Re: Microsoft good press over Longhorn
On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 13:07, Joyce, Matthew wrote:
> I know the finance people I have worked with love excel and are proficient
> at using it, for them it is a totally useful tool.
> The researchers here all us excel and it is very useful and easy to be to
> wite vba functions and have them centralised and shared.
>
> Having Excel on PCs, Mac OS9 and OSX is also useful.
>
> For myself, I like the formula auditing function of Excel, I find it
> extremely useful.
> http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6270-1061218.html
>
> I'm not particulaly pro MS, but I find the "Microsoft's software has always
> sucked" rant boring.
>
> I know this is a linux list, and no doubt I'm in for a roasting.
>
> m
Oh, now, let me see, it really really always has sucked. I've been forced
to use it most of my working life, and on many occasions I've cursed it and
thought 'there must be something better than this shit!' A few examples off
the top of my head just to back that up (I've forgotten hundreds)......
MS Word - in text, the Tab key inserts a tab (chr9). In tables, the Tab key
jumps you to the next column. That's _real_ consistent, nice one,
Micro$oft! So ya curse and hit Shft-Tab to jump back, Ctrl-Tab to insert a
tab - and it deletes *everything* you just typed in that cell. Oh, nice
one, Micro$oft!
And of course there's *no* way to reprogram the Tab key to behave
consistently (that I could ever find, anyway). Nice one, M$.
This is why I won't use tables just to put clause titles in the right margin,
I use Frames instead. Only snag is, frames are buggy - what you see is
never quite what you get, the little boxes always appear on the page a line
above or a line below where they will on the printer. Nice one, M$.
Try using Word2K and using a mouse to select areas in a table, over a Thin
Client network - it's completely uncontrollable (and our IS folks have found
no way to tame it). Nice one, M$.
Automatic clause numbering - really diabolical, easy to screw up totally, and
can be almost impossible to remove once someone's invoked it.
Other apps....
Try selecting 'View Source' of a simple HTML page in IE and then saving it to
disk - then take a look at it again with a text editor. Whatever-it-is that
IE uses as a viewer/editor has dumped 3K of useless Micro$oft-proprietary
font definitions all over it without even warning you. Instant 150% bloat.
Nice one, M$!
I won't even mention viruses or Outhouse Excess.
I'll make *one* exception - MS Project is actually quite a well-thought-out
piece of software. The only M$ one I know of.
Excel's probably not too bad but, umm, weren't most of the good bits invented
by L-o-t-u-s? <vbeg>
Going back a bit... QuickBasic. Really very limited for a program that
cost hundreds of $$$.
GWBasic - incredibly primitive, compared with other Basics of the time. No
graphics functions, no structure beyond IF-THEN-GOTO-GOSUB......
DOS - most of its (very necessary) improvements were written as little apps
by third-party developers (often copied from UNIX) and then copied by M$....
I suppose I could go all the way back to Edlin.....
cr
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