Discussion:Upgrade for Microsoft Office

Just a thought for the day, be careful of software upgrades you may get what you dont't want.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates

-- Larry Hess, CPA | Albuquerque, NM | Talk to me

And, since I'm venting: I've stopped going to the Abcnews website. They have added so many bells and whistles (including ads now) that it appears to be about everything but news.

Sometimes I feel like offering to pay them not to do anything for 5 years

If you mean MS, they really don't do anything for much longer. I believe WinXP was first copyrighted in 1991. -- Larry Hess, CPA | Albuquerque, NM | Talk to me

Action hit the nail on the head with the word "ego". It's a sort of presumption that they are going to guide me with their "kind" hand. Like the cash registers at McDonalds where you don't have to know anything but the number of the food item "I'll have a no 4", ok, press 4.

A lot of businesses are not so document intensive as I am, so maybe it works for them. Or, they are creating "cute" documents. I need good old standard documents. Essentially the same way I learned to type in highschool on a manual, very conservative formats. I certainly don't want my single spacing changed, or to have to create anything to be able to get it. Again, I'll knuckle under I guess, though I must not have downloaded that upgrade because I don't recall having that problem.

On the subject of XP, I thought it was dumbed down as a way of being "helpful". Imagine my terror at the arrival of Vista.

Not meaning to vent at you Larry. I am sure there are some (many) labor saving features I am not using. I do have some thick books around here, but I often find they bring on a good snooze.

Crow, I bet most people don't even use 50% of the features in most of their software. By the way, did they really have typewriters available when you were in high school?

Natalie, there's an option in Word to save changes to normal.dot or not. -- Larry Hess, CPA | Albuquerque, NM | Talk to me

BTW, like Crow, I learned to type in high school on a manual typewriter. I don't really remember in which grade. I'll have to ask the nurse.

My cell phone has more computing power than the entire world did prior to 1972. My laptop has more computing power than the entire world combined prior to 1983 -- and that includes the top secret government computers that we're not supposed to know about. A current model high-end video card -- not the entire desktop, just the video card -- can out perform any supercomputer from 2001 or earlier.

I don't need any more power. I don't need any more features. If I had a dream, it would be to go back to 1991's level of technology and use DOS-based Xywrite for my word processing. Quattro Pro coming to Windows in 1992 was the last time I was excited about new features in a spreadsheet.

Microsoft Vista is a bloated five-legged pig. XP forever, baby!

And while I'm being cranky, you damn kids better stay off of my lawn or I'll spray you with my hose.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208700150

Microsoft wants to pull the plug on XP but it better rethink that strategy.

Corp, I don't know if this is true anymore, but I heard it said once your desktop has more computing power than the Space Shuttle. That was as of I believe the late '90's.

By the way, how often do you upgrade your Microsoft software and how much do you spend?

Tom

No doubt, Tom. Given that the space shuttle was built in the mid-1970s and based on 1960s and early 1970s technology, I'm sure my computer has more power than the space shuttle.

The shuttle's primary flight computer runs at 1.2 million instructions per second (MIPS). If you bought a mid-grade desktop computer last year, you'd have about 18 MIPS at your disposal -- 15 times the power of the shuttle's computer. (If you buy an Intel Dual Core Extreme chip today, you'd have 60 MIPS to play solitaire -- 50 times the power of the space shuttle.)

The iPod an astronaut brings aboard the shuttle so he can jam-out to Winger has more power than the flight computer, a magnitude more memory and substantially more storage.

The newest shuttle, Endeavour, was first flown in 1992. Ain't no one here using a 16-year-old computer. I'd be surprised if someone here is driving a 16-year-old car.

Yet, there is a waiting list of people willing to pay to travel well in excess the speed of sound into a sub-zero-degree vacuum aboard a vehicle where one in every 64 trips leads to catastrophic failure and certain death.

No, thanks. Not me.

XP: It'll be around for a few more years. Microsoft wants it gone but makes more money from XP than Vista so they can't pull the plug. XP is still the operating system of choice for low-end desktops and, much more importantly, non-laptop mobile devices. (Vista will never run on your smart phone or PDA but XP will in a modified form.) In order to be able to sell a $300$400 computer, XP must exist. Vista won't run on that hardware. If XP was gone, Linux would start coming pre-installed so that hardware companies could sell barebone PCs. That scares Microsoft.

Software upgrades: I buy an operating system, office suite and other applications when I buy the computer. Except for Virus protection and specialized tax software, I don't upgrade. There simply isn't any reason. Apply the latest patches as provided by Microsoft and let it roll. The software will easily last the three to five years the computer lasts. I see no reason to upset the apple cart mid-cycle.

I'm not sure if I should admit my husband's car is 19 years old, and my computer just passed the five-year mark.

I was about to ask how many laps of the island it took to get in a hundred miles but then I looked at a map... Hawaii is a lot bigger than I remembered.

After several years of doing metrics, I did my first century last December. My father and I rode all the way across the state of Florida. Of course, we did it without the tailgater you had and on much lighter road bikes. I have all but comitted to doing the Memphis, TN FedEx "Rock-n-Roll" MS 150 in September.

I bought a new laptop this past Christmas, it came with Vista, but I had it removed and XP installed. We have a little personal lap top with Vista and my husband is alway cranking at it, so I didn't want it in the office and a lot of my software wouldn't work on it anyway, and I wouldn't have been able to link my computers if they were on two different operating systems. These software people are going to have to listen to us poor end users, we may very well end up to be non users instead.