Why can't Microsoft make products that work?

It seems that many of their softwares include features that assume you are too stupid to make it do what you want. The problem is that these features are impossible to override in many cases, and don't allow you to do what you want.

For instance when inserting an image in Outlook (as an inline image, not an attachment) Outlook automatically resizes the image because it assumes I don't know how to do that myself. The problem is, that it commonly takes images that are less than 100k and resizes them larger (in some cases to over 2mb). There is no way to de-activate that setting.

Who else has Microsoft frustrations? I know someone is torqued off about the automated crap in Word...

Bill Gates is doing pretty good last I heard. :D

That is actually an interesting point... The market should dictate that if someone had software that was superior (and there are several out there) that Microsoft should be out of business. Yet... They continue to thrive, despite giving the finger to everyone that uses their software. Why does that happen?

(another example of Microsoft giving the finger: Internet Explorer is the browser that is least compliant with W3C guidelines. I'm certain that they are well aware of the guidelines, they just choose not to follow them.)

They do!
A few of their products are very very good. Just look at excel. A fine piece of software engineering.
They are a company with an enormous task of serving a huge array of machines and configurations. The fact that they make all this work, more or less, impresses me.

That said, I wouldn't use a Windows machine for the life of me.

I prefer Unix/Linux and OSX.
Quite simply because that is what I am most effective and comfortable with.

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Originally Posted by HNSB

...it assumes I don't know how to do that myself.

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A lot of people don't, and for them, the product works

I too use Linux and wouldn't be happy if windows was the only game in town. Freeware/shareware is a wonderful thing. My main gripe is that so many programs are propitiatory to microsoft and won't allow shareware devs access to their code.

First, we're talking Office, not Windows. OpenOffice is nice, but it's nowhere near MS Office.

I get annoyed at times with the auto-resize in Outlook '07, but honestly I find it more useful than bothersome. You can always set the scale to 100%, as that's how I handle the times where I need a 1:1 image (e.g. with text).

The MS Office is where MS makes most of their profits, so it can't be all that bad. It's true that there is a somewhat free market, but it's also true that Microsoft was a monopoly for quite some time.
Apple is actually much worse than Microsoft, the only thing they can do better than anybody else is designing a user interface.

I haven't been forced to use microsoft products in ages though, so I have rather superficial view of them. Last time somebody told me they need to spend $200 on MS Office license because they needed to be able to do mail merge, I looked up what it was and how to do it in Pages. It was a little bit harder than in MS Office, but turned out not $200 harder.

Watched this the other night. Gives insight into the history of Open Source and Free Software.

Revolution OS

I gave up on microsoft, one of my better decisions

HNSB,

That is why I switched to various flavours of UNIX (OpenBSD, FreeBSD & Solaris) & GNU/Linux some six years ago :)

Have fun !

Best regards

Russ

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Originally Posted by HNSB

The market should dictate that if someone had software that was superior (and there are several out there) that Microsoft should be out of business

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That sounds like it's a problem with the market. People are so stupid, all buying Microsoft products when there are better ones to be had.

Do you need to use Outlook?? I use Linux primarily at home but am forced to use Windows at work currently so I just use the Windows version of Thunderbird for email you could always give that a try.

Old People.


No offense, but my parents just LOVE all the new nanny-state modifications to windows... it makes it so that non-computer savvy folk can be confident that they will not destroy their OS, and it makes them confident they CAN, say, put an image in an email.

Case in point, the decision to make all the menus in 2007+ Windows software is so kinesthetic it makes me gag... but people who aren't previously acquainted with computers find it easier to look for a picture of what they are trying to do than a menu item followed by data fields requesting numbers and commands for formatting.

In Windows 7, they eliminated the cool photo fix buttons, in the photo program.
In Vista for instance, they had "Fix" and Crop, Red eye, stuff like that..In Win 7, it's gone. Now, you have download Windows Live in order to fix your photos...If your cheap like me, and won't buy a Photo shop program....

P.S. I'm an old "Ms Dos" guy, I've always hated windows. FWIW....

How many of you remember "Power Menu", Formtool, Wordstar, and when monitors only had "Red or Green" colors to choose from...?

I was thinking about going to Macs but the price the cheapest mac note books are almost twice the price of most pc note books but can they be twice a good twice as fast?
I'm not a fan of windows using it has wasted weeks of my life just to keep it running.
I have looked at linux but It's not for me.

So back to windows oh well if it doesn't play ball I can always leave it and go for a shave.

Anyway I have a question for you tech guys out there who in your opinion makes note books with good quality parts?

It always comes back to the OS. :/

MS Office is -- hands down -- the best office suite out there. Outlook is arguably the best mail client, especially when you consider that the vast majority of businesses are using Exchange.

If you insert an inline image in Outlook '07, it will autosize it and there's no one-click way to disable that. For the times when you want a 1:1 image, it can be a little annoying that it takes like 3 clicks to set it properly. In my experiences, it's actually quite handy in that you can manipulate the image size right in the email and the entire email will change dynamically. This is great for people like me who are OCD about formatting.

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Originally Posted by Evin

Anyway I have a question for you tech guys out there who in your opinion makes note books with good quality parts?

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Parts were important may be 20 years ago, these days almost all computers are made of the same parts.
Apple computer isn't going to be faster than a windows computer, it'll most likely be slower. Apple's implementation of the operating system sucks and has sucked from day one. If you install and run windows on the same machine along OS X you'll find out that Windows outperforms the OS X (similarly for computing power Linux outperforms Windows on the same hardware).

As I posted earlier Apple is a design company so all the extra money goes into a sexier looking computer and much more intuitive user interface.
Look at straight razors, when they're made very pretty they can sell for several times what an ugly one that shaves just as well, or sometimes even better. When people have disposable money they can pay a lot for bling.


So it depends on how much you value your time. If you don't like Linux (my parents who don't know much about computers prefer it to Windows), your only options are Windows and OS X, but the later may be a bit expensive. It does come with various rather programs already in, and the Apple's office suite is quite a bit cheaper than Microsofts, so the price difference may not be as drastic at it seems on first sight.

Keep in mind also that things change, most quickly in the world of Linux, but also Windows 7 may not be so bad as whatever you had wasted weeks with.

As a retired software engineer with considerable experience on Windows PC, I am truly amazed with all that goes on under the hood it even works. Millions of processor cycles per second, tons of context sensitive messages in the gueues, screen paints, internet sockets... not to even mention all the third party hardware that is thrown into the stew. It's not the best but it does actually work from time to time as it is now.

The only people who think microsoft products don't work are those that have never seen a developement project up close.

Allthough I understand people not LIKING microsoft products...you actually can't claim they don't work. They (usually) do exactly what they were designed to do and appeal to the greater mass of people (as shown by their sales).

What you mean is "why won't microsoft products do what I WANT THEM TO DO!" which is a completely different question.

Also....most things in microsoft products (apart from looks etc) can be changed in the settings.....

I'm sorry to say this but if you're having problems with the cropping in Outlook...you've probably just not changed the standard setting yet. Which means that Outlook DOES work...it's just that you haven't yet.

My main gripe is when the software thinks it knows how to spell something better than I do, usually abbreviations we use at work.

Very annoying sometimes!

Yeah...that ticked me off on the I-pad. Changing words that I'd typed in English into completely different words in Dutch....

I just can't wait for the droid computer to come out