I was very sad and disappointed to install Open Office and start using it.
For years I have hated Microsoft Office and the fact I was forced to use it.
In particular, I believe, Word is the most profoundly flawed, frustrating,
annoying and useless porgramme ever produced.
From what I see, every upgrade Microsoft adds new features clearly to address
underlying failures of the programme to perform, and always unsuccessfuly.
I wait for the next version ready to pounce on and disable the latest dumb
and worthless feature further compounding the lack of useability of the worlds
most aggravating programme.
I was a document drafter in the main (30 years) and I can say, with absolute
certainty, a minimum of 25% of my salary went into fighting Word to indent
properly, copy and paste properly, format properly.
Am I a nutter? I'm an advanced user with nearly 10 years experience. I have
questioned Word expert trainers on the problems and received a "Yes, well, we
know it can't do that but that's how Word works" response only. As a total
novice, with no training, within 1 month of using Wordperfect I could perform
the key items of complaint above better than I can with almost 10 years of
Word, plus training. There are items that act differently dependent on
inperceptable changes making the programme impossible to master.
And it's not just me, based on discussion with virtually everyone I know
using Word, this phenomenon is so wide spread that it is clear ,to me, the
product is costing industry 10's if not 100's of millions of dollars a year in
time wasted fighting its flaws not to mention the stress of dealing with them.
(I know of only a couple of, not so bright, secretairies that like Word as a
product in the 10 years I used it.)
So why was I sad and disappointed to install Open Office?
Instead of seeing an oportunity and seizing it, instead of following the
basic marketing principle of finding out what your competitor does wrong and
fixing it, instead of realising people want to change because the product is
so lousy, you take this, as I see it, tragic and useless piece of garbage and
create clone.
Why would you do that? Why would you think people would feel more comfortable
using something they hate just as much as an alternative?
Open Office may be free, but that is very little different in price to Word
if you take into account 25% of my salary, less the cost of Word.
Examples of Word:
Dumb little drag markers for margins and indents that are awkward to use,
time consuming and never work properly.
+ and - indent icon that has never worked properly.
Tabs that say permanent throughout the document, that aren't or can't be set.
Automatic Word margin that can't be changed.
Ridiculous copying system that has no idea what copy and paste means as it
may change font, font size, font features like bolding, indentation. And if
you turn the system off it corrupts all fromatting throughout the document so
you are forced to use it (the insanity of Word "Styles", as I see it, a cover
up for not having a proper reveal code system).
Perhaps the most stupid item in the history of programming, automatic
indenting of bullet points (I've never indented the fist bullet point in a
document in 30 years and haven't any documents or books that do). So since the
looney tunes made this amendment I have had turn off the automatic bullets and
numbering (which I suppose is no big deal because of the next point).
Inane renumbering of copied bullet points.
The inability to delete the default font so, if you select a default font for
a document the original default font may just pop up at random.
Which brings up, if you copy an item from a different Word document with a
different font into a new document you will forever be haunted by that
undeletable font even if you select the whole document and set a specific font.
Or you could try Help that hasn't even got help on the subject that pop up
saying see help.
Help that doesn't reference Words own key phrases and descriptions.
Help that advises you to take step you can't taske or aren't even available
in Word.
Even the facility to blank type and auto-format is an absolute failure.
And on and on and on, a never ending and ever increasing list of ill
conceived and time consuming failures.
If Microsoft had set out to make the worst product possible its programmers
simply aren't capable enough to come up with what they've done in Word.
What I believe to be fact is Wordperfect designed the worlds best product,
hit F9 to indent, reveal codes at the bottom so you could delete and add
whatever you liked, Microsoft felt it couldn't copy it and came up with an
absolute dud. They've been trying to fix it ever since without addressing the
underlying falure of being a dud product.
Open Office is a copy.
