I’ve been a longtime user of Microsoft products from the early days of Dos through to the current incarnation of Vista. On the whole they are great and despite rumblings from the nay-Sayers of Microsoft is evil or Bill Gates controls the black helicopters and Vista stinks you should use mac/Linux/OS2/etc whichever way you look at it the last last 20 years of human evolution has been guided by the firm corporate hand of Microsoft to an incredible amount.
Anyway, before I start ranting about software – I’ve been a long time user of Microsoft Office products but the latest incarnation Office2007 has just left me feeling slightly miffed.
It’s crippled the response times on my old trusty Thinkpad Laptop, I just don’t like the visual interface in applications like Word or Excel (I know its a learning experience but maybe I’m just too long in the tooth to learn new things every year) and my personal pet peeve is Outlook 2007.
Outlook is my most frequently used application – bar none – from emails to calendars to to-do-lists to contact lists and then synchronizing it all on my Blackberry.
But, I’m just feeling increasingly cheesed off with Outlook2007 as it slowly clonks around, blowing steam, on my PC. Occasionally hangs up and crashes. I hate the file limit sizes on the PST files. The final star was this morning when I decided to downgrade back to my old version of Office2003 just because the old office felt much more stable.
I’ve un-installed Office2007 which was a big decision as I’ve lost the install discs during my house move to Roanoke. Duh!
But, confident that Office2003 gave me everything that I needed I grabbed my old 2003 disk set, backed up my personal.PST files (yes I have several – one for each email account) and set to work.
- Uninstall office2007
- Reboot
- Install office 2003
- *mutter an Anglo-Saxon expletive*
I cant re-install Office2003 because it says I’ve installed it too many times! Aaaaargh!
This is an entirely legal copy of office purchases as part of my MSDN subscription a few years ago – but because I’ve installed it, uninstalled it and re-installed it on my many pc/laptops over the years obviously the online gods at Microsoft have decided enough is enough. My purchase of the software has silently changed into a rental agreement and I can no longer install or use some software that I bought with my own hard earned $$$.
*sigh*
so thats it…
/me stamps foot in a fit of angst and decides to scrap MSOFFICE and look for something more friendly
If you’re still here and reading and want to find out which application I chose. Then it’s time to open the box.