If you watch my tweets, you would have noticed that a couple weeks ago I was getting frustrated trying to reinstall Office 2007 after my primary hard drive failed. As you may have guessed, the problem was with product activation. I called tech support and gave my activation code to the automated system and when it was supposed to transfer me to a person, it just disconnected. When I got to a person - wait, I bet you can guess - Reboot and reinstall. Ok yep, did that about a dozen times now. I went through a few disconnections and one woman who accused me of software piracy before I finally got to "Kumar" (that isn't what he goes by, but it was part of his name - and yes, all but 2 people had the out-sourced tech support accent). He was great, even remote connected to my computer and tried the install again, had me re-download the software in case there was file corruption (which wasn't fun since we were already throttled down to dialup speed). It finally came down to the retailer on WindowsMarketplace.com had deactivated my purchase a year after I placed the order. The automated email response listed several reasons why they might have done that, but didn't give me any specifics and as far as I could tell never tried to contact me about any trouble. Turns out I was never charged for the purchase afterall.
During this frustrating process, I was venting to a friend who remarked "welcome to 1996" as if Windows 95 was the turning point when I should have started disliking MS. But the truth is, in 1996 I was working for Microsoft supporting Windows 95 (technically - working for one of the centers they contracted with for support. This was before all those jobs were sent overseas). I liked the software and found it easy use and easy to troubleshoot. I continued liking it as my job descriptions changed from help-desk to web developer to server and network administration. I've viewed each new OS from Microsoft like a new toy.
My viewpoint is changing now that it's not part of my job. When it turned out that I hadn't officially purchased Office, I questioned if I still wanted to. I really wasn't that thrilled with the new Office interface, but I could get used to it. I was unhappy that they'd taken Outlook out of the Home and Student edition. I ended up downloading a trial version of Professional so I could transfer my old emails from a .pst to the Windows Live Mail format. I thought that I really liked the new One Note application - but then I thought 'What if they take that out of a future release?' which led to 'Am I willing to keep buying a new version of Office every 5 years or so just to be able to keep my documents?' The answer was 'No'.
Open Office is available as shareware and I could collect all the files that were in the 2007 format and save them back to earlier Office versions that were readable to Open Office. The Google Pack even includes Star Office for free (I'm not completely familiar, but Star seems to be a version of Open that's been spiffed up a bit by Sun and is sold to businesses). Now that I was thinking about it - what format should I save my files in to keep them readable into the future? Open and Star have an "open document format" which sounded good on the surface, but MS doesn't support it so it wouldn't work for sharing to others (MS plans to support ODF with an update sometime next year). I could probably save most as simply rich text format (rtf) or comma separated values (csv).
Then I started thinking about IE. Lately, even with my new install, IE has had a habit of taking naps (going unresponsive for periods of time). A friend of mine (who has the same problem) thinks he's narrowed it down to Adobe. I used to disable the pdf plug in for IE, but now that Adobe has gobbled up Flash and Shockwave as well, it's harder to keep them separate. I've used Firefox fairly often but didn't think it was that much better than IE that I 
would switch completely. A couple days ago, while cleaning up my garbage "favorites" I found Flock. Yahoo customized Firefox and tied it into several of the most popular networking sites (primarily yahoo and google oriented). The browser is fast and takes Firefox add ons like CoComment, etc. It allows you to import search engines so that you can search Amazon, Youtube, etc without going to the site in your browser first. They support Yahoo, Gmail, and with the next beta, AOL mail, much like Windows Live Mail lets you bring several email accounts into one interface.
I haven't completely turned away from MS. I find OneCare(1) a very convenient way to do backups, patches, and regular maintenance. So far, Live Writer is my preferred blog editor. It's just in many areas they don't seem to share nicely with others or they require you use their service (passport or IE) in order to access content. I know, I know - they always been like that. When work required that I have them anyway, it didn't matter; now it does.
(1) OneCare doesn't like the most recent version of Ad-Aware, calling it an interfering program. However, OneCare doesn't detect tracking cookies as a problem (and you might not either, but I don't like them). Here is a copy of my host file that shows the sites I've blocked (so far).
LiveWriter is nice; one of the few programs I wish they would do a Mac version of.
ReplyDeleteThe primary interface element of the latest Mac Office seems to be the spinning beach ball. It's really bad.
I tried Flock; I found it to be an interface nightmare, but I understand why it's appealing to some. I stick with my simple, clean Safari.
I'm annoyed about the crappiness of Office 08 because I actually do like it better than the alternatives; it's just so sluggish and crash-prone.
Openoffice.org is Free Software, not shareware (Free as in freedom, and free as in beer).
ReplyDeleteStar Office is OOo + some proprietary components + support from Sun.
FWIW, OOo can save in older Microsoft Office formats quite well. It also supports quite a few other formats.
OOo is also cross platform (Linux, BSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris, Mac OS X, ...), which could even allow you to consider migrating away from Microsoft Windows at a later date.
It might work in Flock too, but Firefox has a No-Script Extension. It turns off lots of things, originally Javascript but now Flash, Silverlight etc., unless you specifically want them.
ReplyDeletehttps://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722
I've been using Adblock plus for a while but this seems like it might be better. It's amazing the difficulty computers can have with a flash advertisment heavy site and the difference blocking them can make.
(I second a previous comment about using the standard Word binary formats. Unless you're a government or large organisation they're as close to a standard as you'll ever need to get and they're pretty well supported in OSS as well as Mac's, iPhones, Google Docs etc.
I'm actually getting back into Windows (installing XP Pro at work) after learning my way round linux and Mac OS X. Windows is just a bit tatty compared with the latest competition but I think it's good for me to have broad experience and it's not painful if you've got a good browser, a SSH client for accessing servers and Linux in a VM for emergencies.. On the other hand, there's no way in hell I'd pay for it, or Office in this day and age, if my employer didn't.
RobGuy, I feel for you. I went through a similar realization, right before Office 2003 was released. By then I had accumulated almost 20 years of papers, published items, monographs, articles, a thesis, dissertation, and barges of letters in a variety of formats.
ReplyDeleteWhen Microsoft's .doc/xls was no longer worth the cost of the upgrade, I found myself asking if I really wanted to spend the next 40+ years sending money to Redmond for the privilege of reading my own creative work. The answer was no. OpenOffice was still developing ODF at that time, but once ODF 1.1 came around, I took the plunge. I didn't convert all my .doc files, just the most widely read ones. However, I never got near the failed Office 2007's MS-OOXML format.
Like you, I enjoyed a couple of decades of Microsoft software, but after 20 years on the platform, I figured I deserved a break and in 2006 began the migration to Linux. And I'm having so much fun, I haven't looked back!