Oh my god, Microsoft Word has apparently mutated in the last five years into some completely alien program that looks absolutely nothing like anything I have ever seen before. Who are you and what have you done with my word processor? Aargh! I mean, Word has always sucked, but at least it sucked in ways I understood. Mostly. I started using it when I was ten. I knew its tricks, its little ways... Well, I knew the ones I cared about, anyway, and I knew what I could ignore. Now... I don't even know what I'm looking at. And why does every computer application these days have to look like it was designed to appeal to toddlers? I do not need bright colors and cheerful little pictures! I am a serious adult! Why would I even be using a word processor if I didn't know how to read?
Oh, ye gods. It's finally happened, hasn't it? I've finally reached that age where I can't learn new computer stuff and don't like or understand How Things Are Done These Days. Book me in at the old folks home and throw away the key.
Then again, maybe it's just Microsoft.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm not using it. I only know that I'm starting to have trouble opening documents from people who are; the docx format is apparently not compatible -- at least not immediately or easily compatible -- with earlier versions of Word.
ReplyDeleteIt's not an age thing -- I just read a blog entry from a college freshman saying purdy much exactly what you did aboot Word's recent extreme mutation...
ReplyDeleteIt's just microsoft...
ReplyDeleteWord has always sucked
ReplyDeleteAmen, sister! 1) I can't abide Microsoft telling me what it thinks I meant -- or worse, changing the text I've typed. 2) I relate with words and typed commands better than squinting to see what that little picture looks like and then trying to remember what command it performs. 3) I had a serious conversation at work the other day about the programs we learned first and the fact that none of them are made any more.
Don't fret about feeling old. I do that enough for the two of us. Besides, my dad was a great example of someone who learned and understood and embraced technological changes, whereas for me "the trick is to bang the rocks together, guys".
Fred: I usually save things as .rtf files, anyway. I guess I need to start making sure I do that all the time. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteAndrew: Well, I guess I'm glad it's not just me. Although somehow I don't actually feel any better about it. :)
Geosomin: And there I thought I was doing good at avoiding Microsoft's "upgrades" because I was able to get a machine with XP pre-installed instead of Vista.
Captain C: 1) You can tell it to stop doing the annoying auto-formatting stuff. Hell, that's practically the first thing I did, so at least I wouldn't have to deal with that when I actually need to use it to write something. It wasn't that easy to find, but that was true in the old version, as well, really. 2) Very much the same here. Although apparently some people do do a lot better with pictures. I'm not sure if the differences are in the way our brains are wired -- I'm not a visual person -- or if it's that we started learning computers back in the DOS days and got used to communicating with them in words.
Truthfully, my preferred version of Word is 4.11.
ReplyDeleteIt was a lot less bloated back then.
ReplyDeleteActually, I seem to recall that it had more useful options and was much more user friendly. One thing I liked was that I could set it to UK English and it would stay on UK English for every document I produced. Now, I seem to have specify UK or Canadian English every time I have to use my spell check - it won't allow any other language as a permanent default. Very hostile to non-US residents.
ReplyDeleteReally? Sheesh. I'd say that I found it hard to believe you couldn't select a spelling scheme as a default, but I suppose it's actually not difficult to believe that of Microsoft...
ReplyDelete