Reason #836,492 why Microsoft sucks

Using Microsoft Office reminds me of being married to my ex-wife during our final unhappy years together. It’s all I’ve got for the moment, but I just have to believe that there is something much better which would really meet my needs. Today it was Outlook 2003 that drove me to imagine the hell that rightfully awaits Microsoft programmers (or, more justly, the executives for whom they work).

I dutifully have upgraded to Outlook 2003 from 2002, hearing that the integrated spam filter alone is worth the price. Yes, it is a nice spam filter, better than the stand-alone product I had been using. And yes, I do enjoy the snazzier look of Outlook 2003 (and the other Office 2003 products), the new color scheme bringing some brightness to my laptop world.

So my outlook on Outlook was pretty positive this early afternoon, as I finished entering all 86 names and addresses of the people in our Spring Lake Estates neighborhood association into a new Contacts file. I am the secretary of said association, and had been charged with quickly mailing out a survey to find out whether the members wanted the board to get involved with a proposed property development that could threaten the quality of water in our communal lake.

Having recently shifted over to a new laptop, I wanted to move the address file into Outlook, as I had been printing labels on an ancient version of AnyTime Deluxe that seemed just too archaic to transplant to my Wi-Fied E-Machines 6809.

Is it too much to expect that Outlook, Microsoft’s workhorse contact manager, would be able to print 86 labels on standard Avery stock? Mr. and Ms. Microsoft executives, is this Office 2003 user being unreasonable in his expectation that, if a $29 AnyTime Deluxe program can easily print those labels, your mucho-more expensive Outlook 2003 could do the same?

During the 90 minutes I spent trying to unravel the mysteries of mail merging an Outlook file into a Word document I had plenty of opportunity to ponder those questions—along with more malevolent fantasies of how those Microsoft executives would like living at Guantanamo in their orange jumpsuits, forced to endure 20 hour a day interrogations: “Why, why!, why!! did you not put the features into Office 2003 that normal human beings actually need, rather than all the fancy-pants crap that no one other than a computer science Ph.D. understands, even you?!”

I finally gave up and installed good old faithful AnyTime Deluxe on my new computer. I then printed out the labels and went to Kinkos. And when I got home I learned via Google that for $40 or $60, depending on the version, Aladdins Envelopes and Labels will do for me what Outlook 2003 should have done: print some damn labels.

I read on the Aladdins website, “Aladdins adds envelope and label printing functionality to Outlook.” And I think, “Should I really have to pay $40 or $60 for this?” And I answer, “No.” But I do. And after downloading the Aladdins software I find that it easily prints labels, just like they say. And I think, “Why does Microsoft, which makes programs that suck, rule the computer world rather than Aladdins, which makes software that works?”

The answer likely can be found only by delving into metaphysical karmic mysteries beyond my ken. It’s probably the same reason why George Bush is our president rather than Al Gore.

Comments

[Jesse Thompson]

Not to rain on your righteous "Microsoft sucks" parade, but do you have that avery label printery wizard thing? I have one of those and it's happy eating the csv files (or tab delimited files?) that my web applications generate.

If you could have gotten outlook to export it's address book in csv or tab delimited or any kind of XL-friendly format I'll bet you could have swung it and saved $20 or $40 dollars :)

[Carol Ann]

Do you believe in self-flagellation? I believe you need to get back on the MAC wagon!

[Taz]

Why do you complain so much about Microsoft and keep using it?? You paid $60 to make Outlook do something right. Why didn't you just download a REAL e-mail client for free?
The reason Microsoft rules the computer world is because little Billybob has contracts with every major PC manufacturer on Earth so they are all but forced to put Microshitty software all over the computers you buy, and people are ignorant and lazy so they don't bother trying alternatives and blame their computer problems on computers in general instead of the crappy software they are using.

And don't buy a Mac. They are ridiculously expensive, their hardware is terrible quality, and the OS sucks. The only thing good about them is that they're pretty.

Quit complaining. Get Linux and be happy forever.

[Noel]

Maybe MacOS sucked... but now it's UNIX-based, and I really like that. Powerful, secure, customizable, flexible, stable AND pretty.

I totally agree about the laziness fact. Everyone seems to prefer a shitty OS than trying anything new. People likes cleaning spyware every day, I guess. (This is ironic... I'm writing this in IE6).

[tristian]

why didnt you use mozilla thunderbird its free and imports all contacts from outlook.

I agree anything thats programed by M$ developers have more holes than a net thats been shot by a machine gun by a group of soldiers. I think if you run windows with a powerful firewall, AV program and use browser and email client other than IE or Outlook its going to be insecure

Use firefox and thunderbird and secure what you can
www.mozilla.org

[John Wells]

If you stay in Micro$oft land your life will always be a string of frustrations. SOmeone here said Macs are too expensive. But, if you really look into it, they're actually much cheaper than anything esle out there. Apple doesn't make crap and will not put a product on the market that is as bad as the others will. If you were to get a garden variety PC and add to it all the things that Macs come with out of the box, you spend much more on a PC. Plus, the OS (OS 10.3.7 at this time) is light years ahead of Windows. It's already year ahead of Longhorn and that won't be out for 2 more years!

Computers are supposed to make our lives easier and more fun. They are supposed to make it easier to accomplish more things. Microsoft just want your money, they don't want your life to be better. Take a look at Apple and compare their products with what you want to do with your computer.

If Microsoft made cars instead of software, they'd be hounded out of business.

[Steve]

>Posted by: Noel | July 15, 2004 12:18 PM
>
>why didnt you use mozilla thunderbird its >free and imports all contacts from outlook.
>
>I agree anything thats programed by M$ >developers have more holes than a net thats >been shot by a machine gun by a group of >soldiers

lol. If you shot a net, it'd end up with less holes than when you started. Next time just stop at the net mate, dont try and get clever... it just doesnt work for you.

And yes, mozilla owns.

[Matt]

This page has really made me smile.

I remember when windows 95 came out, if you posted a comment regarding Microsoft and how bad thier software was you would get a few cheers from some Mac fans and a lot of flak from the Microsoft "faithfull". Fast forward ten years and now you get a group of responses suggesting viable and readily available alternatives. That not only shows the alternatives are out there but also poeple are starting to find them! I beleive this is a sign of the future, kinda like when the first Toyotas rolled off the boat in the early 70's, they gave the consumers a choice when all you could ger from Detroit was a rattle trap good for 30k miles tops and changed the automotive landscape forever.

I do however disagree with a few things. I dont believe that the origional Mac OS sucked, its crime was being too different in a DOS/Windows world. It never played nice with Windows in a network environment (Mac OS X changed all that) I still use OS 9.1 on my old Mac and still love it, I have a Mac as well as a Linux PC and a Windows 2000 PC(for work). Also In the early days of the Mac vs PC battle Mac had superior hardware with SCSI hard drives And RISC processors.I do whole heartedly agree with everyone about Mozilla, I have it in every machine, they make a Mac version for OS X as well as the old OS 9, I have a version for Linux and for Windows 2k, in every application it is far superior to any browser it replaced. Getting back to the heart of this matter however I agree for the price they charge Microsoft Windows/Outlook/Office/InternetExplorer/or Whatever should be the best darn software you can buy/download but it is NEVER the best and quite often it is the WORST!

[Windoze Sucks]

I agree.
Windoze definetly sucks! You spend more on fixing a Windows based machine then you would spend on a Mac!

[Microsoft Suck More]

All I can say is I've been a tech for over 12 years and have seen all OS vendors grow a great amount. Microsoft owns part of the Mac world now... (hummm)... and Mac OS X is based off of a Linux dirivtive named Darwin (hummmmm)... BTW the Linux copyright is open source and the OS is free to the public. Linux as an OS has by far grown the most and as you can see Mac decided to contiubute to it's innovation (or use it's innovation). Linux has several useful desktops and supporting softwares e.g. Firefox Web Browser and Mozilla Thunderbird email client. As a whole Linux strives to be the best and it shows. In this day and age it is now a complete and competitve OS.
Just and FYI for your eys.
Windows no longer innovates they try to imitate.
Cheers.

[Micr0$0f7=n00bs]

MS sucks, windows has been a rip off since DOS

[J Bz]

Listen, it all goes back to one thing.

Microsoft has been emulating and imitating for so long, so well, that the vast majority of us take a long time to realize that they are the cloners.

IMHO, Microsoft has been much more of a law firm and less of a software developer.

To turn open-source and close it using legal means. This often means messing up the original stuff in the process of rewriting it.

[Benjamin]

Microsoft is the most powerfull software developer of the world and their just not able to put a w3c valide website online.. that shows that they don´t care for anything else than money. if i think of all the money and time i´ve spend on that crappy windows, word (the whole office pack).. and most of all the internet explorer.

for all the people who don´t know w3c:

W3C Develops Web Standards and Guidelines:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/

with the help of the w3c validator you can check the validation of a website:
http://validator.w3.org/

now just go and check one of the official microsoft websites yourself and you will see that mostly all of them produces a lot of failures... (the worst site i´ve checked produced 124 failure notices)

for example the offical windows site:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/default.mspx

or the site of the internet explorer!
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx
(55 failures.. the site of the brandnew ie 7 dosen´t even have a doctype set!) just embarrassing...

sorry guys but microsoft just sucks so bad!

[Calcy!]

So many people have told me that macs are underpowered and overpriced. The only advantage i've ever seen towards PCs is the selection of games available. Otherwise, Apple provides all my computing needs. I have microsoft office (which works better on macs than it does on windows), and all the apps i need. With most of the same file types, I enjoy very few compatibility problems.
My iMac g4 is only a prototype, with a 1ghz processor, 1 GB of RAM and a 32 bit NVIDIA graphics card, yet it is twice as fast as my grandmother's dell dimmension desktop 3000 (or something like that). It has a 2.39 GHZ pentium 4 processor, yet lags on even the simplest tasks...
So if apple OS is better than what micorsoft has to dish out, why is everyone using it?
the answer is overmarketing. windows 95 was so overadvertised that people didnt hear to much of anything else. as the new versions came out, they just bought em because they were already familiar with microsoft.

Not to say that all of microsoft's products are crap. I am rather fond of microsoft office and their gaming sector. The Xbox is great...

But anyway, i've just found that in so many ways apple is just more innovative, and offers good hardware, software and overall experience. Try it if you dont like microsoft's windows. If it doesnt work for you, then go linux. It's UNIX based like OSX, so you'll have very few if no security problems. If that doesnt work for you, then have fun with your spyware and windows.
:)

[tj]

>> Mac OS X is based off of a Linux dirivtive named Darwin (hummmmm)... BTW the Linux copyright is open source and the OS is free to the public. Linux as an OS has by far grown the most and as you can see Mac decided to contiubute to it's innovation (or use it's innovation).

Darwin is not a Linux derivative. In fact Darwin and Linux have different operating system designs. Darwin is based on XNU(which is a combination of the Mach kernel and BSD version 4.3). Linux is based on a monolithic kernel.

I am not saying Linux is bad--it is just different. I run both Linux and Mac OS X.

[Me]

Microsoft... it has to be the most depressing thing in my life, it is badly designed, and Microsoft seems to only care about money. i have had about 7-8 headaches in the past thanks to Microsoft's products while trying to deal with the rubbish they have put me through whilst trying to fix the problems that arise thanks to the bad design of windows. i have completely gone off windows, and Microsoft all together. i know little of the alternatives (but im learning)
there are too few words in the English dictionary for me to describe the hatred and disgust that i feel towards Microsoft

[Gregory]

This is the problem with Microsoft: they have too much money. They don't care about quality anymore, because they don't have to. Any other company that would produce crap software like Vista or MS-Office would go bankrupt in a year or so. They don't.

MS started off producing BASIC interpreters and MS-DOS. That software worked very well at the time. It had to, else no-one would have bought it. That situation doesn't exist anymore. Everyone uses MS software one way or the other, and in general people are too stupid to realise this.

[Mark]

Apple Mac OSX ROCKS!!!!
Not experienced w/ LINUX, but I am sure it is nice too.... HOWEVER... Apple may seem expensive, but I have had my Mac since Sept. 2003 (using it right now to type this) and over
5 years later... still running like a champ. Yeah, I paid 2x the price over a PC when I bought it new.... but just considering the time I have SAVED (not to mention sanity, frustration, etc.) buy not having to fix this computer (like I was ALWAYS doing with PC's), then it's easy for me to say that MAC RULES!!! What's your time worth?

[Regular Guy]

The normal person is not lazy, they just don't have a clue as to which "expert" actually knows what he is doing. I view the computer as a tool (necesary evil). I just wnat to use the damn thing, not build it.

[jordan]

Yeah, why not use linux. I use kubuntu on my ibook and love it! I plan to run arch linux on some servers, and I also plan to put openSUSE u on my Mom's macbook (I'm 16, so I obviously live with my Mom) as a dual boot. Then Mandriva on our iMac. Anyway, the bottom line is that Linux is a really great operating system. Pretty much all of the distrobutions of linux I have used I loved. Here are some good ones: openSUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora (more advanced), arch (really advanced), Mandriva, and of course, Linux Mint! Check out Linux Mint with KDE, it is by far the easiest to use (I would put it on my ibook, except the processors wont work with Linux Mint). Also, OS X 10.6 is a really great operating system, and I have no issues using it, I just like to experiment (and use on a daily basis) with Linux. And yes, Mac's are generally more expensive than PC's (Windows, Linux or BSD PC's) but that doesn't mean they suck. Especially if you get one for your birthday :)

[Jay]

As a happy Linux user for nearly four months, I can't be bothered to use Windows any longer. With all the hoopla surrounding Windows 7, Micro$oft doesn't bother to tell you that the computer isn't fully in your control any longer...compulsory updates, intrusive "genuine Microsoft Advantage" checks, forced anti-virus...It's a real shame that at 28 years of age and having used a computer since I was about ten years old, that I couldn't have seen the farce that is Microsoft. Why spend $319.99 on "Windows 7 Ultimate" when my Xubuntu 9.10 does everything I need it to, for free? Why buy the MS Office suite? Need to write docs? AbiWord works just fine. Need a capable spreadsheet software? GNUMeric. The possibilities with Linux are endless, and I'm glad to see more and more users making the switch to an OS that deserves more exposure, especially within a PC community that is forced to continue to spend money and contribute to Microsoft's fat wallet.

I would say that the only good thing they've put out in the past few years is the XBox360, but the results are showing that even their gaming powerhouse is starting to sink, with the constant hardware failures.