Sunday, October 17, 2010

An Open Letter to Microsoft

Dear Microsoft,

In addition to being a writer, I'm also an editor. It's a side job that I dearly love and keeps me incredibly busy. As a result, I use your products all the time. I recently got a lovely new laptop. it came with Word 2010.

I'll admit, I was a little apprehensive. I don't really like change, and I'm particularly uncomfortable with technological change, but I have a massive amount of work to do, so I dove right in.

The first issue I had (besides not being able to find a damn thing and having simple functions turned into multi-step processes of doom) was suddenly being unable to highlight text with my track pad and right click button. I had to do it old school with the shift and arrow keys. It was time consuming and annoying, but I managed.

However, this morning's "glitch" pushed me over the edge. Yep. Microsoft, you made me cry. I woke up to work on the manuscript I'd spent 16 hours on yesterday, only to discover that 75 comments were missing. The line edits are still in there, but comments are gone, baby gone.

My husband has already spent several hours searching online and within the program trying to restore them, but no luck. This means I get to re-edit it. Again. I'd already lost stuff when I switched from 2007 to 2010. I'm enraged. I don't have time for this shit. I'm switching back to 2007 as soon as humanly possible. Oh yeah, 2010's Help Menu blows.

So, thanks Microsoft for making my job infinitely more complicated than necessary. Perhaps next time you release a product, you may want to consider testing it a might more thoroughly.

~BG

9 comments:

Chris said...

O noes! I didn't think that things could get worse than they were yesterday... *hug*

Mia Watts said...

Oh, honey. I'm so sorry. :(

Dear Microsoft, BG failed to mention that her husband is GURU OF ALL THINGS COMPUTER and if HE can't find a fix, then your product sucks hugely.

Nice job, Microswift. Nice job.

Bron, hugs. If it makes you feel any better, my computer crashed twice today already and appears prepared for a third round. Yay, Dell.

Brynn Paulin said...

I will definitely NOT be getting 2010 for my new computer next month. Some of the changes are just idiotic!

Stacey said...

Holy crow, sweetness!! Big hugs.

I can't imagine how frustrated you must feel. Freaking MS-geeks just can't leave well enough alone.

Margaret Yang said...

:::Hugs:::

I am so sorry that Word blows such big chunks.

I am still using Word2003. I will be a very sad lady when I eventually have to give that up.

Sonya Bateman said...

Dude, I'm still on Office 97 here. Anything higher than that frightens me...

I'm sorry. That SUCKS SO MUCH.

Boo, Microsoft. :-(

Genella deGrey said...

Ugh - I'm so sorry, Bron.
It never seems like the people who write the programs use them.
G.

kris norris said...

Hey Honey,

Sending you a huge hug... wish I could do more.

I didn't even change from 2004 to 2008 after my brother... who works for Apple so yah, he's a bit of a computer geek... had to uninstall all of the 2008 editions in the office because his co-workers were frustrated with the constant crashing of Word...

Maybe we can nuke microsoft frrom space... it's the only way to be sure...

Simone Anderson said...

((((hugs)))) I'm so sorry Bron. Microsoft blows chunks. Eradicating them sounds like a viable solution.