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Ok so several service packs later and Office 2007 still makes a giant sucking noise everytime I start it. In case you are wondering what gets sucked up in the vacuum of MicroSoft hell, its been mainly my time and my systems resources and this is while the program is idle.
The worst offender is Outlook 2007 which uses 50% of processor plus 600 k in memory. Thinking perhaps I have a faulty installation on perhaps one of the service packs created more problems than it solved, I chose to uninstall the Office 2007and try again. Boy oh boy was that an error. Evidently you only get 3 installs of Office 2007 before you have get juggled in endless phone loops between depts. With support saying you have to call activation and activation saying you have to call support. After my 3rd call I started recording my conversations.
And even though I dont have the time or resources to pursue a lawsuit, I do have youtube and myspace video and any other video site I can get my video up on to spread the word. MircroSoft needs to come down off the thrown. I've talked to half of india on the support lines and nobody has a solution for this software of theirs that I nor they can seem to activate.
And now with all of this I have spent half of my working day talking with apologetic support reps who have no solutions. I have a expensive and useless piece of software and a pocket full of apologies. After my 5th rep I've been directed to yet another dept, called the 2007 Activation Support or some malarkey like that. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the program yet again and we are no closer to solving the problem. I was happy to find out (note my sarcasm) that my trouble getting Office 2007 to install was going to be supported "Free of Charge" by Microsoft.... I had to stop myself when the technician told me this. Thanks for supporting your product, but paying for something that doesnt work and then telling me your not going to charge me for it, what the?!?
Well actually I have arrived at a resolution. I am gradually shifting my office (I manage 50 users) off of Microsoft products. I am reviewing several open source option that are compatible with MicroShaft formats.
I've contacted the legal department and I'm going to see if we can get a refund for our Microsoft products. I doubt it but its worth a shot. Office 2007 is a big lumbering albatross. I'm not sure Apple is much better, but I've never had the activation issues with *ANY* of my Macs.
The worst offender is Outlook 2007 which uses 50% of processor plus 600 k in memory. Thinking perhaps I have a faulty installation on perhaps one of the service packs created more problems than it solved, I chose to uninstall the Office 2007and try again. Boy oh boy was that an error. Evidently you only get 3 installs of Office 2007 before you have get juggled in endless phone loops between depts. With support saying you have to call activation and activation saying you have to call support. After my 3rd call I started recording my conversations.
And even though I dont have the time or resources to pursue a lawsuit, I do have youtube and myspace video and any other video site I can get my video up on to spread the word. MircroSoft needs to come down off the thrown. I've talked to half of india on the support lines and nobody has a solution for this software of theirs that I nor they can seem to activate.
And now with all of this I have spent half of my working day talking with apologetic support reps who have no solutions. I have a expensive and useless piece of software and a pocket full of apologies. After my 5th rep I've been directed to yet another dept, called the 2007 Activation Support or some malarkey like that. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the program yet again and we are no closer to solving the problem. I was happy to find out (note my sarcasm) that my trouble getting Office 2007 to install was going to be supported "Free of Charge" by Microsoft.... I had to stop myself when the technician told me this. Thanks for supporting your product, but paying for something that doesnt work and then telling me your not going to charge me for it, what the?!?
Well actually I have arrived at a resolution. I am gradually shifting my office (I manage 50 users) off of Microsoft products. I am reviewing several open source option that are compatible with MicroShaft formats.
I've contacted the legal department and I'm going to see if we can get a refund for our Microsoft products. I doubt it but its worth a shot. Office 2007 is a big lumbering albatross. I'm not sure Apple is much better, but I've never had the activation issues with *ANY* of my Macs.
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Washington, D.C.
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Re: Office 2007 is TERRIBLE
Wed, September 17, 2008 - 6:53 PM
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Re: Office 2007 is TERRIBLE
Wed, September 24, 2008 - 9:17 AMIf you have Java, you can get Open Office which is supposed to be plug compatible with
Microsquish, but you'd be best to read reviews, as I haven't used it yet. -
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Re: Office 2007 is TERRIBLE
Thu, September 25, 2008 - 3:05 AMI do actually use OpenOffice, becuase my home computing platform is Linux (and there are no Windows machines in the house save for the laptop that my employer makes me take home with me every night). It is very good, though there is still room for improvement. The word processor is excellent, and the spreadsheet is very good. The presentation software needs some paradigm improvement to compete with PowerPoint -- changing backgrounds and such is too painful and inflexible right now. I haven't tried the database because I prefer to use enterprise-grade databases like PostgreSQL.
It can, in fact, read and write most MS formats. It also has its own formats, which usually result in much smaller files for the same content. These files also have the benefit of being easy to parse, as they are just zip files containing XML.
OpenOffice is also available in a "portable" edition, which can be installed on and run from a thumb drive on a Windows machine or on a Linux machine with WINE. You can get it from PortableApps.com
You don't need to install Java to get OpenOffice working; it comes bundled with an appropriate JRE. It installs just like any other application -- on Windows there is an installation wizard; on Ubuntu (and probably other Debianoids), you just "sudo apt-get openoffice"; on Slackware, you download the Slackware package tarball and "installpkg openoffice-2.4.tgz" etc.
I am using it on Slackware; my wife is using it on Ubuntu.
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Unsu...
Re: Office 2007 is TERRIBLE
Fri, December 5, 2008 - 1:55 AMI had this software installed for a while and found it to be very nice. You don't say whether you are using XP or Vista. Vist is complete crap, so wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't work correctly on that. The only reason I uninstalled it was because it was a pirate copy and I was happy with 2003. But if someone wants to donate the funds to me, I'd be very happy to replace 2003. Then again, maybe the pirate copy had so much code removed from it that it became normal. -
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Re: Office 2007 is TERRIBLE
Sun, January 4, 2009 - 1:17 AMHi just catching up on my tribe stuff....
I manage a network of users with a few Vista machines but mainly XP boxes (SP2 & SP3). I wish switching to open source apps was an option but i work with allot of PhD s so simplifying my life would be giving them word processors (like typewriters but with screens) not new applications for them to learn. It could be an exact clone of MS products and they would have silly user problems.
My main issues have been serious application hangs and the resource hoggishness of the new suite. If you want to have an excuse for your drop in productivity just fire up Outlook 2007. Not to mention the complete "Vistalike" interface overhaul. *rolls eyes* I really wonder why Microsoft goes through these complete interface overhauls with every new generation of OS. I can understand updating things or whatever, but they just got XP running perfectly now they've gone and released Millennium Edition Ver 2.0 (aka Vista).
I think my all time favourite moment is when I created a document in Word 2007 then clicked the email button fired if off from Outlook 2007 and checked the email in my Outlook as well as a Thunderbird. Outlook completely mutilated all of the message formatting. It seems that Office 2007 SP1 still has yet to fix all the problems. I could go on for days about my problems with Office 2007 and support challenges and whatever, but I'll save you my bitching session. Basically its like this. If you have a solid XP machine and you want something new and different upgrade your computer or get a faster computer and swap your hard drive in.
Vista is a compatibility headache with other products that Microshaft makes [ie Live Messenger which is often more of a zombie] and I see nothing in Office 2007 of the features that I use that I cant already do in 2003, faster and without hang and efficiency issues. Ultimately if I had paid for Office 2007 I'd charge you a $1 for it, because I wouldnt give it to my worst enemy.
After digging through every TSB and the vast [and oft unrelated inforation in the] MKB I could find I have come to the conclusion that, I'm done with it. I like the open source idea tho, I may put that on my home computers and learn it for personal gratification.
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Unsu...
Re: Office 2007 is TERRIBLE
Tue, March 10, 2009 - 2:43 AM~~~ Ultimately if I had paid for Office 2007 I'd charge you a $1 for it, because I wouldnt give it to my worst enemy. ~~~
I just installed office 2007 again after reinstalling Vista. I have to say I like it a lot, but agree that if you have 2003, why bother upgrading.
From experience with dealing with desktop problems in the past, working in many different companies, one thing was obvious, each company had its own set of problems that would reoccur, even though they all used the same software, so the problems you have may not be the same somewhere else.
I personally only use Outlook for my main accounts, but use Firebird for my junk mail accounts. Firebird id very fast, but has its own set of problems. Same goes for Firefox; in fact I hate Firefox and use Opera as a second browser, but IE as my main one.
Now Vista is a complete pain. What a load of crap. The list of problems with it is just too long to go into. I tried installing XP on a new notebook, but couldn’t because the install could not see my hard drive. I guess there is probably a way round that, but I needed it working again, so Vista went back on. Interestingly, I used a Linux live DVD (Knopix 5.3) on the notebook, and that too could not start up because of lack of correct drivers. Maybe someone could make a suggestion for another one. I would be interested in also being able to save to disk.
I am now seriously looking at getting one Linux box as I think it’s now at the stage were its somewhat user friendly. -
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Unsu...
Re: Office 2007 is TERRIBLE
Tue, March 10, 2009 - 2:47 AMCorrection: Thunderbird, not Firebird.
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Re: Office 2007 is TERRIBLE
Sun, December 7, 2008 - 7:54 PMAnother moron infests an inappropriate tribe.
Take this crap to the computer tribes.
This is about use of appropriate technology, not details of an inappropritate technology. -
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Re: Office 2007 is TERRIBLE
Mon, December 8, 2008 - 3:10 AMMay I suggest letting the moderator moderate? Crap technology is absolutely ON TOPIC.
-The Moderator
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