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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: BILL GATES.....MICROSOFT SUCKS!
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Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!
Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000
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posted 02-13-2006 01:21 PM
I'm in that group too Dave. I use MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access every day as either a student or a teacher, and not a week goes by that I don't learn yet another trick or shortcut or capability in using them. Never bothered to take any courses for them, just read a couple of "idiot" books and dove in and have been learning ever since. To me, the on-line/built-in help as presently implemented is worthless. I guess I'll never be a power user.
I think MS tries too hard to be everything to everybody, which results in cluttered and bloated applications that have dozens of ways to accomplish the same tasks. In some ways I wish we went back to forcing people to learn single specific ways to work with software instead of giving them so many options, most of which never get used anyway. Sure would make learning to use these tools easier. They'd probably be easier to write, document, and maintain too.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-13-2006 01:56 PM
I have little patience for MS Word or Excel. They're fine for writing regular letters and making ordinary spreadsheets. But they do suck much ass when it comes to attempting any real graphics work. I'm glad I have all my Adobe, Macromedia and Corel applications. That way I don't have to burn ulcers in my stomach trying to get something done within an MS app.
MS Publisher is a dog that needs to be put to sleep. It may allow users to get some creative work done. But Microsoft, still to this day, has not picked up the first clue that they need to make that shitty application export useable files that will import correctly into real, professional graphics applications. The .WMF files exported by publisher are purile shit.
Now Microsoft is trying to boast how they're developing apps that will kill Adobe Flash, Illustrator and Photoshop. Pardon me for laughing like a madman.
One of the keys to success in any graphics program is that it is able to play nice with other applications and other computing platforms. Vendors like Adobe, Corel, Quark and others have taken many steps to make sure their applications get along as well as possible with graphics mainstays like Photoshop and Illustrator as well as be able to produce Acrobat PDFs worth a damn. As long as Microsoft thinks they're going to manage to go it alone and not give a damned about standards that have 20+ years worth of development, they're going to get their asses kicked.
This MS graphics thing is a pet peeve of mine because I get to see a good number of customer supplied Publisher and Word files. Some will bring in PowerPoint files that are even more useless. The artwork almost always has to be rebuilt using scans of print outs or screen shots of the document.
For real vector-based graphics work, there are affordable alternatives.
Inkscape is a free, open source vector drawing program:
Inkscape Web Site
An Open Source version of Xara X is being developed:
Xara X
The commercial version of Xara Xtreme is just $79:
Xara Xtreme
Those applications aren't quite as well featured and developed as CorelDRAW X3 and IllustratorCS2, but they don't cost nearly as much either. You can design logos and other graphics work within those programs and then export art in formats like EPS that will actually open properly within professional level graphics programs.
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Barry Floyd
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1079
From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 02-13-2006 02:15 PM
We use Microsoft Publisher to make up all of our theatre newspaper advertisements, but must print them to an "Acrobat Distiller" in order to submit them to the newspapers. It seems every newspaper we submit to uses "Quark Express" (??), and it has no problem with importing the PDF files.
We use Excel on a daily basis at the theatre to generate the boxoffice reports, and keep a record of attendance, concessions sales, car counts, per caps, etc.. Sure there are POS systems like RTS, but I made up our own and it has worked out great for us.
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David Buckley
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 525
From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2004
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posted 02-13-2006 02:20 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
As long as Microsoft thinks they're going to manage to go it alone and not give a damned about standards that have 20+ years worth of development, they're going to get their asses kicked.
Microsoft have a history of releasing really useless V1, mediocre V2, and excellent V3s, and if they determine that they are going to kill Adobe, then given time, that is exactly what they will do. It may take time to get there, and they'll have to buy in some specialists, but its just time. Microsoft's have enormous determination and deep pockets.
As an example, goinbg back a few years, WordStar for Windows was so much better than Word (for DOS) and Word for Windows (before it got renamed word) but it still got trashed in the marketplace. There are many similar examples. The only real failure of Microsoft's I can recall was Access. Not Access the database product, but Access the terminal emulator, which they dumped as it was a market of diminishing size, and people were dumping terminal emulation altogether, rather than upgrading or transgrading to MS, leaving the market open (as it is today) to a few small specialist comapanies. And the name Access then got recycled.
I used to think that MS couldn't just walk into a marketplace and make it their won, but the evidence doesn't support that assertion.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-13-2006 04:27 PM
As for MS being able to dominate and distroy....think of where WordPerfect was in the 80s. Everyone on the PLANET who was using a PC used WordPerfect. It was THE office wordprocessor in schools and business offices. WordStar was in there, but to a much lesser extent. Back then, WordPerfect was to office wordprocessing what Word is today. Today Word is so ubiquitous that people send Word files with the expectation that everyone who is using a computer be able to open their Word file. That presumption can only become prevelant if MS has simply bulldozed the competition. Word is like Bandaid....it has become generic, at least in the PS world.
The beauty of WordPerfect was that ANYTHING the program could do, the manual could explain in detailed, understandable instructions. There wasn't a function that was not fully explained. And it was in a printed manual, not some HELP command that told you nothing, ala Word's HELP. To this day we have people in our office who still use WP to do all kinds of complicated forms, posters, brochures, etc. And I am talking about the last DOS version of WordPerfect, when it was still the original company, not the Windows version that turned into dog poo once Novell bought the company and once they ruined it, Corel kind of kept it going but it had already sucummed to slow death by Word. That DOS version of WP was that odd graphic WYSIWYG thing that looked like Windows but really was still DOS. The younger people on our staff never heard of WP. The older ones will soon have to move to Word because being a DOS program, it doesn't have drivers for newer printers.
WordPerfect was a perfectly good word processor and could do anything a small office operation needed, but Word came along and just killed it. I found WP to be much more logical and intuitive that Word ever was. Once you learned a WP function, either by just playing around with it or by reading the manual, it was like a light goes on and you never forget it because it is intuitive. Word on the other hand, I have figured out how to get something to work in Word but will hardly ever remember how to do it again later because it simply isn't intuitive. Stuff is burried under tab after subtab and in places where you say, why is it there in the first place.
And as for the MS Office suite. Let me ask you this about the so-called "integration" of the programs. Outlook is in that suite and people put all their addresses in the Outlook Contacts, but has anyone tried get an address from a Contact record so it can be put into a Word document? If there is a way to do it, I have yet to figure it out. You would think that would be the most elementary of integration functions, to be able to write a letter and then get the address information from the address book. I have asked the college Help Desk, the Library Computer Learning Center and everyone I know....to a person, no one so far has been able to do that simple task. And don't get me started on Word's infuriating habbit of doing stuff the way IT wants and not the way you want.
As for the CDroms or DVD units being placed in vertical desktops. Just last week I bought a CD and put it in a Dell desktop that is sitting on it's side, i.e., like a tower. Mind you, it is designed to sit either way -- horizontally like a desktop or vertically like a small tower. In goes the CD, it won't play....I eject it, and as the tray trys to extract the CD which evidently has unseated itself somewhere in its travel into the compartment, is now jamming the CD between the tray and the wall of the compartment. As the tray forces the CD out, it gouges big chunks of silver off the playing side of the disk. Talk about wanting to take a hatchet to this thing.....
If the CD or DVD player's tray doesn't have spring loaded clips to firmly hold the disk in place, it SHOULDN'T be used in a vertical position, even if the dumbass computer manufacture installs it that way.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-13-2006 06:18 PM
quote: Barry Floyd
We use Microsoft Publisher to make up all of our theatre newspaper advertisements, but must print them to an "Acrobat Distiller" in order to submit them to the newspapers. It seems every newspaper we submit to uses "Quark Express" (??), and it has no problem with importing the PDF files.
It should be noted ALL of the credit for that file interoperability goes to Adobe Acrobat and all the PDF creation hooks it applies into MS Office applications. Unfortunately, few users are going to pony up $200-$400 for full versions of Acrobat or Acrobat Pro.
Without Acrobat to help create workable PDF files, Publisher users are either locked into the native .PUB format or trying to export .WMF files. I haven't seen any professional graphics app able to adequately import such .WMF files (believe me, I try on a frequent basis).
quote: David Buckley
Microsoft have a history of releasing really useless V1, mediocre V2, and excellent V3s, and if they determine that they are going to kill Adobe, then given time, that is exactly what they will do.
Microsoft would literally have to buy Apple Computer to make that happen in the graphics arena. Graphics people are fiercely loyal to applications that have worked great for them over the years. For instance, you can get my collection of Adobe Photoshop CDs only when you can pry them from my cold, dead fingers.
Microsoft's "sparkle" and "expression" efforts are Windows Vista-only things, whereas Adobe PDF and Flash (as well as their entire CS2 graphics suite) are platform agnostic. Adobe has a giant advantage there. Both PDF and Flash are mature technologies with more than a decade head start over Microsoft.
Microsoft also gained its lead in office applications via bundling with new Windows PCs and playing lots of dirty pool against smaller companies they could push around. Microsoft can't really pursue the same tactic in the graphics area, especially when so many graphics people still insist on using Macs. Adobe is the 2nd biggest software company behind Microsoft. They're not exactly small.
Overall, I don't think previous Microsoft victories in bulldozing office productivity app competitors is any indication MS can do the same in graphics. They have little expertise in that area. MS had tried many times over the years to get a foothold in selling creative programs and got nowhere. For example, they bought the Softimage company after Jurassic Park was released. They got nowhere with it. Now Avid owns Softimage.
quote: Daryl C. W. O'Shea
I don't think there's a newspaper on the planet not using Quark. If you can, and Publisher bothers you at all, spring for Quark.
Actually lots of newspapers and magazines have been shifting their workflows over to Adobe InDesign lately. The pace has ramped up since InDesign hit version 4.0/CS2. Adobe's PageMaker replacement is superior to Quark in many regards. Adobe Illustrator and InDesign are still the only graphics applications on the market that fully support all the specifications of OpenType.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-14-2006 02:18 PM
Photoshop's PDF creation capability is pretty limited compared to Acrobat Professional, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. And that's due to the mainly raster/bitmap-only capability of the program. Photoshop is great for editing photos and other kinds of bitmap artwork. However, it has very limited capabilities for producing vector-based artwork. That limitation makes Photoshop inappropriate for the most part to use in creating logos and other graphics work.
As to the sequential numbering ability, Photoshop doesn't have that either. Dedicated page layout programs like Adobe InDesign and Quark Xpress have some sequential numbering capability, but most of that is tied to page numbering metaphors. It takes true, dedicated variable data software plug-ins or standalone software to do large numbers of sequential numbered tickets, postcards or other items with unique numbering.
quote: Barry Floyd
At my day job, we use PDF995 to create PDF files. It was a downloadable thing we found on the net, and for $19.95, you can get the version that doesn't have the on-screen ads.
CutePDF is a decent, free PDF writer (free for personal, non-commercial use that is). It does require the installation of the open source Ghostscript 8.15 application. One cool feature about CutePDF is it now supports 64-bit operation.
There are a number of other free/cheap PDF creation utilities available online. However, most lack the content security features of the Adobe-branded Acrobat. They also don't support a lot of the additional features Adobe has added, such as interactive layers (viewers can enter data into form fields to add comments or fill out forms) or even true 3D document display.
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Bill Gates and Paul Allen are evidently big supporters of seeing movies presented correctly in theatres, with the Internet being a profitable release venue afterward.
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