Is it a sign that I’m entering old age and can’t process anything new that I hate Microsoft Office 2013 even more than I hated Windows 8?
First of all, I hate the incredible cheapness of Microsoft that now charges separately for each computer where you want to use the Office. You can transfer it once between computers, which is of absolutely zero help to most people. I have two computers that I use at home (a bigger stationary one and a smaller one I move around the house and use to travel). So does N. The idea that we have to pay for 4 separate copies of the Office is beyond bizarre. I have never in my life downloaded pirated software (music, games, etc.). Never. And this is the first time in my life that I considered doing it because this pricing policy is simply ridiculous.
Things are about to get much worse, however. I heard that Microsoft will now be charging a subscription fee where you will have to pay every year to renew your copy of the Office.
And what is really annoying is that Microsoft’s greed is completely unjustified by the quality of the product they are offering. Office 2013 is so bad as to be almost unusable. I’ve been testing it for a few days and I absolutely hate it.
To name just a few things, the vile white interface where a document bleeds onto the margins and onto the “ribbon” gives me a headache and hurts my eyes. The commenting function has been messed with to the extent where it is almost unusable. The comments are not numbered any longer. Neither are they marked in the text. You can only see them if you bring the cursor to the comment in the margin. Instead, we are given the completely idiotic function of nesting comments in a blog-like way.
And this is just the beginning of Office 2013’s problems.
In short, don’t waste your money on this completely idiotic version of the Office. Microsoft can’t offer anything of value and keeps futzing with the Office in a way that only makes it worse just to get people to pay money while getting nothing in return.
Clarissa's Blog 
Consider Open Office.It’s free and includes word processing, a spreadsheet and a data base. I have been using it for several years and have found it quite satisfactory. Documents created in Open Office can be saved in MS Word (as well as in various other formats) and hence are easily transmitted to, and used by, users of MS Word and other software. It works fine with Windows 7..
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The only reason why I’m using this stupid thing is that I need to record PowerPoint presentations as videos. I used Open office for years, and it was great.
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Open office also has a “presentation wizard.” I have never had occasion to use it, but you might want to look at it.
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You are right, I need to check it out. Who knows what changes have been introduced since I last used it.
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Open Office is called Libre Office now. And yeah, it does have a presentation wizard called Impress. I can’t tell you how good it is, since I use LaTeX/Beamer for presentations and I’ve never needed to record one as a video, but it can apparently export presentations in .swf files, which any computer with Flash (that is, the majority of them)can play.
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And no, you disliking MS’s latest products is not proof of aging. Rather, I’d call it proof of your excellent taste.
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Not to be pedantic but LibreOffice (which I use) is a fork of OpenOffice. OpenOffice still exists. Some say that some open source programs are more open source than others. OpenOffice is basically an Oracle product. A lot of the open source activist types have jumped ship fro OpenOffice in favor of LibreOffice as some kind of political statement. There also seems to be some kind of long-running feud between Mark Shuttleworth (CEO of the outfit that puts out Ubuntu Linux) and Oracle, so a lot of Ubuntu users kind of got switched from OO to LO as part of a version upgrade.
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You’ll be thrilled to know that Powerpoint 2016 now doesn’t support exporting as videos anymore. And it won’t let you download Office 2013 either. Exporting videos is the only reason I downloaded a trial version of it for my startup business. I have cancelled my subscription already.
I just realized you can make the same with Apple Keynotes, with prettier animation and no hassle. I’m downloading it as we speak.
Funny thing is I found your blog by googling “Microsoft Office sucks” in my frustration, and you wrote this article before even your main reason of using office was chopped.
Nice to see you Microsoft, adios.
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Are you serious??? Fuck, this is bad news. I’m mystified as to why Microsoft is so busily dismantling the most useful elements of Office.
I’ll try Apple Keynotes, thanks for the suggestion!
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If you regularly do work in different languages which require different diacritics then Open Office sucks major donkeys. I wasn’t able to find a way to make keyboard shortcuts (and a colleague who’d worked with it for years told me there was no such function).
One small nice thing about Word is that it’s easy to make a keyboard shortcut so that I don’t have to open a character window each time I want/need a š, an å or a ţ (or download over a half dozen keyboards….).
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Yes, that was a major problem with Open Office. I’m still waiting for Microsoft Office to introduce keyboard shortcuts in PowerPoint.
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Special, international symbols belong to what’s called a “keyboard layout”, which works at the system level between the keyboard and application software, translating the actual keyboard keys to something else. I think Windows even has 2 such translation mappers one on top of the other: One editable with applications such as KeyTweak (changing requires reboot), and the previously mentioned keyboard layouts (editable by a dozen applications, one of with is Keyboard Pianist).
MS Word probably allows to make its own shortcuts, but I’ve never used the functionality, cos it would be confusing to create yet another mapping layer. A given keyboard layout is usable in any Windows application by selecting the layout’s associated “language” from the Language Bar. You can switch between versions of Word or Open Office, and continue using the same keyboard shortcuts.
I agree with the Author about the document bleeding into the margins and surrounding UI controls, because they all look similar – plain white. A mantra I keep hearing about these featureless, ugly graphics interfaces is that they put “the content” in the foreground, where the UI is intentionally plain so as not to attract attention. I don’t see it, because the toolbars and rulers sit on the same level as the paper document, whereas before they were visually elevated using a 3D effect and a darker color. All around the Metro interface looks like its prepared for printing to a laser printer…
I think the Author should pirate an older version that works better. Microsoft sucks because they only sell the very latest product version and don’t offer any choice. If they did, people wouldn’t accept their new copyprotection measures, software bloat, or redesigned UIs, and that obviously wouldn’t work out for Microsoft.
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You only pay the subscription price if you pay for the subscription. If you buy the single license, you have it for life. If you pay for the subscription, it is $100 a year (I think that’s the right price), and you can install it on up to 5 PCs or Macs. Another alternative is Libre Office, it is based off of Open Office, but I think it has a faster release schedule.
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Clarissa, you wouldn’t be normal if you didn’t hate MS Office. I’ve hated every version of MS Word for the last 25 years, which is why I still use WordPerfect for my everyday word processing.
The ONLY reason I have MS Word 2007 on my computer is because editors want manuscripts in .rtf or .docx format, so I convert the WordPerfect documents just before submitting them.
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I still use the 2003 version of MS Office, even though the latest versions are only a torrent away, because, let’s be honest – how big of a difference is there, if you were to eliminate all the useless features they add on every new version, just dazzle the suckers into upgrading. There are a couple of other free Office like suites available besides OpenOffice, some even more polished, if you care to google.
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Exactly, the 2003 version is still perfectly fine. I still haven’t even transitioned to the .docx format and save all my files as .doc.
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I loved the 2003 version of Office, thankfully most of the idiotic changes in 2007 could be eliminated with suitable add-ons, but Office 2013 is totally apalling, I absolutely hate it. Unfortunataly our company just standardised on it, but the IT team are getting well sick of all of the negative comments. Personally, at home, I’m going to buy a Mac, I have never used one, but whatever it does it wil be better than Office 2013.
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“Unfortunataly our company just standardised on it, but the IT team are getting well sick of all of the negative comments.”
– I’m terrified of the moment when this will happen at my job. I so don’t want to be forced with this evil thing.
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How can buying a Mac be better than Office 2013. That’s like saying buying a van is better than buying a chair…..there is no relationship. Also, don’t buy the mac..it is better than nothing..
As for Office 2013. It runs as 1/4 the speed of Office 2010. This is because it was re-engineered from the button up to support tablets. Each document you open opens up another copy of the software, as opposed to earlier Office where you opened multiple documents in one iteration of the software. Microsoft basically ruined (even more) Office to support tablets which accounts for 2% of the Office user base. Well done MS.
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This explains a lot. Thank you, Ed, this is a great comment.
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For someone whose first contact with computers involved 80 column punch cards and FORTRAN, the modern stuff seems almost miraculous and suits my purposes.
Now get off my lawn.
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I remember the punch cards, too. They were all over our place when I was a kid. I also remember the first time I saw a computer: it occupied an entire room and hummed very loudly. 🙂
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Oh yeah, you left out the bit about the hollow floors and about freezing your hind end in that computer room.
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The new version is hell. I don’t have to use it much, but sometimes it is unavoidable and it is incredibly bad. And yes, I remember the old days but the comparison being made here is far narrower.
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Libre Office, hell yeah! 🙂
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I often use Google Docs too now at home especially if it’s a doc I want to share.
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I’m a little nervous about the “software as a service” concept. It would be theoretically possible for it to be a trojan horse (a gift with a catch). I don’t allege that it is, mind you, only that it could plausibly be made into one.
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The only reason to every update your Office product is when Microsoft decides to cut support for the old one with a new format or server type.
You cannot use any Office older than 2010 with the new Exchange 2013 (Corporate E-Mail Server), simply because MS has decided to introduce a new way of communication between the two and cut the old way.
Additionally, did you know that when Microsoft introduced the x-formats (.docx, .xlsx, …) with Office 2007, they initially did not want to make an update for older Office versions, so you’d be stuck with buying either a new version or not being able to handle the new format?
And don’t get me started on licensing Microsoft products in a corporate area. You need separate licenses for everything! You need one license for every OS you install and one for every software you install and then additionally one license for either every server and device or server and user that accesses some some from their workstations.
And last but not least: Did you know that the part that you don’t read when installing anything Microsoft grants them the right to perform and audit in your corporation? That means comming in, counting all the lincenses and then demand a fine for the ones that are missing. And that’s not cheap. I have heard about demands for 250.000€ for medium sized businesses.
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“Did you know that the part that you don’t read when installing anything Microsoft grants them the right to perform and audit in your corporation? ”
– I had no idea. What a ridiculous company, and they are getting worse every day.
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It is not Microsoft alone, but pretty much all of Ye Olde Software Giants, including IBM and Oracle.
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“Did you know that the part that you don’t read when installing anything Microsoft grants them the right to perform and audit in your corporation? That means comming in, counting all the lincenses and then demand a fine for the ones that are missing.”
I have only heard about this in the volume license agreements, however it would be possible for them to sue you for illegal usage of the license. Depending on the country would depend on the outcome.
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There is a trend now with Windows 8, Office and even in the Linux world of tailoring software to the lowest common denominator user — the one who barely knows how to turn on a computer.
Why this is the case, I am not sure. But it makes OSes and applications nearly impossible to use for those with any more experience.
Application makers are in a bad equilibrium now of pretending that no one older than 8 or with an IQ higher than 50 uses their software.
I installed Office 2013 and used it for a few hours. Outlook in particular was the worst. No margins, just a wall of white and no ability to distinguish one email from another or non-email content from anything else.
It was utterly unusable. I uninstalled it, and then deleted the trial. I’ve been warning people away from it ever since.
Pretty much the same story with Windows 8.
I’ve been using computers since the very early 80s and have always been excited about the newest, shiniest thing that comes out. But now that software only caters to the dumbest possible contingent, no longer is that the case.
In short, you aren’t getting old; software is just getting worse.
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Mike, I’m not a power user.
However, every time I see Windows 8 I want to murder it. No, I don’t want my grubby paws all over my screen. Not for actual work. No, I don’t care that you can “swipe”. No, I don’t want to be tied into every Microsoft platform in existence. If I wanted to be tied to one thing, I’d use Chromebook, which is an expensive paperweight. I don’t want to have to hunt for controls. It’s not intuitive; which is something you should never say about a GUI. It is so bad, that I’m hanging onto a dying Vista laptop.
I’ll fall over if I walk into an office or a library and see this UI.
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“If I wanted to be tied to one thing, I’d use Chromebook, which is an expensive paperweight. I don’t want to have to hunt for controls. It’s not intuitive; which is something you should never say about a GUI.”
– Exactly! These are the worst things about Windows 8: it takes away all of the user’s control and it’s completely counter-intuitive. My sister has been working with it for months and says she still hasn’t found an easy way to turn it off!
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Shakti,
I’m a power user by most definitions, but what I actually meant is that anyone who had ever used a computer before in their lives would be put off by Office 2013 and Windows 8 as it is so fundamentally broken and terrible. 🙂
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Our public library has the damned thing and I’m madder than a wet hen about it. It’s ugly, it’s confusing, I spent forever trying to figure out how to do a print preview only to find that you have to click Print first, it completely refused to insert page numbers – there is nothing to love here. It makes me feel like I’m computer incompetent when I am not.
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“I’ve been using computers since the very early 80s and have always been excited about the newest, shiniest thing that comes out. But now that software only caters to the dumbest possible contingent, no longer is that the case.”
– I also always welcome progress and improvement in software and hardware but this new development is just bizarre. Windows 8 seems to be for people who don’t plan to get any work done and who just want to sit there, staring at a screen where images are flashing uncontrollably.
I tried Microsoft Office 2013 for one day and the horrible interface coupled with the counter-intuitive innovations gave me such a headache that I still haven’t fully recovered. I’m SO going back to my Office 2007.
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It isn’t (just) software getting worse. The problem is with changing what a user is used to. Nothing upsets an user as much as changing the user interface. I am a programmer and I have once moved a button in a menu from the top-left to the top-right, to group it with other related functions. I received about 50 angry mails from people for this.
The truth is, interaction with a piece of software for a long time is like a deeply ingrained motoric skill. And if you change something, it forces the user to change habits that have been established when Office 95 came out, and that upsets them.
You will get used to it, just as you will get used to windows 8 after a while.
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I don’t know, I need the comments numbered and I need to see them marked in the text of the document. I can’t work without these functions. I leave up to 80 comments on each paper I grade. For research papers students in higher-level courses write, the number can go to up to 200 comments per paper.
I’d just rather go back to grading typed essays by hand than suffer with the MS Office 2013 commenting function.
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Tim, I agree in most cases, but I don’t agree in this case.
The changes in Windows 8 and Office 2013 aren’t just a matter of some simple re-organization. It is a fundamental change to the entire workings (at least, the user-facing portions) of the OS and applications that remove vital features and substitute them with…nothing.
This isn’t just moving some buttons around.
For instance, even after getting used to the interface of Windows 8 when I was testing it, tasks that took me a few minutes in Windows 7 would take 2-3 times as long.
Some things that I did in Office 2013 and used are now impossible. In addition, the user interface violates to many readability and user interface guidelines that it cuts my reading speed in about half.
Over the years, I’ve used around 10 different operating systems and about 15 different GUIs. Windows 8 is by far the worst.
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yep it is completely unusable, it looks cheap and nasty almost like they have sacked all the old designers and brought in a load of just out of uni where going to change everything and well make it sh*t, I have had the displeasure of having this installed on my machine at work, it has manage to mess up most of the software on my machine getting VBA errors as it copies over these files leaving you to have to install your software again. you get a headache after looking at a spread sheet for more than 2 minutes, the entire layout looks as if it was some freeware software that has gone terribly wrong.
As for windows 8 it was the worse thing (more so than vista and 2000) to happen to computing, but unfortunately I think windows 10 is on par! I working in an Engineering office all PCs are on windows 7, my home PC is on Windows 7 (after rolling back my pc and laptop from windows 10!) the work fine. As an engineer I’m always looking for improvement but it does seem today that with all software its designed for the idiots or more precisely the lazy! the interfaces are becoming worse and clunky, functionality is lost and add ins that drive you mad are thrown in here there and everywhere. As an engineer and having to use a computer for the best part of my life I find this infuriating as I have no choice but.
I just don’t see how these interfaces be it the OS (windows 8, 10 etc.) or Office can be used in a working environment, where most people use computers in there day to day lives?
rant over…..
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My solution would be to de-install and go back to Win7 plus Office 2010.
I can’t imagine how I would react to Win8, given that I have apoplexy whenever that Dam’ Paperclip pops up. I turned off the d. p. on my own office computer, but every once in a while I use a non-assigned computer with its d. p. intact, and I have to swear at it.
BTW, how annoying is the current Kindle, as compared with the other annoying tablets out there? I may break down and get a reader or a tablet someday. I am somewhat inclined toward a tablet for the photographic and graphic reproduction (Audubon field e-guides to birds and every other critter out there; academic papers) but also attracted to the backlit black and white-only (“paperwhite”) readers for fiction.
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“BTW, how annoying is the current Kindle, as compared with the other annoying tablets out there?”
– VERY. I was an enormous fan of the Kindle but the recent versions are really low quality. They have stripped all of the good features and added a mountain of useless ones. Kindle used to allow one to change dictionaries if one read in different languages. That option has been removed in Kindle Fire, rendering the very expensive dictionaries I had purchased on Amazon completely useless! The battery is horrible, the charger falls apart within days of use. It was a good product but they messed with it and messed with it until it became useless!
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And that’s the MAJOR reason why I’ve never bought a Nook or a Kindle: I refuse to lose books to software and version obsolescence. It’s pointless to have the equivalent of the OED in digital form only to lose it because some greedy jerk thinks that five years is too long for you to have the same device. You’ve already got to buy the same books again to read them on the device because you can’t transfer them. Then you’ve got worry about losing the books again every time a new reader comes out? Fuck that!
Kindle used to allow one to change dictionaries if one read in different languages. That option has been removed in Kindle Fire, rendering the very expensive dictionaries I had purchased on Amazon completely useless!
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No, you can read Kindle books anywhere. I’m reading them on my computers, my cell phone and my iPod. It’s now an app that works everywhere. Still, it is hugely obnoxious that a kindle Fire stops functioning in under 18 months!!
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Ok, that’s not as bad as I thought but still… Losing functionality is losing the book in some way. Besides if you lose a function like that, you lose a major reason you bought it in digital form in the first place. Plus the fact that the reader stopped functioning in less than two years is planned obsolescence.
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“Plus the fact that the reader stopped functioning in less than two years is planned obsolescence.”
– Exactly. And when I realized that, I got very angry. This is such a blatant and manipulative strategy to milk people for money. Disgusting! Of course, everybody does this but in the Kindle Fire’s case it was done in a completely obvious and shameless way.
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Intellectual property in the real world is like “altruism” in Ayn Rand’s imagination: The people most surely and sorely victimized by it are the people who actually believe it, and conscientiously apply its stated principles. I do hope you remain true to your principles.
FWIW, I use and recommend Linux. Use of Linux is not piracy, but it’s not paying for a license, either.
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N also is a huge fan of Linux but this is way too sophisticated for me.
And the reason why I don’t use pirated stuff is not any kind of a moral stance, to be honest. It’s simply that I’m very lazy and don’t want to invest any time into the process.
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Setting it up can have its snags, but once you’ve got Linux properly up and running, it really isn’t any more complicated than Windows.
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Out of curiosity, how similar is the 2013 version to the 2010 release? I have 2007 at home…which I prefer. But I have Office 2010 on my computer at school and basically think it’s fine. Is 2013 vastly different than 2010?
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I also have Office 2010 at work and use it a lot. I think it’s perfectly fine. I hoped that Office 2013 would be just minor tweaking of the 2010 version but no, it is completely different. The changes they introduced are dramatic. Maybe I should post some photos of how the interface looks in Office 2013. So yes, 2013 is vastly different from 2010 both visually and in terms of functionality. I have no idea why they made such enormous changes.
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If you could post photos of the interface, I would find it very useful. 🙂
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One thing to remember is that most people disliked Office 2007 when it came out as well. This also happened with Windows XP. The more a person uses the software, the more they will start to like it. Windows 8/Office 2013 take some getting used to, but it isn’t impossible.
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I might get used to the Office but Windows 8 has already made me discover that I know many more swear words than I ever imagined. The computer where it is installed is practically unusable.
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If it is a laptop, I would suggest a USB mouse, it helps so much more than a trackpad. Other than that, just making sure the computer has the recommended system requirements is the first place to start.
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great post. I just got office 2013 installed on my work computer and it does indeed suck big time. i live in istanbul and so i get a lot of documents created in turkish and the new Word can’t seem to remember my preferences. it keeps switching back and forth from turkish to english, even after i change the default settings and supposedly remove the turkish dictionaries. also CTL+F doesn’t work as a shortcut for find and replace anymore, instead it brings up some weird and utterly useless google books-like sidepane feature. time for open office.
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I got 2013 today about 9:30 AM. By 10:30 I called IT and asked to roll back to 2010. The graphics in 2013 are disgusting, and painful to watch on screen. The lack of contrast makes it unusable for business email and business correspondence. This includes Word!!!!!! I am full of venom all over again at MS. They hate our guts!
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” The lack of contrast makes it unusable for business email and business correspondence. This includes Word!!!!!! I am full of venom all over again at MS. They hate our guts!”
– I know! This is so true!
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My education institution gave it to me for free. Uninstalled within 30 seconds and back to 2007. The ribbon titles were YELLING AT ME. And white and “darker” white themes killed my eyes to death.
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Same here. Why was it so necessary to change the ribbon titles to the ANNOYING ONES? Bleh.
Thank you for the comment.
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Why did they ever create the ribbon? 2003 was absolutely the best performing version of Word ever. 2007, 2010 and 2013 are all downgrades. 2003 actually worked.
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The period 2003-2006 was the peak of home pc’s as tools for work. Since then the trend has been to make them toys. I call it peak digital (the more changes made make computers less rather than more useful for work).
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very exciting thread 🙂 It’s very good to hear of the academic community using OpenOffice, Linux, and Latex. I expected no less. I’m a technologist (of the dark side = blue chip organizations) hence work a lot with the Microsoft stack. I personally use office 2013 everyday and it seems to suit my needs, I write white papers so nothing too complex or very long. As an organization though we decided not to roll it out and stick with 2010 as it didn’t bring significant benefits to our users. We’re evaluating office online but not likely to go in that direction either due to security concerns.
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I’ve gone back to MS Office 2010 since the discussion. And it’s still one of the most popular threads.
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Thankfully Linux is also being Dumbed down over the years to make it more attractive to windows users. Mageia 5 will be released in march hopefully, and its probably the closest looking Linux to windows if you choose KDE as the interface.
It comes with libreoffice, and just about every other app you might need.
and its all free.
yes you might still have to learn a bit as it will be slightly different in some aspects to windows, but for those on this thread that expressed they wanted it to be tweak-able, rather than Dumbed down, well Linux is still years behind windows in the Dumbed down area.
However some of its dumbing down will be attractive to less technically able users.
I use mageia as my sole operating system, and theres nothing i cant do with it, and the libre office version that comes with mageia 5 seems to have very good interoperability with office 2010 docx format.
ive found for the firts time, i can simply send a 2010 docx format doc to it and it dispplays and edits as if it were office. for those that want to stick with windows xp or 7 then libre office 4.4 for windows is even newer than the version that comes with mageia and therefore will have even better format support.
regards peter
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I gave up on Office with the intro of Office 2007, when they introduced the Ribbon. It utterly destroyed MS Access as a viable development platform because it was difficult to get rid of and with it enabled, users could “break out” of the carefully controlled navigation and functionality that I was coding into the app.
Combine that, now, with the fact that Office Outlook is bloated with useless features for individuals and small businesses, and devoid of useful features – like being able to look at an email’s headers to determine if it actually came from who it says it came from.
Now, I am seriously considering abandoning it entirely for personal use, too.
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performance in 2013 is the absolute worst. i used 2010 for a couple years without issue. it is probably time to downgrade for me
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…I’m a light user but have been using Word (and the rest of “Office”) in various versions and platforms since the mid 80’s. I eventually bought Office 2010 just because it was on sale (with my new laptop), but could never get used to the ribbon interface. When the free “upgrade” to 2013 came out I tried that, thinking it might be a little better. How wrong was I!!! – The awful drab “color” scheme and, screaming all cap titles and “flat” ugliness (will this terrible flat design fad ever go away??) just turned me off…
Apart from that, what I just don’t “get” is why software in general these days seems to be full of ribbons, task bars and status bars, cluttering up the screen and taking valuable horizontal space, just as our screens have all shrunk vertically, leaving me with the feeling that I’m editing in an ever decreasing letterbox. Between the wide screen format and all these “ribbons” etc, I reckon my work space had decreased over the years by about 20%!!
If 4:3 laptops ever come out again, I’ll be first in line (!)
Back to Word – I still have 2010 and 2013 installed in case I ever need them, but for must of my work I prefer the uncluttered and familiar interface of “Libre Office”.
One last thing – I have a Windows 8 laptop, but like others, I just couldn’t adapt to the new “easier” to use interface (in fact it just frustrated me). I’ve installed “Classic Start Menu” and bypass the “Metro” interface entirely…
Like you I’ve wondered if it’s just me, getting old and developing an aversion to “Change”, but I don’t think so. These new dumbed down, flat, plain, sheer ugly interfaces really do suck!
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Since Vista and Office 2007, Microsoft has consistently alienated and angered more and more of it’s advanced users and power users. They really do seem more concerned with the average dumbed down consumers who use their products for recreation, instead of addressing the needs of the people who use software for actual work.
As for me personally, my long-time dislike of MS became flat-out anger and frustration after the launch of Office 2007 and it’s Ribbon. At that point, MS essentially offered up new eye candy to the stupid masses, while telling it’s long-time power users to “get used to it”. And its been downhill ever since.
The good news here is that more and more people are moving away from MS. Apple, the open source movement, Linux, and even Google are all making progress in terms of software and are also gaining more and more customers every day.
Even the worldwide business community is starting to show signs of frustration. Microsoft’s market share continues to shrink, and their arrogance still won’t acknowledge that fact. They’re dying a slow death, and I’m enjoying every minute of it.
In the meantime, I’m using the software alternatives that I’ve found since 2007. There’s lots of options out there, and those options are giving me real choices, real control, and most of all, they’re letting me actually get work done.
The computer industry in general will take a great leap forward when the likes of Microsoft and their Machiavellian ways are dead and gone. Healthy competition and innovation will once again be the dominant factors. Power users will once again have more control of the tools they use, and it will be the stupid dumbed down masses who will have to “get used to it”.
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I am continually astonished at how bad MS Office is. Really, astonished. As in, I will take a ten-minute break to pace around my place monologuing about how poorly designed a product this is after running into some particularly egregious flaw.
Currently I mainly use PowerPoint out of the suite, but I’m planning on moving over to LaTeX for writing slides. In LaTeX, all the errors are on the user’s end, and quite remarkably, it only does what the user tells it to (as opposed to constantly trying to predict what the user will do and getting it wrong 90% of the time, a la MS Office).
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It’s all about $$$ with MS. User experience has nothing to do with it!! I’ve been in IT for 25 years and this is the worst it has ever been. They are, and have been for years, forcing everyone towards cloud-based solutions so they have control of licensing and can charge what they want. I’ve worked with MS Exchange for 15 years and Exchange 2013 is the worst POS ever. The other versions had their issues, but this tops them all. I used to be excited to get the ‘latest and greatest’ products, but ever since Windows Vista and Office 2007, I’m considering getting out of IT. I can’t stand MS products any longer. Next computer for me will be a Chromebook. Google apps are fine with me, even though I’m not a fan of online apps.
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6 or 7 years on, and I still hate the darn thing. It’s the most obfuscated way possible to present options.
Now, I not only have to scan left and right, but also up and down, across multiple ribbons that are not all visible at the same time. And to top it off, some of the options are not even visible then because you have to click and expand some of them. Aaaaaargh!
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I’ve always been a Word user, but the new version has tipped me over the edge into wanting to commit violence against whatever hateful swine at Microsoft designed that piece of garbage. It’s like they actually hate us. I thought that sort of customer-contempt was the territory of Apple. But no. What drives me insane on a daily basis is STUPID design features like… once upon a time if you zoomed out, you’d automatically get multiple page view. Now, the default setting is to zoom out onto a long string of pages (what idiot thought that would be helpful to anyone?) and you have to select ‘multiple page view’ every single time you open the document. It’s insane. And that’s just the beginning. If you keep improving a product, sure. Charge more. But don’t downgrade the functionality and then have the soullessness to charge more. Someone… or maybe a lot of people… need to be hung, drawn and quartered. After a public flogging, a tar & feathering, and maybe a few days in the stocks.
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Oh, amen amen. If I lived anywhere near MS I’d go and set them on fire. Details too painful to recount but the move from 2003 to 2010 has been a nightmare, still not complete, for urgent jobs I work in 2003 on old pc, send it to new pc, recreate it as 2010 document, check no corruption of original client formatting and send it from there, bccing myself so I have a copy of the final version for my files/invoicing. I had heard that post 2003 versions were horrible downgrades for expert users but, man alive, have never been so deskilled in my life, how dare they. I’ve been working on the transition for 2 months and still can’t bring myself to make the final switch, I just can’t get back to my usual working speed. I am hoping that my clients will go the way of moving to OpenOffice, am praying for that, I hate MS from the very bottom of my heart and would do anything to spite them. They’re costing me a lot of money in time, not to mention what they’re doing to my blood pressure.
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I agree, and I am on the verge of switching from 2003 to 2010 as well as from XP to Windows 7 OS. I’ve had some experience with MS Office 2007 for the past few years, but the ribbon makes me so queazy, that I typically use 2003 just so I can work without getting nauseous or a headache. From what I’ve read so far, 2010 allows you to customize the ribbon much more effectively than 2007 did. I’m looking forward to doing that so I can get as close to the 2003 menu bar as possible and add some quick access buttons as well. It’s odd that Microsoft says they put back the file tab in 2010 because most people couldn’t adjust to the Office button in 2007. But, you only have to do that once in order to adjust to it, so I believe the changes in 2010 over 2007 come from them actually listening to their dissatisfied customers, and finally doing something about it. As far as 2013 is concerned, I’m glad for this post as I shall avoid that version of MS Office.
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