Rant: Microsoft

[jim]

My wife wanted a cheap laptop, so she bought a Windows 8.1 machine. I'm not even going to get into what is going on (ok - I created a new local account after she couldn't install Office and it's sitting here changing colors from blue to red to green to turquous to blue saying "Getting your apps ready". She tried to install her copy of Office and it was getting stuck at about 75% through, and google searching I saw things about "clean boots" and turning off the print spooler and all sorts of other nonsense.

All [expletive] night trying to do the most basic things.

I [expletive] hate Microsoft with a god damned passion.

Almost ready it says.

Just trying to login.

If a Microsoft executive walked through my door now I would kill him. I really would.

edit - update. Finally logged in, tried installing Office but it crashed. Decided to reboot and it now says "Keep your PC on until this is done. Installing update 1 of 17 .."

Now you might say, well Microsoft has to install it's updates. Which I would say ok but that's obnoxious as hell because my Mac doesn't do this [expletive], but ok. It needs to install the updates.

MY WIFE JUST REBOOTED 30 MINUTES AGO AND IT INSTALLED 25 [expletive] UPDATES AND TOOK 30 MINUTES!.

God [expletive] damn it.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

This is classic behavior when you buy a new windows box. Put aside several hours to let it connect to the mother ship and upload all the current stuff.

[jim]

Well it stuck completely. 30 minutes and it didn't upload one of those 17. Got all of the previous 25. I shut the mother [expletive] down even though it said not to - [expletive] them they don't know [expletive] anyway. I disabled a bunch of [expletive] to do a "clean boot", a term I had not hear of until tonight. It now claims that it is "Repairing Microsoft Office", but I think that's bull [expletive]. I'll be shocked if it works, that [expletive] task bar is stuck in the same mother [expletive] god damn [expletive] mother [expletive] place it was stuck at the last mother [expletive] time I tried to install the mother [expletive] piece of [expletive]. But I'll bet if I give those [expletive] $100 or whatever for a subcription to this pile of bloated [expletive] it will work using that god damned mother [expletive] Office 3 [expletive] 65 or whatever the dumbass mother [expletive] name they have given it.

[jim]

Well it installed. Unbelievably. Then when is started it, it said "Enter your product key" which I did and it said "Sorry, this isn't a Microsoft Office 2013 product key."

Seriously [expletive] you. I know it's not, it's Office 2010. It's supposed to work.

edit - it worked. That was the Office 365 [expletive].

There is no way any normal person would have been able to get this to work. Piece of bloated god damned mother [expletive] bull [expletive]. Microsoft suck my god damn [expletive] dick mother [expletive].

[expletive].

[IMADreamer]

Windows 8 is [expletive] garbage. Half the time when I get an update it fails. This sets off a four hour long chain of events that is windows trying to repair the install. Finally it fails and says ok you can use your POS computer again.

While we are on the subject of Microsoft their Xbox live service has been [expletive] for about 6 months but particularly the last month. I swear I haven't been able to play with my friends more than I have.

[Jocephus]

microsoft is not a good nickname

[ghostrunner]

Windows 8 is [expletive] garbage. Half the time when I get an update it fails. This sets off a four hour long chain of events that is windows trying to repair the install. Finally it fails and says ok you can use your POS computer again.

While we are on the subject of Microsoft their Xbox live service has been [expletive] for about 6 months but particularly the last month. I swear I haven't been able to play with my friends more than I have.

Yeah, been spotty for me too. Not even counting the Lizard Squad hacks, which have really been a pain in the ass.

[Sutter'sBeard]

I hate a lot of Windows 8!. They try to make things easier for grandmas and they make everything annoying for everyone else. I hate the "charms bar" that automatically pops up on the right when I go to scroll. Seems like when I need it, it won't appear easy and every time I do not need it, it pops up. From what I've read, there is no way to disable without adding apps.

[jim]

I just hate Windows period. I really try not to be one of those OS zealots, but I grew up on Unix/Linux and I Just think I'm used to that mindset of simple is better, and you can always go to a command line prompt. Microsoft has gotten away with alot - it's amazing to me how the blame for viruses are on the "bad guys". It's the bad guys, it's the OS! And it's not the hardware that the thing is slow, it's the bloated OS! Windows is by far the worst OS in terms of "bit rot" - where the machine just slows up over time until it becomes unusable. I had a LInux box once that was 10 years old and it ran as fast the day I retired as it did the day I got it. Which was a helluva lot faster than a new Windows machine after 3 months of bit rot.

And I know there are security issues with all software, Linux/Unix/Mac included, but it pales in comparison to WIndows.

And the bloat. God bless it. Just look at the Office tools - there are so many god damned buttons and features to do who the hell knows what that maybe 1% of the people use. How about making something like sorting in Excel intuitive? I messed something up so bad once because I selected a column to sort on, sorted it, and didn't notice that it only sorted the column and left all of the other rows in place.

And these god damned updates. What the hell? I had a Windows machine at work (forced on me) for about 6 months. Every Tues. they would push the patches out, and when I would log out on Tues evening it would update. Once it was 45 minutes - and since you can't turn the computer off while these are happening because OH MY GOD YOU WILL RUIN YOUR COMPUTER FOREVER I had to babysit.

And don't even get me started with SharePoint. That's the crown jewel.

[Famous Mortimer]

We have Sharepoint at work and I just use it as little as possible, and always through Windows Explorer not IE. The entire business has converted and it's already crashed a bunch of times. But it's slightly cheaper than the alternative!

If it weren't for games (although Steam on Linux seems to keep improving) I'd never use Windows again. I got Peppermint Linux for the ancient laptop my sister gave me, and it runs a treat (like a small version of Linux Mint).