It's been no secret that I have recently purchased a new computer to replace the old Official Weekend Pundit Main Computer, a 6-year old machine with an Athlon 64 CPU, 1GB of RAM, an ATI video card, and two 100GB hard drives. The old machine runs Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It also makes use of interesting and useful programs like Firefox and Thunderbird (both from Mozilla), Open Office, Lview (image editing) and Snaggit (image capture and editing), and a host of other utilities and fun stuff.
While the machine was never perfect, it did its job and did it pretty well.
The new machine has a multi-core 64-bit AMD CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 1.5TB hard drive, and an ATI video card. It runs Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) and I have plans to add Ubuntu Linux this weekend. I doubt anyone can argue against the fact that in so many ways it is better than the old machine.
It has been an interesting but carefully paced adventure, using Windows 7. So far there's little I find I dislike about it, and those things I have found less than optimal (in my opinion) are minor annoyances. It boots quickly, it runs quickly, as do all of the programs I have run so far. Some of that I have to attribute to the hardware, and some to the software. But I do have a major complaint, and not about the hardware or the operating system.
It's that damnable Microsoft Office 2010. To put it into simple terms, it SUCKS. (Yes, I know I've written about this before, but after struggling with Office 2010 at work, and now at home, I can't say enough bad things about it.)
First, I want to remind you that I am a techno-geek. I live, eat, and breathe electronics and optics. I have a pretty good handle on programming (usually used to test something we've designed to make sure it works the way it's supposed to), but I'm no code wizard. I use computers at work and home every day. I understand user interfaces to the nth degree because the equipment my employer builds and sells lives or dies by the ease of use of the equipment I help design. If the user interface stinks it doesn't matter how good the piece of equipment it goes with performs. (I've seen and used too many of our competitors' equipment that have been well designed and perform well, but are difficult to use because the user interface requires the owner to open the user manual to figure out how to turn the darned thing on.) A poor user interface will cause more dissatisfaction with a product than buggy software or barely adequate hardware.
All of that being said, the user interface on Office 2010, and its predecessor Office 2007, is awful.
I don't care what the folks at Redmond, Washington say, the new interface has failed. It is not intuitive. It requires seasoned users to spend lots of time trying to figure out where Microsoft moved the features they've been using for years (this is a major indication the user interface design has failed).
Functions that used to take one or two clicks now take up to seven. It doesn't matter if the interface is customizable if it takes the user a long time to figure out how to do so. And like earlier versions of Office, it tries to do things for you even when you don't want it to. But with 2010 it's even more annoying, if that's possible. Undoing something it has 'fixed' for you is more difficult (the old Control Z or the Undo button doesn't always undo it whatever it is it did for you).
I get the impression that the folks at Microsoft spent a lot of time and money asking users what they liked and disliked about Office some time after Office 2003 was released. The problem is that I think they asked the wrong people. It seems to me the changes they made were more at the behest of power users, those few folks who will use the 90% of the Office features no one else does, assuming they even know they exist.
Another fail: the 'ribbons' that have replaced the long-used toolbars take up a lot more space on screen. I mean a lot more. I now have less usable working space on my screen than under Office 2003. This is supposed to help productivity?
I've been playing with the crippled version of Office 2010 that came installed on my new machine and it has merely confirmed what I've seen at work. I hate to say it, but whoever thought a redesign of the Office interface was a good idea should be FIRED. Whoever actually designed the new interface should be FIRED. Whoever it was that tried to sell this godawful UI to the public as "the greatest thing since sliced bread" should be FIRED.
I know if I had created a user interface for a piece of our equipment as awful and defective as the one on Microsoft Office 2010, I would have been FIRED, and I wouldn't have blamed the company for doing so. I would have fired me, too.
So until Microsoft fixes the piss poor user interface on Office, I'll stay with Open Office at home (and even if they do I'll still stay with Open Office). Unfortunately I won't have a choice at work.
While the machine was never perfect, it did its job and did it pretty well.
The new machine has a multi-core 64-bit AMD CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 1.5TB hard drive, and an ATI video card. It runs Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) and I have plans to add Ubuntu Linux this weekend. I doubt anyone can argue against the fact that in so many ways it is better than the old machine.
It has been an interesting but carefully paced adventure, using Windows 7. So far there's little I find I dislike about it, and those things I have found less than optimal (in my opinion) are minor annoyances. It boots quickly, it runs quickly, as do all of the programs I have run so far. Some of that I have to attribute to the hardware, and some to the software. But I do have a major complaint, and not about the hardware or the operating system.
It's that damnable Microsoft Office 2010. To put it into simple terms, it SUCKS. (Yes, I know I've written about this before, but after struggling with Office 2010 at work, and now at home, I can't say enough bad things about it.)
First, I want to remind you that I am a techno-geek. I live, eat, and breathe electronics and optics. I have a pretty good handle on programming (usually used to test something we've designed to make sure it works the way it's supposed to), but I'm no code wizard. I use computers at work and home every day. I understand user interfaces to the nth degree because the equipment my employer builds and sells lives or dies by the ease of use of the equipment I help design. If the user interface stinks it doesn't matter how good the piece of equipment it goes with performs. (I've seen and used too many of our competitors' equipment that have been well designed and perform well, but are difficult to use because the user interface requires the owner to open the user manual to figure out how to turn the darned thing on.) A poor user interface will cause more dissatisfaction with a product than buggy software or barely adequate hardware.
All of that being said, the user interface on Office 2010, and its predecessor Office 2007, is awful.
I don't care what the folks at Redmond, Washington say, the new interface has failed. It is not intuitive. It requires seasoned users to spend lots of time trying to figure out where Microsoft moved the features they've been using for years (this is a major indication the user interface design has failed).
Functions that used to take one or two clicks now take up to seven. It doesn't matter if the interface is customizable if it takes the user a long time to figure out how to do so. And like earlier versions of Office, it tries to do things for you even when you don't want it to. But with 2010 it's even more annoying, if that's possible. Undoing something it has 'fixed' for you is more difficult (the old Control Z or the Undo button doesn't always undo it whatever it is it did for you).
I get the impression that the folks at Microsoft spent a lot of time and money asking users what they liked and disliked about Office some time after Office 2003 was released. The problem is that I think they asked the wrong people. It seems to me the changes they made were more at the behest of power users, those few folks who will use the 90% of the Office features no one else does, assuming they even know they exist.
Another fail: the 'ribbons' that have replaced the long-used toolbars take up a lot more space on screen. I mean a lot more. I now have less usable working space on my screen than under Office 2003. This is supposed to help productivity?
I've been playing with the crippled version of Office 2010 that came installed on my new machine and it has merely confirmed what I've seen at work. I hate to say it, but whoever thought a redesign of the Office interface was a good idea should be FIRED. Whoever actually designed the new interface should be FIRED. Whoever it was that tried to sell this godawful UI to the public as "the greatest thing since sliced bread" should be FIRED.
I know if I had created a user interface for a piece of our equipment as awful and defective as the one on Microsoft Office 2010, I would have been FIRED, and I wouldn't have blamed the company for doing so. I would have fired me, too.
So until Microsoft fixes the piss poor user interface on Office, I'll stay with Open Office at home (and even if they do I'll still stay with Open Office). Unfortunately I won't have a choice at work.
I wrote a bit about my initial impressions of the pre-beta release of the Windows 8 Developers Preview on my blog in an article aptly named Windows 8.It could be worse. As for office 2010, people seem to love it or hate it, and in my experience it usually boils down to did you learn to really use Office on Office 2003, or later. I'm on the fence, but I don't use Office 2010 for much more than Word and the occasional spread sheet. Visio 2010 is a stand-alone product and shouldn't be put in the same category.
I get tired of listening to complaints about Vista, even if they are legitimate. Vista needed tweaking and you had to know what you were doing to get it right. When you did it worked beautifully, but the vast, vast majority of people, even power users, couldn't be bothered. I don't blame them, but it bugs me to see it called crap. I prefer to think of it as a poorly-engineered "Out Of The Box Experience".
My 2 cents...
I find the Win 7 interface to be close to what I've seen on some 2010 releases of Ubuntu Linux, though the Win 7 graphics are flashier. While not perfect, it's good enough for what I do. It didn't take long for me to get used to the differences between XP and 7.
At work we've been using XP since 2003, though blew off Vista as an unacceptable upgrade (too many of our critical applications wouldn't run under Vista and there were no 'Vista' versions available), and took some time before deciding to upgrade to Win 7. (We did have one machine running Vista in our lab, but that was purely for software development and was never connected to our network.) The upgrade to Win 7 has been taking place a little at a time as our IT guys replace our older machines with new equipment. I expect I'll be changed over sometime before next March.
While I've had one or two folks at work say they like Office 2010, they're coders, so they don't live in the real world as it is. But pretty much everyone else at work using it hates it with a passion.
Amen!
My personal computer is still running XP, though my husband upgraded to 7 a while ago. I don't especially care for the Win 7 interface as it is on his computer, though I know I'll get used to it once I upgrade mine (something I've been putting off for forever....). But Office 2007, god I hate it, and so does my husband. I don't use it enough to get used to where things are, so when I DO need to use it half my time is spent trying to figure out how to change the paragraph spacing or what not.
My work is still using XP as well, god I hope I'm not there when they have to do THAT upgrade!
And people wonder why I keep using Linux. Our IT guy at work says corporate IT wants nothing to do with Win 8. They're just now making the transition over from XP to Win 7 and aren't likely to change the OS again any time soon.
About the only positive thing I've heard about Windows 8 is that it's supposed to boot faster than XP and 7. If that's all it's got going for it I'll stick with what I've got.
You think Office 2010 sucks? Wait until you get a load of Windows 8 and the Metro UI! It accomplishes something I never thought possible: it makes Bob look good...