What. the. fuck.

Oh, brother. We were all burdened with Office 2008 last week. I've never gotten so little done in so much time. Each program takes so fucking long to open that often I can't remember what I've opened it for when it's ready. Just awful.

That catchphrase never changes in relation to MIcrosoft products.

I had just gotten used to where all the functions and menus where in all the previous versions of Office, and now they've thrown out the menus and moved everything all over the place and replaced everything with massive buttons. It's not that it's worse, heck, it might even be better, but WHY MUST THEY DO THIS TO ME?

What's the freakin point anyway? What was wrong with Office 98 (or Lotus1-2-3, WordPerfect etc)? And just what the hell are the 20,000 software employees doing up in Seattle?

Microsoft is a giant parasite.

I use Word 2000. I bought a later version for work, didn't like it, uninstalled it and reverted to to the old version, which does everything I need, like spellchecking, very nicely.

Open office. Reject MS (and Appple while you're at it)

its a shambles

took me 5 mins to locate print preview on word.

i use open office now, only trouble is the database. access 2003 is fine (if the hardest learning curve of any application i have used) OO isnt great on the DB and 2007 is horrible

where can i download acces 03?

I was dubious about switching to Linux because I would have to use Open Office and from previous experience this has been something I haven't enjoyed. But I can confirm, the more recent versions of OO are really great.

Office 2007 is excellent once you've figured out where the buttons are. It's actually much more intuitive than previous versions if you've never used it before.
Of course, more or less everybody HAS used previous versions, so that doesn't help a great deal.
Seriously though, it's a marked improvement especially in the back office areas - much easier to support, easier to rescue, fits together better than before, is more flexible all round.
But you know, the interface is different, so it must be shit.

FTR, I use open office at home because I'm buggered if I'm paying for a licence for something I use once a month. It's pretty good. I wouldn't use it in a business environment though.

QUOTE:
But you know, the interface is different, so it must be shit.

I didn't say that, I said it might even be better. And it probably is. It's just that it's completely different than the stuff they've thrown at us for the last 10 years. So it's frustrating that everything changes all of a sudden rather than the changes being iplemented gradually. And in typical Microsoft fashion, you can't choose your interface... they force the new one upon you.

I quite like it, though it is a bit frustrating, I'll grant you, until you get used to it. But now I'm wishing that we had it at work too.

I spent much of yesterday reinstalling XP on our home PC because over the years I'd overloaded it with things I then couldn't work out how to get rid of.

So a clean install was jsut easier, I thought. Getting XP back up and running was the easy bit, then discovering that your network card doesn't work automatically and you have no driver disk was more entertaining.

Anyway, got there in the end, spending about 3 hours working out that I'd installed the wrong graphics driver, it worked o.k. on the graphics card but stopped the soundcard working... took alot of figuring out.

Outlook 2007 I like, so much easier to setup new accounts and I think the interface is easier on the whole. I did however accidentlaly do a reply-all already. Nothing too embarrasing though thankfully.

QUOTE:
And in typical Microsoft fashion, you can't choose your interface... they force the new one upon you

Yes you can. There's a classic interface patch. However, why would you? With an hour's effort you'll find the new one a load better than the old one. And if you're having problems, download the real time help and it'll give you a tutorial for loads of stuff.

Indeed Hobbes.
Sometimes i wonder if people have actually used the product that are so quick to slag off.

Its like when people who have never lived anywhere near london say crap like "the M25, the worlds biggest car park".