Rant VIII: The Reckoning
- Thread starter Anonymous
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- boat people
I'm so sorry to hear that your family is going through this.
At least hospice is all about making your mom as comfortable as possible.
Cajungal
Staff member
I'm sorry for your loss.
As hard as that must be, I'm glad for your sake and hers that she didn't linger. My mom had to watch my grandma go on for weeks under hospice care, an it was really difficult. I hope you have many fond memories to look back on.
GasBandit
Staff member
Well of course it is, it's supposed to look like Windows 8.
Of course, the version that changed to look like windows 7 was ugly as shit, too.
If you ask me, Office peaked at the 2003 edition.
Slightly uglier than sin, but not quite as ugly as someone who fell off the ugly tree hitting every branch on the way down.
All you have to do is polish that turd...
Tangent time:
My girlfriend just bought a new laptop with windows 8. Why is it that the only way to make it user friendly at all is to set it up to be as similar to windows 7 as possible?
Dorodango made from shit are actually quite nice to look at.
I use OpenOffice. It's slow, but it's free and I don't have to deal with ANY of this bullshit.
GasBandit
Staff member
... the Mac version?[DOUBLEPOST=1379628817,1379628768][/DOUBLEPOST]
Yeah, I wish it hadn't gotten discontinued.
Yeah. Dunno what the deal is with delaying the release an extra year just 'cuz. It's not like the porting process always takes exactly an extra year.
--Patrick
What do you mean discontinued? Apache OpenOffice is still getting updates. It's still 100% free and does everything Microsoft Office can. It's just a program now instead of a web-based thing.
GasBandit
Staff member
Ah. I'd just heard that openoffice.org was discontinued. I actually prefer installed programs to cloud solutions, so good on them.
It's not the same software, rather software descended from it because of the open source nature of the whole thing. But it's still top notch stuff and covers the whole suite of applications that MSOffice does. It's great. Never going back to MSOffice.
As long as I keep getting free licenses for MS Office, then I will keep using it. I do have one pc with openoffice on it. I like it. It does the job. I do prefer Prism when it comes to graphing and stats.
I just got one with windows 8 on it too. I've found that if you don't have a touch screen, which I do, 8 is almost unbearable. I've really come to like it with the touch screen though. Once you get all your tiles set up how you like it, and get used to the navigation, it's really a lot smoother.Trying to do the gestures or get to the action spots with a mouse can be a pain though.
Ever since 7 I haven't used the start menu much except to bring up the search box to type the name of the program I wanted to use, so losing it wasn't a big deal to me.
8 takes some getting used to, and a touch screen, but I like it so far.
figmentPez
Staff member
Also, LibreOffice is still going. It forked from OpenOffice in 2010 to avoid any problems with SunMicrosystems possibly restricting OpenOffice.
fade
Staff member
Mac Office isn't ported. It's a totally different code base.
Yes, I know that. Otherwise there wouldn't be that comical 4-yr difference bug that sometimes (still!) catches people unawares.
I was just calling out the questionable marketing practice of forcing all the Mac people to wait up to a year or more for their version...for no good reason that I can see other than to "encourage" end users to invest in a Windows box (to avoid the delay). And they would do this again and again every 2-4 years.
--Patrick
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Yes. Interoperability. If you need to correspond with others, and those others have the newer version, then you might need to upgrade to match, or else productivity will suffer.
Now, I'm in a position where people ask me all the time whether they need to upgrade their software/hardware/phone/ISP/carrier/OS/peripherals/whatever, and my answer is always the same; "If what you have now no longer does what you need, then yes, it is finally time to upgrade." And really, that's the only question you ever need to ask yourself about technology. Any technology. If you are still using Office97 on a 500MHz Compaq running WinME and printing to an HP Laserjet 2100 over parallel, and you are perfectly happy with the results, then there is absolutely no reason why you should feel guilty about not upgrading any of it. Sure, you should probably have a contingency plan ready to go if your ancient equipment finally decides to die on you, but upgrade? Why??? Why mess with success?
Note that I did not say to bury your head in the sand and deny new developments exist. I do not endorse nor advocate ignorance of new technology. Refusing to acknowledge new technologies can be very unhealthy. Instead, poke your head out there once in a while to see what's going on. You may find that someone has developed a solution to an efficiency roadblock which, though it is not necessary, may still be a benefit, and potentially a very significant one. Then there is the possibility that your current solution may be demoted to the backup/reserve solution, and eventually retired (with much nostalgia) and pass peacefully into obsolescence.
--Patrick
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The only time an Office upgrade would have interoperability issues was when docx first came out. Otherwise there is no reason you need the latest and greatest office. Even then the only people using docx were small businesses that upgraded just because. Most large businesses that had any sort of professional IT department realized that you couldn't expect everyone to upgrade at your pace.
I would disagree with that. Aside from cosmetic feature enhancements, the releases between 97-2008 added features such as extensive customization, security enhancements, voice control, error recovery, and better junk mail filtering. If you were looking for any of these, then the new versions were a godsend (see my "needs" comment, above). If not, then they were meh.
--Patrick
That doesn't have much to do with interoperability though. Just new features you want. Office can offer a lot, don't get me wrong. I just don't see a problem with being a year or two or three or even four off of the latest and greatest of it.