Log in to see any non-public content on this page
Athabasca University | AU Student/Staff Login | Invited Guest Login
Athabasca University | AU Student/Staff Login | Invited Guest Login
Microsoft Word
I hate Microsoft Word. It is buggy, ugly, clunky, slow, lacking in features, lacking in standards compliance and massively overpriced. Why, when others could do it more than 20 years ago, can you not even drag a picture to where you want it to be?
I use it solely for compatibility with others, which is why I am currently using it to coauthor a book. I estimate its bugs and failings cost me an average of an hour or two a day at the moment.
This error message sums it up for me:
If you cannot read this, it says 'The document "crowdbookdraftjd.docx" could not be opened. Word cannot open files in the "Microsoft Word Document" format.'
Sigh.
First World Problems
A space to let off steam about unimportant things
Comments
MS word isn't that bad. From an administrative perspective the patch management is light years ahead of anything else out there.
@William: Perhaps, but that just means it's like those horribly dry textbooks I run into every now and then where each copy wastes a dozen pages worth of dead trees at the beginning extolling the virtues of the book for professors who use it. Just because they're doing a good job of courting the people who make the buying decisions doesn't mean it's a good tool for the people who actually have to use it.
Besides, Jon is probably running it on his own private machine, which means that patch management for large deployments is completely irrelevant.
Patch management is only 'light years ahead' because they've had to patch it so many, many, many times. :-(
I quit upgrading at Office 2003 because one look at the 'ribbon toolbar' was enough to convice me it was time to cease upgrading. My latest machine does not even have office installed - only OpenOffice. It's now good enough that I only miss MS Office on one very specific item (Excel - paste speciall... values only). Otherwise Open Office meets or exceeds MS for me in every way.
I haven't used MS Word in years - Open Office has been a more than capable replacment with no compatability issues (though I haven't used it for collaborative work)
What Microsoft and Apple Corp. have achieved is outstanding in comparison to DE trials. M & A have been able to convince willing endusers to voluntarily give up their time to test software AND buy it after they have beta tested it. How to get free labour and consumers at the same time - you have to marvel at that.
Hence why its great to have so many patches...lots and lots of beta testors.