3 ms·

I recently opened an old laptop with Windows 95, and had the same realization there with Word.

by punnerud 2y ago

hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
I disagree. Office 2000 was *substantially* better than the more recent revenue-optimised versions
- autoexec 2y ago
  I've never cared for office, but it does feel like office 2000 was a high point. Pretty much any version pre-ribbon is a win though.
mrweasel 2y ago
Back in the day, when I was first trying to use Linux as a desktop, we had all these concerns about "Will I be able to do this or that" and "On Windows I got all these features that's not in the word processors on Linux". We never used any of them though. Turns out Abiword was all we ever needed, ever StarOffice was to much. I get that the required feature set isn't the same for everyone, but I bet that the majority of people and businesses would have had no issues with development of Word or Excel stopping around the 2000s, if stability increased. There is going to be edge cases where a modern Photoshop or Excel will save you hours or days and allow previously impossible workflows, but I doubt that's the majority.
- opan 2y ago
  This is a good point. People get hung up on feature parity and niche features that they often don't even use. I guess they'd be more comfortable if there were zero downsides to switching to something else, but it's rarely so simple. Some people also just think they need photoshop to edit images at all, they've convinced themselves all the expensive pro tools are the only thing worth using. We've got people roleplaying as graphic designers, music producers, and movie-makers all at the same time when they don't need much of any of that. I guess it's a convenient excuse to not switch to free software or GNU/Linux and not learn new things. Doesn't apply to everyone, of course. Personally I use LibreOffice maybe once or twice a year at most. I don't even see a big need for office suites in general. I deal in a lot of plaintext, which I suspect would be fine for many, but they're used to jotting down notes in MS Word and don't wanna change. I also almost never user GIMP or Krita. The biggest usage I used to have for an image editor was cropping screenshots, but now we have screenshot tools that can just select a smaller area to begin with, so I rarely need to do any editing. I'm also used tricks like making a very small floating terminal to place as a black bar censor over things at times.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    The chief problem LibreOffice, et al. have is they aren't Microsoft Office. You have to keep in mind that the main users of Microsoft Office are businesses, both big and small. Not being able to receive or create and send documents perfectly with other businesses can cost A Lot Of Money(tm) if not loss of face and thus trust and thus business. The multitude of features frankly isn't important, the one feature every business wants is Microsoft Office in Microsoft Office. Common folks just needing a simple word processor or spreadsheet editor for home or school can't relate because they can't even tell what is incompatible, let alone lose money and business over it.
- happymellon 2y ago
  My only issue has only ever been formatting from a DOC or DOCX, and having LibreOffice tell me that the page was actually some horrific table that Word had been hiding behind the scenes and that you can't possibly have margins on a table that small. Words a trainwreck, but it is mostly a consistent trainwreck when displaying an already created document. [Edit] You can see it in Word as soon as you try to change something and the whole document reflows in ways you wouldn't expect. Obnoxious.
  - philistine 2y ago
    With the misery of Word being so dominant, I feel like most people are completely unaware that a WYSISYG document editor could be different. Hell, LibreOffice recreates the same terrible decisions as Word. I stay as far away from Word as possible. PDFs and Pages for Mac make my workflow predictable.

I recently opened an old laptop with Windows 95, and had the same realization there with Word.

hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago

I disagree. Office 2000 was *substantially* better than the more recent revenue-optimised versions

autoexec 2y ago
I've never cared for office, but it does feel like office 2000 was a high point. Pretty much any version pre-ribbon is a win though.

mrweasel 2y ago

Back in the day, when I was first trying to use Linux as a desktop, we had all these concerns about "Will I be able to do this or that" and "On Windows I got all these features that's not in the word processors on Linux". We never used any of them though. Turns out Abiword was all we ever needed, ever StarOffice was to much. I get that the required feature set isn't the same for everyone, but I bet that the majority of people and businesses would have had no issues with development of Word or Excel stopping around the 2000s, if stability increased. There is going to be edge cases where a modern Photoshop or Excel will save you hours or days and allow previously impossible workflows, but I doubt that's the majority.

opan 2y ago
This is a good point. People get hung up on feature parity and niche features that they often don't even use. I guess they'd be more comfortable if there were zero downsides to switching to something else, but it's rarely so simple. Some people also just think they need photoshop to edit images at all, they've convinced themselves all the expensive pro tools are the only thing worth using. We've got people roleplaying as graphic designers, music producers, and movie-makers all at the same time when they don't need much of any of that. I guess it's a convenient excuse to not switch to free software or GNU/Linux and not learn new things. Doesn't apply to everyone, of course. Personally I use LibreOffice maybe once or twice a year at most. I don't even see a big need for office suites in general. I deal in a lot of plaintext, which I suspect would be fine for many, but they're used to jotting down notes in MS Word and don't wanna change. I also almost never user GIMP or Krita. The biggest usage I used to have for an image editor was cropping screenshots, but now we have screenshot tools that can just select a smaller area to begin with, so I rarely need to do any editing. I'm also used tricks like making a very small floating terminal to place as a black bar censor over things at times.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  The chief problem LibreOffice, et al. have is they aren't Microsoft Office. You have to keep in mind that the main users of Microsoft Office are businesses, both big and small. Not being able to receive or create and send documents perfectly with other businesses can cost A Lot Of Money(tm) if not loss of face and thus trust and thus business. The multitude of features frankly isn't important, the one feature every business wants is Microsoft Office in Microsoft Office. Common folks just needing a simple word processor or spreadsheet editor for home or school can't relate because they can't even tell what is incompatible, let alone lose money and business over it.
happymellon 2y ago
My only issue has only ever been formatting from a DOC or DOCX, and having LibreOffice tell me that the page was actually some horrific table that Word had been hiding behind the scenes and that you can't possibly have margins on a table that small. Words a trainwreck, but it is mostly a consistent trainwreck when displaying an already created document. [Edit] You can see it in Word as soon as you try to change something and the whole document reflows in ways you wouldn't expect. Obnoxious.
- philistine 2y ago
  With the misery of Word being so dominant, I feel like most people are completely unaware that a WYSISYG document editor could be different. Hell, LibreOffice recreates the same terrible decisions as Word. I stay as far away from Word as possible. PDFs and Pages for Mac make my workflow predictable.