d much rather slog through your generic content which means nothing to me and generously donate my worthless time and help you, a multi-billion-dollar corporation, generate even more revenue through clickbaiting.

Thank you, MSN, for taking up the top inch or so of my browser window with that black menu bar that won’t go away. Just because that MSN pull down menu has the same choices as the horizontal menu bar not even an inch below it doesn’t mean the thing is entirely worthless. It’s also got a handy Bing Search bar that does the same thing as the two search bars that my browser has RIGHT DIRECTLY ABOVE IT.

Oh, and the best part is that is says “Welcome, David”, which will come in handy when I forget my name after banging my head on my desk while using your new and improved MSN. And let’s not forget the little cog, which contains the option to “customize” the page or to leave “feedback”, both of which I’ve thoroughly tried, and is the main reason I can be sure I’ll need that “Welcome, David” reminder after banging my head on my desk.

Thank you, MSN, for making it so hard to find the sports scores of my own teams. Rather than have them available at a glance, I’d much rather have to click several links to find them, since I know you guys need all that clickbait money, and my time, as I’ve said, is so utterly worthless. Plus, I so appreciate the opportunity to broaden my horizons and see the news about teams clear on the other side of the country that I don’t give a rat’s fart about. It’s refreshing, in a banging-my-head-on-my-desk sort of way.

Thank you, MSN, for taking away the four-day weather forecast that I had at the top of my page away from me. Who needs to know whether the weather will be hot or rainy within the next few days? It’s simpler and much more helpful to have only the current temperature. I’m grateful you spared me the walk out the back door to the thermometer on the patio. What a chore that was. And it was time that could otherwise be spent banging my head on my desk.

Thank you, MSN, for that revolving big picture of the eight or so stories that you, in your infinite wisdom, have decided I must know about so urgently that it is a moral imperative that this feature take up two thirds of the browser window and not in any way be a removable option like all the other categories. I especially like that it takes up the whole depth of the browser window, because now I have the wonderful opportunity of having to scroll down to see other content. And, because I have a scroll wheel on my mouse, I can scroll AND bang my head on my desk at the same time!

In fact, scrolling down seems to be a major feature of the new TouchpadMSN, fully as much as head-on-desk-banging. Instead of having over 80 links on three screens worth of scrolling on the old, yucky MyMSN, I can now experience the joy of scrolling through 6 pages with fully half as many links! Twice the scrolling with half the content! I had to count it twice just to be certain of just how truly blessed I now am with TouchpadMSN. The careful counting process went something like this: scroll down, count, *thunk*, scroll down, count, *thunk*, scroll down, count, *thunk*.

This all makes me almost as happy as that wonderful big block of ads that take up the other one third of the opening TouchpadMSN screen, a feature so gosh-darned wonderful it fully explains why this top portion of your new page isn’t removable. On second thought, that big block of ads makes me happier than anything else about your new site: I’m happy I have Firefox with AdBlocker Plus. That grey, blank space where your ads should be just brings a smile to my face. I gotta love ya for it. Three bangs of my head on my desk, just for you.

Thank you, MSN for that link bar at the top of the page right below the black bar. While I actually use Outlook, it’s also so very nice to have links to online versions of Office products, online versions that I will never use because I already own MS Office and have for many years.

However, that One Note thingy should come in handy if I should ever want to spend five minutes trying to figure out how to jot something down that would take 5 seconds with pen and paper. And after spending time crafting my One Note, I can follow the next link and store it on my One Drive, because those pesky flash drives and the backup hard drive I have for storing hundreds of gigabytes of data are just so darned difficult to figure out, and this “Cloud Storage” thing is so popular that it’s been in the news for some reason lately.

And, you know, now that I think about it, the Maps link should come in handy just about every day when I get lost going to work at the same place I’ve gone every workday for the last several years. I’ll just have to remember to get lost. I’m sure anyone reading this has been wishing I’d get lost for quite some time now.

To top it all off, let’s not forget those links to the holy triumvirate of websites: Facebook, Twitter and Skype. With those three companies controlling and inserting themselves into every waking moment of my life, my life would finally be complete.

Wait … I’ve just followed the Music link to X-Box Music site and I’ve just found out that I can listen to songs by someone named Jeezy and someone else named Wiz Khalifa. I was wrong before. NOW my life is finally complete.

*thunk*

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

297 answers

Anonymous

2014-12-18T12:01:41+00:00

Thanks David 42. I have tried to decide between start.me and u.start, while continuing to use My Yahoo as I always have as an alternative. start.me is geared more toward Safari and Mac users than some of the others. and I like my iMac very much for artistic and musical production advantages / ease of use. Outlook is the only reason I still use MSN... it is a perfect businesslike email alternative which I prefer. UStart is a little nicer looking on the PC and I haven't explored it completely yet, so I will be making the choice soon.

Your post of a more comprehensive list is appreciated by those of us who have not decided yet. Maybe there is something better among the 4 or 5 I haven't seen yet among them. I hate to have to report that Yahoo is following along w/ their new look and anti-input device stance..... swipe and tap for smart phone computing and deserting the business computer model that has served so well for the last 15 years. They are already cutting back on RSS feed support, as I have lost 3 more of my RSS reader feeds in the past two months. It is just a matter of time before the grubby new web managers decide to stop My Yahoo support. I liked some of the My Yahoo features better than My MSN, but the utilization and execution wasn't always the best. And add the absolute brainless sorts that comment on Yahoo articles forced me to stop trying to reason w/ the right radicals about the virtues of moderation . I just cruise away now to a more informed and learned group of sites for any serious discussion and a select few non-gossip/ mean-spirited pages that concentrate on freedom of choice alternatives in the world of entertainment and sports

Google Reader has also bit the dust and the reasons given were exactly like MSN's response to their longtime loyal and paying customers. Basically the mute unresponsive, sarcastic nonsense that we heard for a couple of weeks until those who tried to fight for MyMSN were threatened w/ dismissal and disappeared from this thread/forum. Basically a short letter about not enough traffic and ad revenue potential to justify site maintenance costs. No apology, no thanks for your continuous past loyalty, "you old farts just don't matter anymore. Excuse my dust while I run away laughing at you who will probably just die off anyway in the next 10 - 20 years." Good riddance to bad rubbish is my response as I direct more of my business energies toward the Mac and OSX and away from the PC . We have met the enemy and it is Microsoft. To the extent that they now have 20 % plus of their reading pane devoted to ads and self-promoting mobile app shilling w/cannot be erased w/ an X. And they refuse to fix the "disappearing scroll bar" issue after countless feedback complaints. Lazy, thoughtless ingrates who are simply thumbing their noses at those who built their current employers' business success and expansion into the teaching and education sectors , as well as the art, music and architecture software utilization they now enjoy. It literally sickens me to think of how low they have sunk and how the loss of a guiding spirit like Bill Gates and the excitable promotion of Steve Ballmer has literally left them devoid of humanitarian effort and earnest accommodation of customer wishes and requests. Customer Service now exists only for those who do shell out hard-earned money for less productive and lesser logic-based product lines.

Making it easier is not a bad thing, but deciding what is important for us to know first and making it harder to find what we seek amongst the clutter and morass of sleek, slick photo packaging and relentless image seeking is the sin of media overload. Then add the various video accessibility issues which suffer from a lack of a common set of codecs across platforms. I always felt that flash was a good thing as long as internet providers didn't insist on constant throttling of the pipeline for economic blackmailing purposes. It isn't as much of a problem in Japan and Europe as they are ahead of the curve and understand that anti-productive schemes and inefficient execution tolerance should be avoided as business models that anger the common users when they are asked to pay more to be successful. This is a typical Microsoft tactic and even Apple approaches this due to their proprietary elitism. Some would say that this is really what the mass media purveyors and corporate fascists are really seeking: mass confusion, lack of easier access to important news and knowledge, and propaganda , entertainment and sports as distractions mushrooming into their own sense of self-importance and dominance, as the truth-seekers are thwarted by the distractions and statistical trivialities. Sad, isn't it, that voter education on the important issues of the day is discouraged while sound bites, catch phrases and dittoism dumb down the electorate into approaching their duty as hot button emotional decisions vs. calmly reasoned evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of the alternatives before them ??
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-12-17T20:44:09+00:00

Ditto. Thanks for taking MY MSN away. It was so much easier then this bull. I might have to take MSN and change it to Yahoo or Google, whatever is easier for me.

I don't know if you've read this advice elsewhere, and if you have, I apologize for repeating, but here is a link to some fine alternatives to MSN, ones that offer a real homepage with customizable features. One of these should suit you. Sorry for taking so long to reply, but I've pretty much given up on MSN. It's useless.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-12-04T21:50:27+00:00

Ditto. Thanks for taking MY MSN away. It was so much easier then this bull. I might have to take MSN and change it to Yahoo or Google, whatever is easier for me.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-11-29T14:23:16+00:00

FYI, My MSN no longer exists except as a saved HTML document if you were lucky enough to see it one more time before they (Misrosoft ****) deep-sixed it and thumbed their noses at all of the long time customers that supported them and used it as a valuable tool for sorting news, sports, entertainment, tech and RSS info and news feeds. Shame should be spilled all over them, but it would be pointless because they are too young and stupid to realize that it is ethically WRONG to take a dump on your customers for the simple sake of expedient profit while failing to see the big picture and eventual loss of good will and ultimately the downfall of their once formidable financial empire. A bunch of grubby Yalies and neer-do-wells will eventually get their comeuppance in the form of pink slips if their is any justice or at least a vengeful Overlord !
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-11-29T14:14:56+00:00

Not surprised about this at all. Have not had any use for the MSN homepage except to keep access to my MSN Premium Toolbar and Dashboard. If MSN never reverts back before the subscription is up, then it'll be bye-bye Mr. Qi Lu, and thanks for nothing!
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments