junk it and return to Office 2000

[Dan Cutrer, Dallas]

I have wasted a couple weeks trying to get Office 2003 to work. There is no
converter from WordPerfect 5.x in this version. Outlook is a complete
abortion, it never works. I found a slew of posts from others who have had
the same problem with Outlook. Microsoft charges $39.95 to tell a human how
lousy its product is.

Could be worse. I paid almost $600 for Office 2003 Pro when it was first
released, finally got around to trying to install it. I've switched back to
Office 2000, which is reliable and actually works.

Not that anybody in Redmond will actually read this and give a damn.
They've already got my money.



----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...6428dd00f214&dg=microsoft.public.office.setup

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

If you wanted Microsoft to read your comments, this really isn't the right
place.

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

If you wanted Microsoft to read your comments, this really isn't the right
place.

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

If you wanted Microsoft to read your comments, this really isn't the right
place.

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

If you wanted Microsoft to read your comments, this really isn't the right
place.

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

If you wanted Microsoft to read your comments, this really isn't the right
place.

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

If you wanted Microsoft to read your comments, this really isn't the right
place.

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

If you wanted Microsoft to read your comments, this really isn't the right
place.

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

If you wanted Microsoft to read your comments, this really isn't the right
place.

 

[Amnon Feiner]

I have wasted a couple weeks trying to get Office 2003 to work.

OpenOffice.org, free stable and reliable.Did I say free?

 

[Amnon Feiner]

I have wasted a couple weeks trying to get Office 2003 to work.

OpenOffice.org, free stable and reliable.Did I say free?

 

[Amnon Feiner]

I have wasted a couple weeks trying to get Office 2003 to work.

OpenOffice.org, free stable and reliable.Did I say free?

 

[Amnon Feiner]

I have wasted a couple weeks trying to get Office 2003 to work.

OpenOffice.org, free stable and reliable.Did I say free?

 

[Amnon Feiner]

I have wasted a couple weeks trying to get Office 2003 to work.

OpenOffice.org, free stable and reliable.Did I say free?

 

[Amnon Feiner]

I have wasted a couple weeks trying to get Office 2003 to work.

OpenOffice.org, free stable and reliable.Did I say free?

 

[Amnon Feiner]

I have wasted a couple weeks trying to get Office 2003 to work.

OpenOffice.org, free stable and reliable.Did I say free?

 

[Amnon Feiner]

I have wasted a couple weeks trying to get Office 2003 to work.

OpenOffice.org, free stable and reliable.Did I say free?

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Dan,

I don't know what difficulties you had, but we run Office 2003 on a big
network and we've had close to zero problems, but that was after reading
all the readme files and resource kit documentation, and doing careful
custom Administrative installations. Unfortunately, Microsoft don't
allow Admin installs (post-Office 2K) unless you have a corporate version.

The problem right now, is that Microsoft's products are getting bloated
and less stable and the dependency tree (and the way it interacts with
Microsoft's own o/s) is flawed. They make the same mistake they made
with IE - they don't know where an app ends and the o/s begins. In this
context I agree that Office 2000 was better designed.

The way we made our Office 2003 stable, was to turn off as many
hand-holding features as possible, prepare JET to be in sandbox mode,
and eliminate as many dependencies as possible.

It's the same problem with Windows "Vista" everything you touch causes
some kind of pop-up annoyance, and requires some kind of user action.
It's like the Office Assistant gone mad. The security model is also
flawed, they thing having annoying pop-ups means it's "secure", but
everyone knows the user will just click what ever they need to make
their app start working.

Our users prefer Office 2000 because they just want the apps to
instantly appear and be unobtrusive, but we (the IT bosses) force them
to have Office 2003; go figure...

 

[Gerry Hickman]

OpenOffice.org, free stable and reliable.Did I say free?

And soon to have better memory management.

Is it more stable? Well it certainly should be; if you look at the inner
workings of Office 2003 and it's dependency tree and then look at
OpenOffice you can see the OpenOffice guys are planning and implementing
for the future, not just the next dumb press release (like we get with
Office 2007).

It won't appeal to everyone (nor should it), but the way I see it is
that Open Source and Open Standards are the future and right now,
Microsoft doesn't have anything to offer in that arena.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

OpenOffice.org, free stable and reliable.Did I say free?

And soon to have better memory management.

Is it more stable? Well it certainly should be; if you look at the inner
workings of Office 2003 and it's dependency tree and then look at
OpenOffice you can see the OpenOffice guys are planning and implementing
for the future, not just the next dumb press release (like we get with
Office 2007).

It won't appeal to everyone (nor should it), but the way I see it is
that Open Source and Open Standards are the future and right now,
Microsoft doesn't have anything to offer in that arena.