microsoft gripes

[thuh Freak]

how about we have a thread about gripes with microsoft? no particular reason, or anything, just vent anti-microsoft style. for example:

ms put out this program called "InfoPath" with office (i think 2003, maybe xp/2002). it basically sucked. so they came out with "service pack 1 preview" a few months ago (may-ish), and promised the full service pack in "june." so, i started developing with sp1-preview, as it does all kidns of "neat" and "nifty" things, which are required by various projects at work. of course, all these neat and nifty things are alluded to on the download page, and some are easily spotted on the interface of the new version, but documentation is completely lax. as i inevitably ran into problems with sp1, and "logic" and "insight" become useless (stupid me thought that ms would be reasonable), so i look into the great big msdn documentation deal. honestly, for virtually all .net development i've done, theres been something in msdn docs relating to whatever. not with infopath. actually, with infopath they were nice. they had doc pages per class/interface/whatever just like all the other msdn docs, but everything said "description forthcoming" and "replace this sentence with 2 or 3 sentences explaining what this does." and whenever msdn has failed me, google was always there. not with infopath sp1-preview. infopath supposedly allows a person to post data to a webservice, and logic might imply that this would be done in the same or similar way as posting to a database. not for ms though. july rolls in, and no sp1-full. at some point in august (while i wasn't looking), or maybe late july, they put out the full. the only noticeable difference (to me), is theres some documentation. i notice while poking through the docs about this great idea of attaching files to my infopath docs. i turn off my brain and try posting this file to a webservice. fuck me. infopath doesn't like that. apparently a 64-bit variable on one side doens't equate to a 64-bit variable on the other side. but now google does come to the rescue. on a blog page, by one of the infopath developers, they explain that files aren't attached purely and simply to an infopath file. just for kicks, microsoft throws some headers onto the file, then corrupts the data, to make sure you can't do anything with it. :mad: sometimes i want to open the cd drive and shit in it.

anyone else ahve issues with microsoft?

[Messiahtosh]

As a student, Microsoft forces me to buy the entire Office package, when all I want is Word. How worthless is that?

[Kickaha]

Word? Very worthless.

[Mass Appeal]

Word? Very worthless.

I'm not too fond of Word either and I'm looking for alternatives. What do you like best?

[Quagmire]

As a student, Microsoft forces me to buy the entire Office package, when all I want is Word. How worthless is that?

Actually you can buy word for $99. I saw it at my local apple store.

[DMBand0026]

sometimes i want to open the cd drive and shit in it.



:lol: :lol: :lol:

And on to my next point.

Point is...who wants to pay that much for Word? It's a crappy app...IMHO.

[Barto]

If you really don't want to use Office, you can try NeoOfficeJ (http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php), OpenOffice.org implemented in Java. It's not totally stable (but neither is Office), it lacks scroll wheel support but it is compatible and not too slow.

[Zodiac]

my microsoft gripe? It's existence.

I swear, I have so many problems with my mom/dads pc :mad: .That's why I bought an emac :D :D :D .

[curiousuburb]

IIRC, there was a Redmond software company that bought game developers then let their products die.
Bastards.

[Mass Appeal]

If you really don't want to use Office, you can try NeoOfficeJ (http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php), OpenOffice.org implemented in Java. It's not totally stable (but neither is Office), it lacks scroll wheel support but it is compatible and not too slow.

Thanks I'll try it out. Word is the last reminder of my pre Mac days and I'd like to cut the ties completely.

[Messiahtosh]

Actually you can buy word for $99. I saw it at my local apple store.I can buy office for $50.

[curiousuburb]

Looks like SP2 is causing headaches (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3570636.stm)

[thuh Freak]

another gripe: frequent minute long freezes with windows xp. i have to use this "operating system" at work. from time to time, any program in any operating system will spike the processor; an annoyance, of course, but a reasonable person might expect the taskmanager to react. tm doesn't even have these spikes in its history. i've gotten used to having taskmanager open and in my taskbar. but atleast a few times a day, microsoft will freeze everything on my computer. mouse, keyboard, everything. doesn't even respond to ctrl-alt-del for a full minute. and this is a reasonably new computer (probably wasn't top of the line, but mid-level, and its less than 6 months old). at times like these i have to restrain myself to keep from screaming.

[stoo]

My Win2K PC refuses to accept a DHCP lease. It connects at the MAC level, but never gets an IP address. All of the other clients are fine...

Yes, I have reinstalled Windows and the latest drivers. It worked (for a short time...)

[InactionMan]

another gripe: frequent minute long freezes with windows xp. i have to use this "operating system" at work. from time to time, any program in any operating system will spike the processor; an annoyance, of course, but a reasonable person might expect the taskmanager to react. tm doesn't even have these spikes in its history. i've gotten used to having taskmanager open and in my taskbar. but atleast a few times a day, microsoft will freeze everything on my computer. mouse, keyboard, everything. doesn't even respond to ctrl-alt-del for a full minute. and this is a reasonably new computer (probably wasn't top of the line, but mid-level, and its less than 6 months old). at times like these i have to restrain myself to keep from screaming.
Same thing happens to me on my Win2K box at work whenever I try to convert something to PDF in Acrobat. Whenever it happens I'll usually just restart the piece of crap and go outside for a cigarette.

And this complaint isn't really Windows fault, but I can't count the number of times a day I click the third button my mouse to get expose going. It's really freakin' hard to work without that once you're used to it.

[thuh Freak]

Whenever it happens I'll usually just restart the piece of crap and go outside for a cigarette.i do similarly. back in the long long ago, i smoked 4 cigarettes a day. now i go through about a pack.

somehow that reminded me of yet another gripe, though i like to think this one is partially dell's fault. i come in to work (11ish, cuz i'm great ;)), and the screen is blank. to be expected. i flick the mouse and tap a few keys. i stare at the black screen for a few minutes. i cigarette myself. i come back, and the fucker is still fuckered. atwhich point the only recourse is pulling the plug and restarting. the messed up part is it will only happen randomly. sometimes i come back from a few hour meeting and its in this "perpetual awesomeness state". sometimes all it takes it five minutes. sometimes i come in on monday, not having been at the computer for days, and its fine (not even black screen). i love micaroft.

[curiousuburb]

And you though password length was an issue migrating from OS 9 to OS X.0.1 to Panther...
MS Version (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/q276/3/04.ASP&NoWebContent=1)

[staph]

Thanks I'll try it out. Word is the last reminder of my pre Mac days and I'd like to cut the ties completely.

You could also have a play with the new development release (2.1.3) of AbiWord (http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/11511), a word-processor only Word-like program. I haven't played with it too much (I'm happy with my butt-ugly Mellel (http://www.redlers.com)), but it's worth a look. Like NeoOffice, it's FOSS.

[staph]

i do similarly. back in the long long ago, i smoked 4 cigarettes a day. now i go through about a pack.

somehow that reminded me of yet another gripe, though i like to think this one is partially dell's fault. i come in to work (11ish, cuz i'm great ;)), and the screen is blank. to be expected. i flick the mouse and tap a few keys. i stare at the black screen for a few minutes. i cigarette myself. i come back, and the fucker is still fuckered. atwhich point the only recourse is pulling the plug and restarting. the messed up part is it will only happen randomly. sometimes i come back from a few hour meeting and its in this "perpetual awesomeness state". sometimes all it takes it five minutes. sometimes i come in on monday, not having been at the computer for days, and its fine (not even black screen). i love micaroft.

So I'm not the only one that Dell boxes do this to? (We bought 4 in a batch for the SA — two of them are fine, one crashes during "fast" user switching and exhibits these symptoms, and one continually goes to sleep and never wakes up).

I told them to buy Macs, goddamnit, but the Exec demanded Dells — so everyone else in the building gets Macs which work, and they get Dell Optiplexes, which suck bigtime.

Grr.

If only I smoked.

[_Ω_]

And you though password length was an issue migrating from OS 9 to OS X.0.1 to Panther...
MS Version (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/q276/3/04.ASP&NoWebContent=1)

:eek: :eek:

:lol:

[_Ω_]

Why is that when you send a 500 KB ppt file to the printer, it magically inflates itself to 14.7 MB?

Or when you type a page of straight text and save it, and then find it is 3.8 MBs large? You then copy all text and paste it into another doc and it reduces to 25 KB.

:no:

I fucking hate my Dell :mad:

[usurp]

If you guys are looking for a word alternative, something thats faster and more compact with most of the features then i would like to suggest Nisus Writer. Its really great.

http://www.nisus.com/