Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Whoa, this gal hates MS Office 2010 -- 5 Reasons Why You Don't Need It

(1/10) > >>

zridling:
Julie Sartain of PC World gives us Five Reasons You Don't Need Microsoft Office 2010, and she doesn't hold back:

(1) No more upgrades. If you are looking for an upgrade price, forget it. Microsoft has decided not to offer upgrade pricing anymore.
Next to Windows Millennium, Vista, the Office 2007 Ribbon, and the Kin bombshell, this is the worst marketing decision Microsoft has ever made.

(2) Free Alternative Programs. OpenOffice, et al.
Other alternative programs include IBM's Lotus Symphony, Google Docs, and Zoho--all free--and ThinkFree, which has both a free and a fee-based version.

(3) Few New Features, Nothing Impressive. You can save Word docs to SharePoint--or just copy and paste them in. Other new features include paste preview, so you can preview the page before you paste items into your document--or you could just go ahead and paste the items in, then select undo if you don't like how it looks.
There are a few other minor features. However, I still don't think these are anything to get excited about, and they're certainly not worth the new ‘non-upgradable' price tag.

(4) The Ribbon Changed, but It's Still a Bomb. The only real change worth mentioning on the Ribbon bar is its capability to customize the menus.
I hated it in Office 2007 and I still hate it. After using it for weeks and cursing it daily, I finally purchased a program from AddIn Tools that, when installed, redesigns the Ribbon bar menus back to the old Office 2003 menus.

(5) Simultaneous Editing. [This] is nothing more than a shared document feature.
This not a cool function. It actually creates a lot more confusion than it's worth, especially if you have ever used Adobe Acrobat to perform these same tasks. Every time I have ever used sharing and collaboration in Acrobat, it has resulted in chaos with one user changing what another just wrote or edited causing conflict between all participants because the original is no longer available unless someone had the foresight to make a backup copy.

_________________________________
I was with her until she suggested Corel's WordPerfect. Really?!

tomos:

Wow, that's really pushing things - no upgrade price!!
I'd still go for Softmaker Office myself @ $80 with a helpful forum (if a little defensive at times) - but I'm not an advanced user so cant really compare it with Word etc.

Perry Mowbray:
I was advising a friend with a new laptop the other day about the benefits of Free / Cheaper MS alternatives... most people do not use or need the power in the Office Applications - ever. It's just that they use "Excel" for "spreadsheet" and "Word" for "word processor" etc... Somewhat like we say "Google" for "web search".

But what happened was that the hardware vendor gave her a student license, which effectively means that she'll not investigate other alternatives. Which is a shame.

Ampa:
I have to say that I like the ribbon! It is one of the reasons why I find it hard to switch to a free (or paid) alternative. A return to all those fiddly little buttons and endless menus seems like a backward step.

Josh:
I am with Ampa. I use the ribbon, and have since day one. Instead of forcing myself to use something old, I find myself pushing to new technologies and concepts and am often happy with the results. This has been the case with the ribbon. It helps me learn shortcuts to make myself more productive. I have learned many more shortcuts, exposed new features I never knew were there, and overall be far more useful when it comes to operating MS Office.

I have never once purchased a full-priced copy of Office and I probably never will. Many home users do not need to purchase it as it will either come pre-loaded on a system with a version that is good enough for them, or they will get it from work or their educational institution. My two copies of office 2010 ran me a total of 80 bucks (Professional edition).

Also like Ampa, I find myself unable to switch to other competitors products because they feel old, clunky and nowhere near as polished. The menu driven system, or desire to use it I should say, is gone for me. The ribbon, with it's auto-hide feature, is the wave of the future and I try and show everyone I meet just how useful it can be once you figure out what it can do.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page