Upgrades For No Good Reason -- Or The Wrong Reasons

[dr_phil_physics]

Dear LiveJournal,

Release 88, in a word, sucks. And you're hearing about it. The Release 88 post has over 8000 comments (120+ pages), and very few of them are saying "Good job!" And there are nearly a thousand comments in the Release 88, Paid time extension post.

Usability has been lost, some of the new "features" are distracting or even migraine inducing (!) and the readability of comments has been significantly degraded. Release 88 needs to be rolled back and Never Spoken Of Again.

I've never posted a comment in the LJ release postings before tonight. Or put in a complaint ticket. Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

And in case you're wondering, yes I have a paid Permanent Account. And Paid time extensions to compensate for service problems don't do me a bit of good.

But It's Not Just LJ

Google Gmail desperately wants me to switch to the New Look -- I've been getting a little box suggesting I Switch To The New Look before they even told me what the New Look was. And when they've gone ahead and switched me, I've so far been able to Temporarily Revert To Old Look. The fact that you even have such a feature suggests that you know there are problems.

Changing buttons from DELETE to icons -- shouldn't that be my choice?

And in case you're wondering, yes I'd probably pay for Gmail service at this point, if they offered me control.

For Free, Expect Less

The latest versions of ZoneAlarm seem to have gotten rid of the little meter that showed when data was inbound/outbound over the net. This was very useful for diagnosing problems and attacks.

And in case you're wondering, yes I use the Free version, because the paid versions offer duplication of services I already have or things that I do not want.

Even The Innocuous Can Be Bad

Facebook is soon supposed to be rolling out Timeline. Being able to read through all most posts and actually find things and links that I made? What's not to love? Except I read today that it may be that ads will be inserted in between your comments, rather than on the sides.

That strikes me as tacky and distracting, but worse, it makes it look like I'm endorsing whatever ads happen to be showing up. And I object to that. Somehow that doesn't seem to be social interacting.

I Don't Want To, But...

Because of the Release 88 debacle, Dreamwidth is apparently offering new accounts without invite codes. I really don't want to have to mess with crossposting or multiple semi-incompatible blogging systems -- just as I don't want to waste the time to roll my own or switch to WordPress -- but when I glanced over there I remembered why I hadn't done Dreamwidth in the past. Trying to figure out which paid points system would convert over my current LJ blog. Sigh.

Inheriting Windows 7

I brought home Wendy's laptop and desktop, which are both Windows 7 machines. Office 2010, or whatever it is, is incompatible with my files from Office 95 Professional. And to install Office 95 Professional, I have to create the Windows XP Penalty Box, either using Microsoft or other tools. And Windows 8 won't even have that option, as I understand.

Folks, it's 2011 and almost 2012. I shouldn't have to keep converting my file formats every couple of years and I surely shouldn't have to upgrade my word processor to add non-useful functions at the whim of MS or anyone else.

Upgrades Can Be A Force For Good

There are times when versions have to change, especially when the technology is young. Windows 1.04 anyone? (evil grin) But after a while, you get to a point where you can use something... for years. Change for change's sake. Arrogant upgrades to support someone else's contrary design ethic doesn't fall in the category of good customer relations.

What all these people seem to forget is that I use my computers. Me. I do not buy computers solely so that Anti-Virus can take over my machine at will to update. Or to switch from software which works to software which is either buggy or looks bad on the screen.

Software and service providers need to start consider that they have to be nice to me. Or I'll take my ball and go home.

Dr. Phil

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Re Office 2010...

Microsoft actually DID have a good reason for the changes they made. Starting with Office 2007, they rebuilt the office suite from the ground up, using xml. That is why older versions of Office cannot read docx files--because it's as if it was a completely different program.

As someone who uses and supports Office on a daily basis, the changes made starting in 2007 that were completed in 2010 were badly needed and long overdue. Office 2010 is actually more efficient, far less buggy, and once you get used to the changes, a whole hell of a lot easier to use than any previous version. Mail merge is probably the best example of this. In earlier versions I would avoid doing a mail merge at all costs. In 2010, it's easy and more importantly it *works*.

Every time I do a training class for Office 2010, I'll point out some feature and someone will go, "Oh! That's great! I'm so glad they added that!" to which I inevitably reply, "actually, that feature has been around since at least Office 2000, it was just buried in so many sub menus, no one knew it was there."

The rebuild and redesign of 2010 was long overdue, and created a product that for new users is actually intuitive. And to be blunt, once most users get used to the new layout, the do come to prefer it. But it does take some getting used to.

And as much as I despised Windows Vista, once I started using Windows 7, I hate going back to Windows XP.

Microsoft's problem is exemplified in Office 2007 and Windows Vista--they'd have been better off sitting on their hands and putting out a fully functional project later than releasing 2007 and Vista which were an intermediary worse than the suite/OS on either side.

IIRC, Wendy used my documentation to get up to speed on Windows 7 and Office 2010. It has a quick reference for finding where commands have used, which makes getting up to speed a whole lot easier. Let me know if you want me to point you in that direction.

Random Michelle K

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Nope, sorry. Not buying it. Because there were features which worked in Office 95 that got broken in Office 97. So some of the features that now work in 2010 are Oh you finally sort of fixed it. Good for you. Back to 1995.

And who asked them to use xml? Seriously.

Remember, my usage is for writing. I'm not doing mail merge. I'm not trying to pretend that Word is Publisher.

Wordpad/Write used to use Word 6.0/95 .doc format. Now it uses RTF.

Vista never happened. Office 2007 didn't happen. (I use 2003 w/ 2007 extensions for compatibility.) (grin)

Dr. Phil

[(Anonymous)]

I used Word Perfect up until Office 2000, so I can't speak to versions earlier than that. :P

Word needed rebuilt from the ground up. There was so much legacy code it was buggy and unstable, and xml was a good choice.

(rtf is actually a better choice for word pad, since it can be opened by any word processing program, anywhere. That resolves the issue of sending a document to someone on an older computer, different OS, etc.)

As far as the issues of "writing" versus "working" with Word, every Win 7 laptop (including two netbooks) we've bought has come with Office 2010 starter, which is a free "stripped down" version of Word, which is precisely what you'd need if you wanted to write and nothing else. But it gives you the ability to read and write Word documents, which is what most schools and businesses use/require.

Office 2010 Professional isn't for the casual user, you're right--it's for business. Which is why I like that Office 2010 Starter is available on new laptops. No time limit, and it's cross compatible with Office professional, so you don't have all the issues that were inherent with Microsoft "Works" (Talk about a contradiction in terms.)

And, if you don't have a new computer with Win 7, the Windows Live website allows you to create and edit files using the free sky drive.

The problem with the above is, of course, that it increases MS' monopoly on word processing software. But if they keep Starter and Sky Drive free and available to all users, I don't really have a problem with them dominating the market as much as I used to, because they are at least recognizing the fact that--as you said--most users don't need the full office suite and all the bells and whistles. So if they're going to make a basic version of office with word processing and spreadsheets available for free, I'm good with that.

But if you do--those bells and whistles are really really nice, and a huge improvement over anything that's gone before. (Multi-user editing of files is probably the biggest thing that's pushed most of my users to Office 2010. Well, that and the stability.)

And of course there's always Open Office, which is also built on xml (IIRC) and has the advantage of being free and open source.

The point of all this is that you're right, the casual user doesn't need all the bells and whistles. But it seems to me that MS finally recognized this and is making software freely available to users who don't want/need the bells and whistles. It seems to me that in and of itself is a vast improvement.

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

If you want to Save As to an RTF file, that's fine. I do it all the time. But unless you want to default to show All Files, opening an RTF file in Word is a two-step process, and if Wordpad/Write can't open a .DOC file, even with limited formatting, I need to fire up Word to either open the .DOC or make an RTF copy -- and if there are both .DOC and .RTF copies, things get out of synch.

Don't know about anyone else, but switching between writing files in Word and note files or quick lookups in Write is handy.

I've installed Open Office twice and both times deleted it. The first time it was too buggy, the second time, well... I've created a fleet of customized icons in Word 95, nearly all of which work in Word 97, and some work in Word 2003. One of my complaints about upgrading, is that why do _I_ have to change my workflow, when what I have works? It's the changes in OSes which drives some of the forced changes.

Is supporting old legacy code a pain in the butt? You bet. But that's what we pay MS the bucks for. To be grown up, suck it up and do the hard coding. Hell, I'm still using Norton Utilities 4.5 & Advanced Edition for DOS from 1987 in the MS-DOS command prompt in Win XP. I've found no good substitute for those functions. I make extensive use of DOS batch files, scripts to you modern kids, but haven't checked to see what works in Win 7 yet.

Am I a minority? You bet. But fail to support my legacy uses and you lose some of the reasons I still use Windows.

Turning back to the original post, LiveJournal's Release 88 has generated 20,000 user complaints, nearly all of which say Roll It Back. Software Fail is, well, Fail.

Dr. Phil