Only because Microsoft pushed it into companies and it have become a standard. Lotus used to be a good little office package in it's day and my sister-in-law still prefer word perfect to MS word.
i don't like the new versions of MS office with the silly ribbon menu system, i now use Libre office, does what I want and I bet it will do what most people want and for free/.
Libre is fine but there are still compatibility issues so for home use Libre fits the needs of most but if your a student or professional you really do need Office for peace of mind.
I've got Office 2010 but now I've retired and don't really have to worry about compatibility I doubt I'll upgrade again, no point. I've legit copies of Office 2000, 2003 and 2007.
As said, if your a home user knocking out a few letters or household spreadsheet etc there is no need for Office.
I've never understood all the hate for the ribbons, I actually like them and think they're a step forward. To quote an almost infamous digispier - "Some people just need to read who moved my cheese"
Libre is fine but there are still compatibility issues so for home use Libre fits the needs of most but if your a student or professional you really do need Office for peace of mind.
Compatibility with what? oh yes, MS office. It was far better when we had different office suites out there, MS must love being the only one out there,
monopoly for the Os and for office suites.
i did have one problem a couple of days back, I saved a word file from MS office in Doc format, got it home, tried to open it up in Libre and only part of the document was there. I had to phone my mate up to save it in docx format, send if via email, Libre office opened it up them.
Thankfully, publisher is still hated in the publishing circles. We done a flyer, well some one done a flyer for a event using publisher, went to get it printed and eventually found one who would take .Pub files. It is getting better, there are more that will take .Pub files, but they don't like them.
We now use Quark, which is a bit of a learning curve, but oh so much better.
I've got Office 2010 but now I've retired and don't really have to worry about compatibility I doubt I'll upgrade again, no point. I've legit copies of Office 2000, 2003 and 2007.
I got a legit version of 2000, but it don't like windows 7, it will work, but some things not as they should be. I used a trial of 2010, but I would not buy it.
At work we still use 2003.
As said, if your a home user knocking out a few letters or household spreadsheet etc there is no need for Office.
Libre is not perfect, but it does do the job for home users. i think some people want office because they think that is the only one available.
I've never understood all the hate for the ribbons, I actually like them and think they're a step forward. To quote an almost infamous digispier - "Some people just need to read who moved my cheese"
just change for no reason to be honest, the menu systems works fine. Maybe if it was the only thing we knew about we may get used to it, but now we got software with two different systems, unless every bit of software goes to the ribbon system and that is not happening.
just change for no reason to be honest, the menu systems works fine. Maybe if it was the only thing we knew about we may get used to it, but now we got software with two different systems, unless every bit of software goes to the ribbon system and that is not happening.
I disagree with it being change for changes sake. All MS products send usage data back to MS, if you opt in, and that combined with information from support calls identified usability issues with the menu system where people couldn't find features and would spend time looking through them. So the ribbon were born. There is a series of great blog posts about "how we got here" if you Google.
It seriously isn't like some guy went, "wouldn't it be awesome if we x". Everything is measured and deliberately done with data
I disagree with it being change for changes sake. All MS products send usage data back to MS, if you opt in, and that combined with information from support calls identified usability issues with the menu system where people couldn't find features and would spend time looking through them. So the ribbon were born. There is a series of great blog posts about "how we got here" if you Google.
It seriously isn't like some guy went, "wouldn't it be awesome if we x". Everything is measured and deliberately done with data
Although MS have gone telemetry crazy thesedays, there is some good underlying data and hence reasons for the move to the ribbon. Office 2010 is excellent and we moved all of our group over last year after selectively trialling it for a period of time. The view is overwhelmingly positive and we use Word, Excel, and Outlook extensively.
Compatibility with what? oh yes, MS office. It was far better when we had different office suites out there, MS must love being the only one out there,
monopoly for the Os and for office suites.
i did have one problem a couple of days back, I saved a word file from MS office in Doc format, got it home, tried to open it up in Libre and only part of the document was there. I had to phone my mate up to save it in docx format, send if via email, Libre office opened it up them.
Thankfully, publisher is still hated in the publishing circles. We done a flyer, well some one done a flyer for a event using publisher, went to get it printed and eventually found one who would take .Pub files. It is getting better, there are more that will take .Pub files, but they don't like them.
We now use Quark, which is a bit of a learning curve, but oh so much better.
I got a legit version of 2000, but it don't like windows 7, it will work, but some things not as they should be. I used a trial of 2010, but I would not buy it.
At work we still use 2003.
Libre is not perfect, but it does do the job for home users. i think some people want office because they think that is the only one available.
You can afford to use free software at home but if say your a university student you really want to use the same software at home as you do on your studies, students get Office cheap. The last thing you want is to type up a 10000 essay and find you loose formating etc when you import the file at uni.
I've used all sorts from Word Star to Wordperfect to Lotus to Office, overall and as a complete package Office wins, simple as that. You don't need it, your job does not demand homework and your not a student so stick to Libre.
Millions, literally millions of people use Office everyday and are happy with it, they can't all be wrong :rolleyes:
You can afford to use free software at home but if say your a university student you really want to use the same software at home as you do on your studies, students get Office cheap. The last thing you want is to type up a 10000 essay and find you loose formating etc when you import the file at uni.
Perhaps unis should save money by using open source then? I have to supply .doc, so cannot use docx.
Millions, literally millions of people use Office everyday and are happy with it, they can't all be wrong :rolleyes:
Well, they don't know any different and may not even be aware of the alternatives. Millions of people use IE...
Perhaps unis should save money by using open source then? I have to supply .doc, so cannot use docx.
Well, they don't know any different and may not even be aware of the alternatives. Millions of people use IE...
Have you checked your I.T. dept at uni, they often sell Office cheap, Office 2010 for £25 from my local university. University's use Office because its part of their role to prepare students for the real world, in the real world most people use Office.
Why should millions of people switch from a perfectly good product to open source lol, and yes, millions do use IE and seem happy enough.
I disagree with it being change for changes sake. All MS products send usage data back to MS, if you opt in, and that combined with information from support calls identified usability issues with the menu system where people couldn't find features and would spend time looking through them. So the ribbon were born. There is a series of great blog posts about "how we got here" if you Google.
It seriously isn't like some guy went, "wouldn't it be awesome if we x". Everything is measured and deliberately done with data
i think they do sometimes, they come up with some idea and they will do it because they know they can and people will still the software because they have no choice.
Menus are far better, certainly since options can be hidden that are not used. the ribbon seems to have gone back to sticking everything in view, even if they are not used.
i think they do sometimes, they come up with some idea and they will do it because they know they can and people will still the software because they have no choice.
Menus are far better, certainly since options can be hidden that are not used. the ribbon seems to have gone back to sticking everything in view, even if they are not used.
You can afford to use free software at home but if say your a university student you really want to use the same software at home as you do on your studies, students get Office cheap. The last thing you want is to type up a 10000 essay and find you loose formating etc when you import the file at uni.
Strange then that my nephew used star office for a while, which is more or less a older version of Libre for uni stuff at home and yet never had any problem losing formatting. Even with a spreadsheet. Changed to MS office because he could get it cheaper part way through uni, but it was not that cheap when he started uni
I've used all sorts from Word Star to Wordperfect to Lotus to Office, overall and as a complete package Office wins, simple as that. You don't need it, your job does not demand homework and your not a student so stick to Libre.
i used all of them as well, including final writer and at that time MS office was naff, it is only in the last few years that they started to bumped it up with crap that is not required.
Word is suppose to be a word processor and yet it is now getting close to desktop publishing and got more features than most people will use.
Millions, literally millions of people use Office everyday and are happy with it, they can't all be wrong :rolleyes:
You got no idea what so ever. Most of those millions of people use MS office in a office environment, so they have no choice and the only reason they use it is because MS have knocked out the competition. Other people just don't realise there are other options or they use Office because they think they need it or it could be snob value.
i have seen that myself, someone was shocked that I don't use MS office, because it the thing to use, even if they have no idea how to use most of the features.
i myself have no idea how to use a lot of word these days and in the ribbon system I get lost.
Strange then that my nephew used star office for a while, which is more or less a older version of Libre for uni stuff at home and yet never had any problem losing formatting. Even with a spreadsheet. Changed to MS office because he could get it cheaper part way through uni, but it was not that cheap when he started uni
i used all of them as well, including final writer and at that time MS office was naff, it is only in the last few years that they started to bumped it up with crap that is not required.
Word is suppose to be a word processor and yet it is now getting close to desktop publishing and got more features than most people will use.
You got no idea what so ever. Most of those millions of people use MS office in a office environment, so they have no choice and the only reason they use it is because MS have knocked out the competition. Other people just don't realise there are other options or they use Office because they think they need it or it could be snob value.
i have seen that myself, someone was shocked that I don't use MS office, because it the thing to use, even if they have no idea how to use most of the features.
i myself have no idea how to use a lot of word these days and in the ribbon system I get lost.
Expand on that comment please.
It could be your intimidated by the ability of Office? Lets be honest you could probably use notepad for you needs? Your not in higher education etc.
Only because Microsoft pushed it into companies and it have become a standard.
No, it was because at the time it first emerged it offered the best value for money and was (on the whole) better than the competition. Then when the competition got good enough it was too late.
Lotus used to be a good little office package in it's day and my sister-in-law still prefer word perfect to MS word.
In the DOS days, Lotus and WordPerfect were top dogs. When Excel came along it was far better than Lotus. Word wasn't far better than WordPerfect and people say at the time that WP was still better. But MS Office offered the better value for money. E.g.., the cost of Office was less than the cost of Lotus or WordPerfect DOS versions alone.
Today, of course, the world has moved on and we're used to low cost and free or open source, so Office seems expensive.
i don't like the new versions of MS office with the silly ribbon menu system, i now use Libre office, does what I want and I bet it will do what most people want and for free/.
No real benefit to the ribbon but I've gotten used to it now. Once I discover a button for a feature I just add it to the Quick Toolbar.
For the typical consumer there's no real need for Office except for familiarity. For the typical business there's a lot. Plus MS tie you in with all the integration with SharePoint, CRM and such like.
Yep and run the risk of google scanning your documents for words they can use to chuck adverts at you
Tbh, if I'm going to be served ads I'd rather they served ads that stood a chance of being relevant.
But, in any case, since I run an ad blocker I couldn't give a toss. Even without an ad blocker I don't have to click on the ads so again I don't give a toss.
Menus are far better, certainly since options can be hidden that are not used. the ribbon seems to have gone back to sticking everything in view, even if they are not used.
So, collapse the ribbon (I know you can't do this in all MS's ribbonised apps but you can in Office). Ditto with toolbars. Hide when not using.
Word is suppose to be a word processor and yet it is now getting close to desktop publishing and got more features than most people will use.
MS was asked about this some years ago in response to the oft-quoted claim that most people only use 5% or whatever of its features. MS's reply was : "yes but they don't all use the same 5%."
It's interesting that every so often in so-called "bloated" products a vendor tries to streamline and is met with irate customers complaining that such and such features have been removed.
Have you checked your I.T. dept at uni, they often sell Office cheap, Office 2010 for £25 from my local university. University's use Office because its part of their role to prepare students for the real world, in the real world most people use Office.
I don't need to purchase anything, I just need to save as .doc. Even if I have office 2010, I still need to save as .doc and check the formatting.
Hopefully university will educate people to use the tools appropriate to the task and not to follow the herd.
In my experience, people use less than 5% of the capabilities of an app. They could quite happily use Wordpad for their wordprocessing.
The main driver for office as I understand it is the integration with exchange. For small businesses though, it may not make economic sense.
I remember using Quattro Pro for windows. You could even print non-contiguous blocks (can you even do this in excel 2010?). It cost £29.50 inc vat when excel cost 200 or 300.
Why should millions of people switch from a perfectly good product to open source lol, and yes, millions do use IE and seem happy enough.
They use IE because they don't know any better even though other browsers were/are superior.
Sure they don't have to switch, but I would argue they are using so little of the functionality, that it is a waste of their money.
Comments
Far to easy an option for some;)
Work in hand, open up the document, save as, and with auto save enabled you don't get problems. I've never lost a Word document.
+1 for Libre Office.
I use it every day.
It will do fine for most people. No publishing software, but Scribble is free and that is not bad.
I've got Office 2010 but now I've retired and don't really have to worry about compatibility I doubt I'll upgrade again, no point. I've legit copies of Office 2000, 2003 and 2007.
As said, if your a home user knocking out a few letters or household spreadsheet etc there is no need for Office.
Compatibility with what? oh yes, MS office. It was far better when we had different office suites out there, MS must love being the only one out there,
monopoly for the Os and for office suites.
i did have one problem a couple of days back, I saved a word file from MS office in Doc format, got it home, tried to open it up in Libre and only part of the document was there. I had to phone my mate up to save it in docx format, send if via email, Libre office opened it up them.
Thankfully, publisher is still hated in the publishing circles. We done a flyer, well some one done a flyer for a event using publisher, went to get it printed and eventually found one who would take .Pub files. It is getting better, there are more that will take .Pub files, but they don't like them.
We now use Quark, which is a bit of a learning curve, but oh so much better.
I got a legit version of 2000, but it don't like windows 7, it will work, but some things not as they should be. I used a trial of 2010, but I would not buy it.
At work we still use 2003.
Libre is not perfect, but it does do the job for home users. i think some people want office because they think that is the only one available.
just change for no reason to be honest, the menu systems works fine. Maybe if it was the only thing we knew about we may get used to it, but now we got software with two different systems, unless every bit of software goes to the ribbon system and that is not happening.
I disagree with it being change for changes sake. All MS products send usage data back to MS, if you opt in, and that combined with information from support calls identified usability issues with the menu system where people couldn't find features and would spend time looking through them. So the ribbon were born. There is a series of great blog posts about "how we got here" if you Google.
It seriously isn't like some guy went, "wouldn't it be awesome if we x". Everything is measured and deliberately done with data
Although MS have gone telemetry crazy thesedays, there is some good underlying data and hence reasons for the move to the ribbon. Office 2010 is excellent and we moved all of our group over last year after selectively trialling it for a period of time. The view is overwhelmingly positive and we use Word, Excel, and Outlook extensively.
Dave
You can afford to use free software at home but if say your a university student you really want to use the same software at home as you do on your studies, students get Office cheap. The last thing you want is to type up a 10000 essay and find you loose formating etc when you import the file at uni.
I've used all sorts from Word Star to Wordperfect to Lotus to Office, overall and as a complete package Office wins, simple as that. You don't need it, your job does not demand homework and your not a student so stick to Libre.
Millions, literally millions of people use Office everyday and are happy with it, they can't all be wrong :rolleyes:
Just misguided.
I'm very aware of the alternatives and LibraOffice is a giant pile of wank compared with Office.
Have you checked your I.T. dept at uni, they often sell Office cheap, Office 2010 for £25 from my local university. University's use Office because its part of their role to prepare students for the real world, in the real world most people use Office.
Why should millions of people switch from a perfectly good product to open source lol, and yes, millions do use IE and seem happy enough.
i think they do sometimes, they come up with some idea and they will do it because they know they can and people will still the software because they have no choice.
Menus are far better, certainly since options can be hidden that are not used. the ribbon seems to have gone back to sticking everything in view, even if they are not used.
Have you got an example of what you mean here?
Dave
Strange then that my nephew used star office for a while, which is more or less a older version of Libre for uni stuff at home and yet never had any problem losing formatting. Even with a spreadsheet. Changed to MS office because he could get it cheaper part way through uni, but it was not that cheap when he started uni
i used all of them as well, including final writer and at that time MS office was naff, it is only in the last few years that they started to bumped it up with crap that is not required.
Word is suppose to be a word processor and yet it is now getting close to desktop publishing and got more features than most people will use.
You got no idea what so ever. Most of those millions of people use MS office in a office environment, so they have no choice and the only reason they use it is because MS have knocked out the competition. Other people just don't realise there are other options or they use Office because they think they need it or it could be snob value.
i have seen that myself, someone was shocked that I don't use MS office, because it the thing to use, even if they have no idea how to use most of the features.
i myself have no idea how to use a lot of word these days and in the ribbon system I get lost.
Expand on that comment please.
It could be your intimidated by the ability of Office? Lets be honest you could probably use notepad for you needs? Your not in higher education etc.
No, it was because at the time it first emerged it offered the best value for money and was (on the whole) better than the competition. Then when the competition got good enough it was too late.
In the DOS days, Lotus and WordPerfect were top dogs. When Excel came along it was far better than Lotus. Word wasn't far better than WordPerfect and people say at the time that WP was still better. But MS Office offered the better value for money. E.g.., the cost of Office was less than the cost of Lotus or WordPerfect DOS versions alone.
Today, of course, the world has moved on and we're used to low cost and free or open source, so Office seems expensive.
No real benefit to the ribbon but I've gotten used to it now. Once I discover a button for a feature I just add it to the Quick Toolbar.
For the typical consumer there's no real need for Office except for familiarity. For the typical business there's a lot. Plus MS tie you in with all the integration with SharePoint, CRM and such like.
Tbh, if I'm going to be served ads I'd rather they served ads that stood a chance of being relevant.
But, in any case, since I run an ad blocker I couldn't give a toss. Even without an ad blocker I don't have to click on the ads so again I don't give a toss.
So, collapse the ribbon (I know you can't do this in all MS's ribbonised apps but you can in Office). Ditto with toolbars. Hide when not using.
MS was asked about this some years ago in response to the oft-quoted claim that most people only use 5% or whatever of its features. MS's reply was : "yes but they don't all use the same 5%."
It's interesting that every so often in so-called "bloated" products a vendor tries to streamline and is met with irate customers complaining that such and such features have been removed.
Hopefully university will educate people to use the tools appropriate to the task and not to follow the herd.
In my experience, people use less than 5% of the capabilities of an app. They could quite happily use Wordpad for their wordprocessing.
The main driver for office as I understand it is the integration with exchange. For small businesses though, it may not make economic sense.
I remember using Quattro Pro for windows. You could even print non-contiguous blocks (can you even do this in excel 2010?). It cost £29.50 inc vat when excel cost 200 or 300.
They use IE because they don't know any better even though other browsers were/are superior.
Sure they don't have to switch, but I would argue they are using so little of the functionality, that it is a waste of their money.