Clueless
Microsoft still doesn’t get it. I thought for a little while that, perhaps, the software behemoth had finally begun to grasp it, but apparently I was naively optimistic. Microsoft, for all appearances, seems to be trying to just get by until Mac and Linux somehow fail and leave Microsoft once again without any meaningful competition. Of course, we all know that ain’t going to happen any time soon.
Crisis
I was recently faced with the annoying necessity of replacing an aging PC laptop before it crashed one time too many. (It since has crashed one time too many.) Since I work from home part-time and in the office part-time this replacement really needed to occur before the old computer crashed and left me sans-computer with a looming deadline. Since I use Mac at work, I was tempted to just convert to Mac when I replaced the compute; however, since I had not planned to replace the computer when I did, a new Mac laptop was not in the budget.
Starter
My research into replacement options enlightened me to Microsoft’s new marketing gimmick for Office 2010 – Microsoft Office Starter 2010. This version of Office is shipping on new PCs with Windows pre-installed. Microsoft essentially offers a stripped-down version of Word and Excel, bundled into this Starter edition, free with new PCs. Microsoft also embeds advertising in Office Starter 2010 to annoy users generate revenue.
Since the built-in limitations of both Word and Excel were clearly explained, and since the advertising policy was also clearly explained, this sounded like a fair deal. Honestly, the included versions of Word and Excel would handle somewhere between 99 and 100 percent of what I do with an office program anyway. I didn’t figure I could go wrong. I have been using OpenOffice.org and, more recently, Libre Office for years and rarely use more than the most basic features of these programs either. Lately I do the vast majority of my writing (including this article) in FocusWriter – a free, zenware writing application that works with files in either .rtf (rich text) or .odt (open document) formats.
Microsoft offers the option to upgrade to the professional version of Office at any time, thus removing the limitations on this software. At the least, this approach sounded better than the trial period approach to evaluating software. Users can upgrade when they need additional features or get tired of the annoying advertising banner.
Features
I was generally satisfied with Microsoft Office Starter when I first tried the program. As I mentioned though, I don’t need to do anything fancy with it either.
I was pleased to discover Microsoft finally figured out that people actually export documents as PDF. Finally, Word offers PDF export without needing to install a third-party utility. Microsoft Office is only years behind the free competition on this feature. Truthfully, this is the one feature that initially pushed me toward OpenOffice.org and away from Word – years ago.
Failures
Unfortunately, I quickly tired of using Microsoft Office 2010. The user interface is horribly cluttered and distracting. Several other writing programs I have tried (and currently use) provide users with a full-screen option. In my opinion, full-screen is the only way to write now that I have experienced the pleasure. Full-screen mode eliminates all the clutter and leaves a writer with a keyboard and their words – rather like a typewriter did in years past. Certainly not all users of Microsoft Word 2010 would care about or use a full-screen option, but some writers most certainly would. Whether everyone would use the feature is not the question though. The question is why Microsoft waits for years to implement a simple feature that their competitors already offer – for free.
Microsoft also introduced another “feature” with Office 2010, something Microsoft calls Click-to-Run. I prefer to call it Click-to-Crash. In theory, Click-to-Run allows users to download and install a minimal feature set, and the program will download additional features when you attempt to use the feature for the first time. In theory. In practice, Click-to-Run seems to download some new feature every time anything is clicked – and this process does not stop after a few days (by which point the program would presumably know how to open a file or insert an image into a document).
Attempting to perform any task or command that activates Click-to-Run causes an information balloon to pop up with a message:
“Microsoft Office is downloading the required feature Microsoft Office may appear unresponsive temporarily as the required files are downloaded.”
No, Microsoft Office does not appear unresponsive temporarily. Microsoft Office is unresponsive. Whether Microsoft Office is unresponsive temporarily or is unresponsive permanently is the only question.
The persistent unresponsive states are bad enough, but Microsoft does not bother to warn users in advance that their new bright idea will also require a constant broadband connection. The suggestion from Microsoft documentation is that a broadband Internet connection will only be necessary when new features are being downloaded. Thus, according to Microsoft’s own documentation, users should be free to disconnect while using features that are already installed. Not so. Instead, the program looks for an Internet connection every time just about anything is clicked and, not finding a connection, promptly crashes. (Note to Microsoft: This is now 2012, but even in 2010 people regularly worked without Internet access on their laptop computers.)
Internet searches reveal too many reports of similar problems with Office crashes to count. Microsoft seems clueless as to what causes these problems if their own support forums are any indication. In any event, it is not an isolated problem with my PC. I attempted several “fixes” (read that as half-baked hacks) found in forums, but without success.
Microsoft Office 2010 also presents users with a horrible user interface that limits menu options and hides too many features under the “File” tab – which is really an entirely separate page rather than a menu item like one would expect. Something as simple as viewing the document properties requires accessing the File page, while something as simple as obtaining a character count, somewhat useful for writers – and essential for newspaper writers, requires multiple steps and the opening of the File page and then the properties dialog box. Microsoft is apparently unaware that most programs allow users to view this from the menu bar. Good programs, like the FocusWriter application that I currently use and several others like it, allow users to view customized character and word counts in the status bar at the bottom of the page.
Grade = F
Why write another article bashing Microsoft? It is easy to hate Microsoft just as it is easy to hate most behemoth corporations. These organizations so frequently seem disconnected from what their users actually want and need. Somewhere along the way from startup in a garage to software behemoth the ability to deliver a product that works the way people want it to work is lost.
Ultimately, I did not write this article to hate on Microsoft though. Truth be told, I think Windows 7 may be the best OS Microsoft has released yet. I loved Windows 3.1 – back in the day (of course, I started with computers on a TI-99, and progressed to a UNIX mainframe). I hated Windows 95. Windows 98 was okay, and I ran it for years while totally skipping 2000/ME. I liked, but did not love, Windows XP. I mistakenly upgraded to Microsoft Vista in 2008 (not sure what I was thinking on that purchase). So, in light of what has been released in the past, I think Windows 7 is a responsive, stable OS that is the closest yet to competing with Mac out of the box.
I also was actually excited about Microsoft Office Starter 2010 at first, and thought Microsoft was finally beginning to compete with Apple in delivering an OS that “just worked” out of the box. Imagine purchasing a new PC and actually being able to open a word processor or spreadsheet document without first spending another few hundred dollars for an office program or downloading an open-source suite!
Ultimately though, I was disappointed. One might reasonably assume that Microsoft could handle shipping an OS with a functional office suite. Sadly, Office Starter is functionally useless because Click-to-Run is really Click-to-Crash. The program is more frustration than it is worth. Further, like many people, my only computer is a laptop and I am not always connected to the Internet. Why does Microsoft Office need to again download something every time I click on the File tab?
Microsoft seems to rely on the assumption that they beat WordPerfect at the office suite game, so they can now release lousy software and businesses will just keep buying their software because Office file formats are the industry standard. There are several problems with this assumption. First, this is the era of open source. There are already competing products that provide more features than Microsoft Office – free. Second, Microsoft Office format is no longer the standard. That distinction now belongs to the open document standard – as it should.
Microsoft Office Starter 2010 is another fail for Microsoft. This software is unstable, lacks basic features like auto-save and full-screen, is adorned with a dreadfully cluttered interface, and ultimately fails to impress – a big problem if they want people to pay money for this program rather than using better featured, more stable, open-source options.
No related posts.