Inside Information

Chris Sells blogs on getting the inside scoop.  Particularly, he points out that he occasionally used to ask friends inside Microsoft for info, after exhausting other reasonable means.

Now, I'm just a regular joe without 'friends' at MS, but I've always noticed that every time I've contacted Microsoft with a reasonable question, the people on the other end have literally jumped through hoops to assist me.

How many of you have complained about MSDN documentation?  I know that I have (My response is under the pseudonym 'jerdenn').  I've sent a similar messages to microsoft support on several occasions, and not only do I usually get a message back acknowledging the problem, but I also receive a detailed proposed solution (including code).

A while back I was interested in the .NET Speech SDK, before the beta was publicly available.  I emailed the Speech SDK team, and they actually offered to send me an alpha version of the software.

Really, I've always had a good experience in this realm - as long as you've got a legit purpose, people are going to go that extra mile.  Just don't expect them to do your homework for you.