Visual Studio 2005 is a great tool, a great IDE. It is generally very stable. But when it crashes, it crashes hard. I certainly want to do my part to make the product better, and lately I have been patiently waiting for the Error Reporting module to upload crash reports to Microsoft. But sometimes they seem to take forever to upload. The real frustration is that I don't know just how much time it will take. See, the Error Reporting window gives me an estimated transfer time based on a 56k modem. Personally, I only know of one developer who still uses a 56k modem to connect to the Internet. It may seem trivial, but how hard would it have been to detect my connection speed and show a more accurate estimated transfer time? Oh, and if it's still transferring, why does it tell me it's checking for the status of the problem? It's the little usability things that make a huge difference in a user's perceived product experience.

Just to mention, only once in using Microsoft products has error reporting ever come back to me with a solution for an error. How about saying that "we got your error report", "we have seen this problem before" (most likely), "it's related to XYZ", and "we are working on it". Then we could have that warm fuzzy feeling that Microsoft values our feedback, and us.

Oh, and in the time it took me to write this up, here's the progress it's made.

Doh! Good thing I'm not working on a deadline.