Tech: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417

Subject: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Young Buchan
Date: 05 Jun 10 - 06:45 PM

Someone wanted the words of Pride of the Springfield Road.
I was happily typing it out.
I got to that beautiful line "'Twas there I met my little brunette and she stole my heart away."
A green wiggly line appeared under 'brunette'.
I investigated.
It would appear that Mr Gates and his minions thing it would be better if I sang 'brown-haired person'.
I have lived too long ....

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: John P
Date: 05 Jun 10 - 08:52 PM

Office 2007.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 02:50 AM

Office 2007 is quite probably the reason (or at least a main one of the reasons) why Apple has recently passed Microsoft in net worth/market value.

It is designed by idiots in a way to make it virtually impossible for persons accustomed to well-designed software to perform expected simple operations, on the apparent assumption that there are no users more intelligent than the idiots who "redesigned" it.

Having assumed that "only idiots will buy it," they are rapidly propogating the conclusion that "only IDIOTS SHOULD buy it.

It's very popular with "computer magazine" editors ... ... ... ('nuff said?).

John

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: terrier
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 04:39 AM

Why are people still using Microsoft Office when they can get Open Office for free? Or is it not all it's cracked up to be.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 12:16 PM

Or they can get Word Perfect, which IS all it's cracked up to be?

When I first saw the tool bar on MO7 I thought I'd died and gone to Hell. I still think so.

Which is why I use Word Perfect and Open Office. In fact, think that Wordstar 1.0 worked better than Microsoft Office ever has.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 12:59 PM

Wordstar? You don't remember having to hand tailor with coded line commands every indent, italic, every margin, ad infinitum? Don't get me wrong, for its time it was a wondrous thing. But I am not an idiot and can work quite happily in MS Word. You just have to learn the damn program, which I warrant is not as simple as it should be.


A

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: SINSULL
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 01:02 PM

I must be a total idiot. I love Bill Gates and Microsoft. I once worked in DOS.
SINS

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 01:02 PM

BTW, I tried opening a document and inserting the word "brunette" in it. All it did was correct my spelling. It sounds to me like what you brought up was not a correction, but a definition, having called on the automatic dictionary function rather than a spell-check.

ALternatively, you may have set some kind of weird politically correct standard rule in the Grammar settings.

I have never been told such a thing by Word myself, and I have used it for decades in various incarnations.


A

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: John P
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 01:10 PM

I've never tried to use Open Office or Word Perfect. Will Microsoft Office open their files and vice versa?

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: jeffp
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 01:21 PM

Microsoft Word will open their documents, but I wrote a simple resume in Open Office and opened it in Word and had to do a lot of adjustment to make it look the same. At $150 for the Home and Student version, the real thing is on my computer. And that package is authorized for up to 3 computers.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Amergin
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 04:25 PM

Open Office does not have the same functionality that MS Office does....It is all right (if a bit slow and clunky) for basic things...but if you needed to do something a bit more advanced, you're better off with MS Office.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 07:33 PM

Unless MSO has seen the light, you can still do more with WP. Take, for just one example, the "Reveal Codes" function: if you have a problem in a sentence and have to fix the formatting you can do a "Reveal Codes" and it will show you the formatting codes -- takes the guesswork out of it. It also publishes quite nicely to HTML, XML, PDF, and Edgar. It will open and save in such things as Wordstar, ASCII, Doc, Rich Text, Volkswriter, Windows Write, Unicode, Navy DIF Standard, Edgar, Display Write, and ANSI (to name a few). It will also open PDF and let you edit the document and then re-file as PDF.

Heck, it does more than I'll ever need and it does it well. Why fool with what works?

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Alice
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 07:36 PM

... I love my Mac.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: GUEST,jts
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 07:49 PM

Lotus symphony is also free.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: olddude
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 08:42 PM

use open office, free, powerful, and you can save it as a word doc, pdf or anything else you want.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: SINSULL
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 09:27 PM

Ahhhh but some of us find old Bill quite sexy.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 09:34 PM

Rapaire repeats a "standard idiot" complaint:

Unless MSO has seen the light, you can still do more with WP. Take, for just one example, the "Reveal Codes" function: if you have a problem in a sentence and have to fix the formatting you can do a "Reveal Codes" and it will show you the formatting codes -- takes the guesswork out of it.

Since the first Windows version before the main programs were combined into an "Office" package, Word shows on the toolbar the format applied to each character; or you can open the sidebar to show paragraph formats fully and completely.

You NEVER NEEDED TO FLOP BACK AND FORTH between reveal codes and not reveal codes since the "CODES" WERE ALWAYS SHOWN ALL THE TIME.

You don't need codes since the format for characters, for words highlighted, or for sentences/paragraphs selected ARE ALWAYS SHOWN and you just select another format if you want them different.

That is, until Office 2007, when Microsoft decided Office is ONLY FOR IDIOTS and made most of the useful tools inaccessible.

Prior to Office 2007, it was at most three clicks to nearly ANY OPERATION you wanted, and related operations were in a single menu.

Beginning with Office 2007, you have to figure out first which of the five top menues you might find a function on, then GUESS which of 70 to 95 unintelligible icons on each menu might get you close, then often you have to scroll through as many as 200 "presets" to get to "other choices" where you may find half of one of the simple menus that used to be accessible in two clicks.

But HALF OF THE OTHER HALF of the menu you need is on a different "top menu" where you repeat the process, to (maybe) continue an operation (to as nearly complete as you're expected to be smart enough to know you should want to do it) in (I've counted) 143 clicks to do what should require 3. The remaining half of the "other half" of the menu you should have had in its entirety in 3 clicks is not accessible by any means so you just can't do it any more.

And Office 2007 - and presumedly 2010 - has no functional "Help" file to explain anything. You're simply sent to "web help" where all you find are links to "social networking sites" where multitudes of blithering/blathering idiots will tell you (incorrectly) how to choose blue flowers for the background instead of polka-dotted giraffes - and why that's more important than knowing how to copy paragraph styles from one form to another (which you apparently can no longer do, beginning in Word 2007).

Until Office 2007, I never met a professional WP person who learned to use Word with basic professional competence after using Wordstar or Word Perfect, all in professional applications, who would willingly return to either. Open Office does not include all the capabilities easily accessible in older Word, but may be at least as good as Office 2007/2010. I'm still looking for a fully useful alternate to Office 2007.

John

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 10:39 PM

So am I, JiK, so am I. If I'd come up with something I like better I'd change in a minute. In the meantime, I'll stick with WP and OO.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 02:18 AM

Rapaire -

I think for most people Open Office is perfectly satisfactory. Few are likely even to know the existence of the fairly common but slightly advanced features used by many WP workers, and only very few "casual users" would even imagine the existence of the capabilities used by the specialists in book publishing or similar applications.

So far as I can tell though, many really necessary features we used in our businesses are simply gone, or inaccessible since OS updates crippled older versions and we were forced to Office 2007.

It's pretty obvious that the people who "redesigned" Office simply didn't know very much about how it was being used by those who had taken the trouble to learn what could be done with the prior versions.

Perhaps it's fortunate that I'm old enough to be retired, and LiK is "withdrawing" from her prior work due to her health. It would be impossible to continue her former business at the same levels as before, using Office 2007. They would have put us out of business even if we weren't in the process of "phasing out" of it.

I find it sad, however, that those still working (assuming there are some still literate ones) will not have the same kinds of tools (or skills) that we knew and used.

John

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Howard Jones
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 01:51 PM

The problem with Office is that it's become so complicated. It will do lots of things, but in the process MS have made it difficult to do simple things. I suspect most people only use Office to type fairly simple letters and reports.

One thing which really bugs me is when I'm writing a report with indented paragraphs, and suddenly Office for no apparent reason will decide it knows better than I do how I want it formatted. I then have to spend some time rearranging ruler marks to get to appear as I intended.

At least they've got rid of that bloody paperclip. I once typed in its box "Just f*** off and leave me alone" - and it did!

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: GUEST,Jonny Sunshine
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 02:02 PM

It looks like you're trying to post to a messageboard thread complaining about Micro$soft products. Would you like me to help?

;-)

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: GUEST,Riginslinger
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 02:04 PM

My computer crashed - I lost my programs - so I put Office 2007 on it. It's terrible. I have Word Perfect and Open Office and don't like them either. The older Word program I had was better than any of them. I'm suppose to get a free up-date for 2010. I hope it works better.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: PoppaGator
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 04:24 PM

I'm still using Word 2003 (and by extension Office 2003) both at home and at work, with no problems. I suppose I will never want to "upgrade"; if and when I have to buy a whole new computer, I'll probably give serious consideration to Apple. Either that, or stick with Windows but turn to Open Office rather than the latest downgrade from MS.

The main problem with Word Perfect, as I see it, is that it's difficult to "share" files, because so few people still use it ~ if you send a WP document as an email attachment, the average recipient will not be able to open it.

Open Office does not present the same problem, since it can be opened by a Word user (and vice versa ~ Word docs can be opened in Open).

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 04:25 PM

Started out using WordStar on a KayPro II (CP/M operating system). Bought it in 1983. Miraculous! Portable. If you consider 27 pounds "portable."

Currently have an HP laptop. I've been using Microsoft Word (various permutations) now for quite a number of years. Never had a problem with it and it does what I want it to do. The inbuilt spell check does toss in the little squiggly underline from time to time, which can be an alert to a typo or misspelling, of course. Often it will give a squiggly underline under a word it doesn't recognize, and often names. Or when it spots a sentence fragment or an obviously mis-used verb tense.

Actually, I find that handy. But then I will deliberately write a sentence fragment for effect, or write a single word sentence and it will squiggly underline that. If it gets too annoying, I can just right-click on the word or phrase with the squiggly underline, click "Ignore all," and it just goes away.

Or, if you get a squiggly underline on a word that you use a lot and know is spelled correctly (e.g., a bit of jargon or a technical term), you can add it to Word's dictionary with a couple of clicks.

No sweat.

I've got WordPerfect and it's fine, but I use MS Word mostly, because I'm a lot more familiar with it and it does what I want it to do—which is quite a bit, really.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 07:08 PM

"Wordstar? You don't remember having to hand tailor with coded line commands every indent, italic, every margin, ad infinitum?"

Ah - that's why learning to write HTML in notepad was so easy then.....

:-)

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Gurney
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 01:03 AM

I'm still usings Works 97, but you have to have more recent versions onboard to get the files to make it work with XP. Like Rapaire, I don't like the looks of later versions. They work OK, though, at my level of expertise.
Microsoft irritates me because it just lost the driver for my soundcard, and won't reinstall it. Lost the time-and-date, too.

Subject: RE: Reasons for hating Microsoft No. 3417
From: Zhenya
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 02:51 PM

Office 2007 was imposed on us at work a few months ago. I agree with all the scathing comments above about Word 2007. I've put as many commands as I can fit onto the Quick Access Bar, and I try to keep the rest of the mess minimized so I don't even have to see it. I still have Word 2003 at home and will try to hold onto that as long as I can.