Good lord do I HATE Microsoft, Bill Gates and Osama BinLaden!!

I'm working with Word 2010 and I can't figure out why the freaks at Microsoft can't leave well enough alone! Why is it that with every iteration of Word they move functions around or make you hunt for things that used to be intuitive. Notice I didn't say "things I was used to" but I'm talking about things that just made sense! Word was fine years ago and they just keep changing little things to keep us annoyed. That was one reason I switched to a Mac (besides being a superior being ). If you have a 10 year old mac with a 10 year old OS you aren't out of luck, you can run most anything available today. But if a windows machine actually lasted 10 years without being rebuilt 8 times you couldn't run that original OS. Why oh why can't you just leave office alone while making the rare and subtle improvements that are needed as opposed to reinventing your out of round wheel every other year while somehow keeping said wheel FUBAR!?!?!?

I'm sure I am not making much sense here since my brain is quite rattled after having to deal with this crap and I need to go to bed.

I liked Word 2010, but then I migrated from Word 97....

I'm a little confused on how Osama got mixed in with this, but all I can say is "Word".

Apparently he was trying to write an article about how he'd found Osama, but the new version of word didn't work so well.

Word 2010 is reasonably well put together and at least it is consistent. With 2003 the customization could mean button could be anywhere, which is nice if you are power user, but can be a huge pain if you are not.

The BIG miss in 2010 is that they changed the file format which could have allowed them to get rid of the INSANE crap that it does (some really stupid inconsistencies) since it seems to be constructed as essential and extension of a text file. Not real surprising I guess since it is likely even Win7 still influence by DOS 1.0 (what was that 1981!?)

But why not leave well enough alone? Most companies develop a product, test and improve it then release it to the public. When they start getting feedback like "I really don't need three handles on my pruning shears" they remove the third handle. Microsoft doesn't listen to the complaints and makes a totally unwarranted change like, "well, we really liked the the three-handled pruning shears so much that we decided to develop shears that would light up as you squeeze the handles."

One word: openoffice

DrBoost wrote: But why not leave well enough alone? Most companies develop a product, test and improve it then release it to the public.

NEW! SHINY! YOU WANT IT!

Change for the sake of change is not good, EVER. But a majority of society is braindead tards that fuel this attitude, and as such we get cars that weigh 4500pounds with features we never use, or operating systems that require you to have a graphics card installed in your computer to run well (because they are purty!), or god-aweful updates that make you hate word.

I had Office setup just the way I wanted it, with buttons for all of the commonly used things that I did right up in my toolbar. It was one of my favorite features of Office! Then a new version came out and they decided to do away with this excellent piece of functionality. Poof. Gone. Why? Who knows. But it sucks without it, and I went to a Mac and Open Office on my portable. I hope this will be a trend until Microsoft becomes the Commodore or ATARI of computers.

+, urm, looks like 3 at this point for OpenOffice.

It'll take a little getting used to, but no more than switching from one version of MSOffice to another.

Plus, it's free. Both as in speech and as in beer.

Also whoever decided that you should hide all the buttons with some ill designed ribbon and put a big Microsoft logo in the left corner of Excel must be eaten by moths.

Also new versions should do all the things the last one's did, SO PLEASE don't go mucking about with VBA language. You can add stuff, but for the love of Cats stop taking away functions that have been in it since the stone age in the name of security. It drives me crazy because old code is never documented correctly, never has any sort of notation, and only works when I sacrifice on of the interns to the sun gods.

Also Excel 2003 was great.

Supercalc 1.0 and a nice DOS-based text editor, please!

I am too damn cheap to buy a Mac.

Office 2010 is frustratiung. I thought at first that it was just not liking change, but now after months of using it I find terrible to use. The menus are not ituitive at all. Things are not where they make sense.

I've used open office at home for years and I like it, but at work I don't get a choice and have to use office. We just recently went to IE 7 from 6 and I don't get it either. Very random and hard to use. I use Mozilla when given a choice.

96DXCivic wrote: I am too damn cheap to buy a Mac.

Even if you weren't you'd probably end up running Office on it anyways....that seems to be one of their big sellling points these days. If I were buying a new computer for home right now I think I'd buy a mac. I don't use my PC for games, just for surfing the internet mostly and some occaisonal word processing or spreadsheets.

TJ wrote:

96DXCivic wrote: I am too damn cheap to buy a Mac.

Even if you weren't you'd probably end up running Office on it anyways....that seems to be one of their big sellling points these days. If I were buying a new computer for home right now I think I'd buy a mac. I don't use my PC for games, just for surfing the internet mostly and some occaisonal word processing or spreadsheets.

Also Macs suck for engineering.

If you're considering a jump to Mac, jumping to a decent Linux distro is just as easy of a switch, and you're not paying double what the hardware is worth just to have some fruit on the case. I recommend Mint - Mint is Ubuntu minus all the F/OSS zealotry, so proprietary things like Flash and .mp3s work out of the box.

Don't get me wrong, I like Macs, and if I were in a much higher income bracket, I'd probably buy one. But as it is, Compiz is WAY prettier than anything on Mac or Windows. Compiz Demo

96DXCivic wrote: Also Macs suck for engineering.

How so?

stuart in mn wrote:

96DXCivic wrote: Also Macs suck for engineering.

How so?

I assume he means to process engineering ON, not the actual engineering of the computer itself. Lots and lots of esoteric-field and vendor-driven specialty software is simply only available for Windows.

I have been using google docs more and more. Its like office but web based, and free. Also the files are not stored locally on your computer so if your HD takes a crap you don't loose all your files.

Duke wrote:

stuart in mn wrote:

96DXCivic wrote: Also Macs suck for engineering.

How so?

I assume he means to process engineering ON, not the actual engineering of the computer itself. Lots and lots of esoteric-field and vendor-driven specialty software is simply only available for Windows.

Exactly a lot of the programs I use for classes and stuff won't run on Mac.

Go here to ask questions about Word for which you cannot find answers via Google:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wordcreate/threads

MS went to the ribbon because usability testing confirmed that it is easier to use. That said, they made the change from 03 to 07 too abruptly (and, frankly, didn't fix a ton of E36 M3 that's sucked since 03 and before). They also failed to grasp how difficult it is to RE-learn how to do something vs. learning something brand new.

Get used to the ribbon UI: I'm seeing it on more apps these days...

+1 for Open Office

Duke wrote: I assume he means to process engineering ON, not the actual engineering of the computer itself. Lots and lots of esoteric-field and vendor-driven specialty software is simply only available for Windows.

Wait, can't you make Windows a dual-boot option on Mac's now?

Yes. You can dual boot, going into whichever you want, or you can run them side-by-side using parallels or VirtualBox.

I like virtualbox because it's free, and parallels pissed me off. Parallels is easier to set up, though.

Note that running both side by side needs a crapload of RAM... enough for both OSs, and whatever's running.

It's not emulation, you're running windows righ off an intel chip, just like your windows box, so there's not the old-style emulation slowness. In fact, a while back the fastest windows laptop tested was a MacBook Pro.

Note: if you run windows on your mac, you're running windows, and you're just as vulnerable to viruses and problems as you would be on any PC. All the Mac/*nix security goes out the window. However, if you're running on Parallels or VirtualPC, you can easily create snapshots, which makes it pretty easy to throw away a problem and revert to a good working windows install.

For me, it works much better because I can simultaneously run multiple versions of IE for testing. Something I can't do on a Windows machine at all.