At 9:51 AM -0400 21/8/09, Wojtek S wrote:
>But what really puzzles me is why people and businesses put up with the crap
>dished out by Redmond when other alternatives are either already available
>or within reach of being quickly developed. Just imagine the loss of
>productivity brought by the need to retrain millions of workers to use the
>new shit crapped out by Redmond aka Office 2007. Form a purely business
>perspective it makes no sense, since the functionality offered by 2007 is
>nearly the same as that of 2003 for most business uses, but the menus have
>been so completely rearranged, that previously learned skills are almost
>entirely obsolete.
It is weird they do that. These days I find myself almost completely unable to format MS Word documents. I used to be able to do it all without even thinking. Now I just can't be bothered even re-learning the basics, since it is obvious they will just change all the menus around again.
You have to upgrade the software eventually though, the old software eventually won't run on new hardware. And if you stay with the old hardware for long enough it means you won't be able to do anything. You won't be able to access the WWW, because your old computer doesn't do cookies for example.
So they have you by the short and curlies. Obviously the new software is virtually worthless, so you'll feel cheated even if you get it for nothing.
But I still can't work out why they insist on moving all the menus around. Probably the same reason they tortured those prisoners at gitmo, they had them at their mercy, were completely unaware of history and were bored.
>Jordan mentioned support - but in my experience it is a total canard. In my
>entire life time I have not received a single bit of useful support
>information from Redmond, all they could say was that my file was probably
>"corrupted" and I had to start my work anew. Their "support" would be
>totally laughable if it were not so frustrating. For every single problem I
>had with their buggy software I either found the solution myself (e.g. by
>Googling it) or from more knowledgeable friends and co-workers.
They really do offer support at Apple though. It sounds far-fetched, but I rang it a couple of times this year and it was unreal. First time I'd ever rang Apple support line, though I've been using Apple Mac computers since 1986. Got straight through and both times to someone who knew the business and seemed dead keen to help, rather than just fob me off. A surreal experience.
>So, really, what makes otherwise cost-conscious people and businesses,
>especially outside the US, fork over good money to Redmond for their
>overpriced and poorly debugged crap?
Well it used to be that I had learned how to use Word and excel, used them since V. 1.0 when that was the only decent software for the Mac (no exaggeration). Having learned them, didn't want to learn something else.
Obviously that doesn't apply anymore. Last time was just habit. (And it was dirt cheap, got the donation model for $16) But still, the new version turned out to have less utility than the old, which I still have to use in the case of Excel because the new version of Excel doesn't support a Macro built into my accounting spreadsheet.
I know exactly how you feel though. If someone flew a plane into Microsoft HQ I would love to be there selling popcorn to the cheering crowds. ;-)
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas