Good-bye Microsoft

 

I've used Microsoft products for years - since Word 1.0 was distributed in a popular pc magazine - ON A SINGLE 5 1/4-INCH FLOPPY !!

I've suffered each time Redmond "improved" the product with a new User Interface or "UI."

I LIKE the MS Office products - Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. I like many of the utilities that come with the operating system - the many "accessories."

But the constant mucking around with the UI has finally caused me to look elsewhere.

I just bought a new notebook (nee' laptop) from Toshiba. Nice machine.

It came loaded with Vista Home - a major step down from XP Pro that was on my Compaq replacement machine and on the office machine. (The new office boxes probably will be loaded with Windows 7, but the cycle for me is a couple of years away.)

I both love and hate Microsoft Word … as a simple word processor, I think it is great. My preferred word processor. It has severe limitations, but realizing that, smart documentation people use other programs for serious documentation; creating text in "weird" and pouring the text into a real page composition application. Likewise graphics. Sure, Word can be used to create simple graphics, but Visio is bettere for block diagrams and flow charts, and there are a few good programs out there for "real" graphics.

But much as I love Word, I have come to the end of the line with Microsoft products.

I just tried to access the COOKIES "folder" (a "sub-directory" to my peers in age). I don't have access to the folder.

Yet I am, by default, the "system administrator." In fact, I am the ONLY user of this computer.

What do I care about accessing the Cookies folder? Turns out Microsoft's Internet Explorer V8 can't seem to purge the cookies . . . on XP Pro IE 7 could clear out all the cookies AND let me confirm the deletion. Actually, I want to manually DELete cookies so I can "save" one; the cookie StatCounter uses to ignore hits on my Web page and blog that originate from my computer.

Vista shares the notebook's hard drive with Linux Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org applications, and Firefox

Firefox not only can clear out all cookies, it asks me each time an application wants to set a cookie if I want to keep it, delete it at the end of the (browser) session, or block the cookie.

OpenOffice.org - a poor man's free version of the commercial StarOffice from Sun, has allthe program types MS Office offers, but there are many features and functions missing that Office users are accustomed to using. Likewise Evolution, the email handler that functions like Outlook. Granted, all the applications that came on the Ubuntu CD are free and most are developed by volunteers, so lacking some features and functions fund in the "high priced spread" versions (e.g., Microsoft products) is understandable.

I'm sure that the freeware will, as Microsoft products did, improve with age. Likewise, I am sure there are "alternatives" and "work-arounds" to make the free applications function more like the commercial versions.

I only hope that the people working on Linux applications learn from what I term Microsoft's mistake and refrain from "updating" the UI with each new release.

If Ubuntu and Linux developers follow in Microsoft's footsteps, I may be forced to go back to pen and paper. (I wonder if I still can find a good, affordable (bulb) fountain pen … and a jar of ink to fill it.)

Yohanon.Glenn
Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com

For want of a driver

I have a mix of peripherals connected to a Windows box.

I frequently am less than happy with Windows. I also am frequently frustrated by Microsoft Office, especially when MS fixes something that isn't broken (e.g. the Word user interface).

So when my XP Pro machine locked up - again - and when I failed to quickly find a Word function in Office 2007 that once was conveniently available in Office 2003, I thought it was time to start Looking Into Linux. I know there are Open Source applications "out there" that have the look and feel of MS products (which version?) and that can suck in MS-created files and turn out MS-compliant files so, although I live in an MS environment, I don't need MS to survive. So why stay with Windows and Office? Simple. Peripherals. I have a great Canon i850 bubble jet printer and a still-going-strong HP flatbed scanner. I've also got a Brother multifunction device which . . . well, it failed shortly after it went into service. None of the peripherals work with Linux. I also have Verizon DSL. I've had cable; Verizon is more portable and, over the years, has been good more than bad. I have yet to see a Verizon DSL modem for a Linux box (although I know there are Linux-compatible modems). I know I could set up the portable's 80G replacement hard drive to dual boot, but

Let me rephrase that. I know the 80G hard drive can be set up to dual boot.

I'm not a computer mavin or geek or nerd, although my first machine was CP/M (guess that just means I'm old). I want my software shrink wrapped, good to go out of the box. My #2 is a geek, but he is "there" and I am "here" so he's not much help. Besides, his path to geekdom included "repairing" a couple of my computers (including my classic all-in-one CP/M box). Why not Apple? Good company and I understand Macs include a Linux flavor. But Apple is Apple and if I am going to run Linux, let it be on a Linux machine. Bottom line: As long as the printer keeps printing and the scanner keeps scanning, I'm "stuck" with Windows. But I certainly wish Canon would get with the program and create downloadable Linux drivers for dummies - the same user requirements as those for Windows: "Click the button." yohanon