Bad microsoft experience

[dero]

Following a recent Microsoft update I had a few minor problems .
After a week of microsoft tech HELP , and I use the term lightly , I ended up with basically a wiped computer , which I mostly got back in working condition .
But , My legitimate & fully paid version of office 2016 professional plus is gone & after much lengthy & drawn out discussion ,Microsoft's best offer was a minor discount on a home & business download , which I found very unsatisfactory .
My initial inquiry to consumer protection , ministers , ombudsman etc has revealed that as Microsoft are basically based in cyberspace , they are pretty much beyond the law in Australia & my only hope is their goodwill , which I have found to be virtually non existent
So I am left with having to shell out for a new 2019 version .
My computer was working perfectly well before their unsolicited update & the only people to try & fix things were the Microsoft help team via remote access , I left it up to them as it was their fault to start with & I am basically a dinosaur .
So really ****ed off with Microsoft & very little I can do about it .

[incisor]

why do you specifically need microsoft office ?

[dero]

I don't know , like I said I am a dinosaur , but my girlfriend uses it to do book work etc . seems, to my uneducated view, to be the standard .

[p38arover]

I prefer MS Office on my Windows PCs to LibreOffice that is on my Linux box.

If you still have the Office 2016 licence key, you should be able to source the software and reinstall it.

[disco gazza]

As I dont like giving people/companies money when there is a perfectly good (free) alternative,I,d rather the free than the paid.

Has your girlfriend tried : open office:

Apache OpenOffice - Official Site - The Free and Open Productivity Suite (http://www.openoffice.org)

It does what micro office does,except its free.

Just a suggestion [biggrin]

DG

[speleomike]

Hi

LibreOffice is considered to be a bit more up-to-date / more developed than Apache OpenOffice. The two projects share a considerable amount of code, have similar interfaces and features. Both free and open-source. I have not found that there is anything I need MS Office for. You would only need MS Office if your in a company and you need very tight integration and perfect compatibility with other persons in your organisation.

Note: I'm biased :-) I use Linux as my OS.

Mike

[dero]

Thanks for the suggestions , I am loathe to support Microsoft after this ordeal , so will look at other options .
Apparently Microsoft have changed the rules in Australia with regard to office professional plus , they only make it available to corporate users ,and prefer subscriptions to one off sales. The changes include not allowing me to download again using the key [ which I have ] I have tried , but they ask for a confirmation ID to authorize the down load , which they cannot / will not give me .

[Eevo]

i prefer lotus notes

[speleomike]

Lotus Notes. No.
Ed Is The Standard Text Editor :-)

[Graeme]

The changes include not allowing me to download again using the key [ which I have ] I have tried , but they ask for a confirmation ID to authorize the down load , which they cannot / will not give me .Is Microsoft asking you for information (confirmation ID) ?

[NavyDiver]

I have several free word and spreadsheet programs on my computers now. I didn't mind buying Office every five years or so. The subscription caper got up my nose enough for me to drop Microsoft.

Now its ONE DRIVE which is tied to Windows 10. I tried it for a year before deciding another could storage solution was more secure and fitted me better. One Drive is not in use yet it still manages to get in my way a little. Not enough for me to worry usefully[biggrin]

Oddly I have found MS support very good on the few times I have used them.

[Eevo]

Lotus Notes. No.
Ed Is The Standard Text Editor :-)

you need to upgrade. try vi

[BradC]

Thanks for the suggestions , I am loathe to support Microsoft after this ordeal , so will look at other options .
Apparently Microsoft have changed the rules in Australia with regard to office professional plus , they only make it available to corporate users ,and prefer subscriptions to one off sales. The changes include not allowing me to download again using the key [ which I have ] I have tried , but they ask for a confirmation ID to authorize the down load , which they cannot / will not give me .

If you have a key, just download an un-molested copy from thepiratebay and install using your valid key.

[dero]

Several of the Microsoft support crew were excellent , they just were not allowed to reinstall [orders from above]
They had all the info possible , several times over , several different operators , ultimately Microsoft just refused to let me have it.

[dero]

Is Microsoft asking you for information (confirmation ID) ?

The download window asks for a set of no's , but Microsoft will not give it to me .
New rules , no longer available to Australian end users , too bad , go away.

[p38arover]

Download from the US using a VPN

[Graeme]

The download window asks for a set of no's , but Microsoft will not give it to me .
New rules , no longer available to Australian end users , too bad , go away.
Is it asking for your licence code, the one that you said that you have?

[incisor]

Where did you buy the original licence code?

[incisor]

you need to upgrade. try vi

Joe is much better[emoji1]

[dero]

Is it asking for your licence code, the one that you said that you have?

No , that was several steps before .
The process has been followed correctly , [by Microsoft's tech help]

[dero]

Where did you buy the original licence code?

It came with the computer , aprox 2 years ago .
The supplier is quite legit , and quite happy to talk to Microsoft .
The bottom line is ....This product is for corporate use only [ in Aust ] & they simply refuse to reinstate my lic.

[Eevo]

It came with the computer , aprox 2 years ago .
The supplier is quite legit , and quite happy to talk to Microsoft .
The bottom line is ....This product is for corporate use only [ in Aust ] & they simply refuse to reinstate my lic.

they should be giving you a refund then

[incisor]

they should be giving you a refund then

not if it is one of the install once corp licences

[Eevo]

not if it is one of the install once corp licences
interesting, ive never heard of those.

price of office is stupidly high. 200bucks!

[incisor]

interesting, ive never heard of those.


all over ebay for 40 odd $ or used to be

libreoffice and mozilla thunderbird with lightning has most of MS office covered and is compatible on all platforms, which MS office isnt

[travelrover]

Hi all

I have suffered a number of Microsoft issues this year (no different from any recent year really). A couple of months ago Windows 10 completely froze after a forced upgrade. Fortunately my Thinkpad was still under warranty and Lenovo tech support spent best part of 8 hour (very slow ADSL) helping to rebuild as I could get no support from Microsoft. Win 10 & Office were part of the original build.

But more recently, in the past fortnight I have had another major Win 10 upgrade forced on me (with the un-removable version of Edge). As a a result I now have no drivers for my external monitor (which was working fine before) and some investigation shows the required driver (hdgraphics 3000) is not supported by this version of Win 10. The monitor will work in duplicate mode but not extended. There appears to be no fix for this. The monitor still works fine on a 10 year old Thinkpad which is on a different Win 10 build though did also get the forced major upgrade. And again there was no interest from Microsoft.

Also I lost connectivity to my printer and have wasted far too much time trying to reconnect this... HP OfficeJet 6956. Have reinstalled it several times, it sort of works (print/scan) for a while and then goes offline so I just given up before I throw everything at the wall.

IBM = I Blame Microsoft

Cheers - Simon

[Markf]

all over ebay for 40 odd $ or used to be

libreoffice and mozilla thunderbird with lightning has most of MS office covered and is compatible on all platforms, which MS office isnt

If only there was a viable Outlook equivalent I'd ditch MS in a heartbeat. I only ever went MS because my employer at the time decided that Exchange and that peculiar add-on called Outlook was going to be the saviour of the world.

And, yes. Over my IT career I've had some memorable battles with MS all of which I lost without any compromise on the part of MS. I had quite a few other battles too with the likes of IBM, DEC, HP, Sun, etc. all of which showed that, at least, they knew what customer service was. Not MS though, for them the "service" part of it is a foreign concept.

If only IBM hadn't missed the boat with OS/2....

[Eevo]

If only there was a viable Outlook equivalent I'd ditch MS in a heartbeat.

thunderbird?

[travelrover]

If only there was a viable Outlook equivalent I'd ditch MS in a heartbeat. I only ever went MS because my employer at the time decided that Exchange and that peculiar add-on called Outlook was going to be the saviour of the world.

And, yes. Over my IT career I've had some memorable battles with MS all of which I lost without any compromise on the part of MS. I had quite a few other battles too with the likes of IBM, DEC, HP, Sun, etc. all of which showed that, at least, they knew what customer service was. Not MS though, for them the "service" part of it is a foreign concept.

If only IBM hadn't missed the boat with OS/2....

At the time IBM missed the OS/2 boat their nearest competitor was Digital which had market capitalized value of less than the IBM AS400 business. How times have changed. IBM have virtually abandoned AUS/NZ. I was working for BHP in Singapore in 2011 when IBM were told by the board ‘you have been raping us for 5 years and delivered nothing’ you have 12 months to exit the account globally!

That went down well Armonk... Not! Wasn’t a particularly large account but loosing a blue chip global client wasn’t a good look.

[Markf]

thunderbird?

It's close but it doesn't cut quite cut it for me. If I was looking for an email, contacts and calendar client I'd switch now but I use journaling a lot as well as storing docs, etc. in Outlook folders. Pity really....

[BradC]

If only there was a viable Outlook equivalent I'd ditch MS in a heartbeat.

I've used thunderbird for years. For business stuff though I have a Zimbra install which gives me a credible web client, plus activesync and an MAPI interface for the one Outlook user left.

I've used Linux on the desktop since about 96, but I keep a few windows VMs around for Office, AutoCAD and Revit. I find windows behaves better and runs faster in a VM than on the bare metal, plus I can deny it network access to the outside world. No phone home or updates without my explicit say-so. I can also upgrade the underlying machines without worrying about license keys or activation issues, plus duplicate/snapshot for testing stuff without crapping-up the windows install.

Unfortunately I need Office for collaboration, but I use Libreoffice for pretty much anything I can get away with.

My main office VM is still Office 2007 on XP 32 bit. I've had to upgrade to Windows 8.1 64 bit for the Cad VM, but it's cut and shut down to a minimum footprint.

I have a very strong dislike for pretty much anything Microsoft, but unfortunately it's still pretty essential if you collaborate with other organizations. I reserve a special pit in hell for Outlook, but at least with everything on the Zimbra server a "delete/re-install" takes a matter of minutes with no config or data loss.

[incisor]

If only IBM hadn't missed the boat with OS/2....

arca noae still putting out up to date versions of os/2 for a price

them was the days...

64 line bbs running on a 486 dx2-66 using os/2 and a stallion board or two....

[DeanoH]

"Bad microsoft experience"..................

Is there any other sort ....... ?

Microsoft has been making an art form out of screwing people and businesses over for decades. Even back in the 'good ol' DOS days' :) when HDD's cost a fortune and disc compression software was all the go Microsoft stole disc compression software and incorporated it into DOS 6 until the owners took Microsoft to court and this DOS version was withdrawn, replaced with DOS 6.x without disc compression software.

Microsoft pulled a similar trick with Java in the Win98/XP days, got all huffy when Sun? (the owner) complained about being dudded so Microsoft screwed over all Windows users that needed Java for graphics etc. Microsofts reputation was so poor that they even ran a "Trust Microsoft" advertising campaign a few years ago, what a hoot, it was roundly derided as a joke and the ultimate oxymoron, unsurprisingly the campaign was a failure.
Microsoft is not a very nice, honest or decent company. IMO it has the corporate morality of Atilla the Hun :(


them was the days...

64 line bbs running on a 486 dx2-66 using os/2 and a stallion board or two....

luxury Inc, luxury :) ............. 8086 processor with a massive 64K of RAM. I couldn't believe the power available with my first 80286, what a game changer as was QEMM memory manager, as you say, .......... them was the days :)

Deano :)

[speleomike]

Hi


It's close but it doesn't cut quite cut it for me. If I was looking for an email, contacts and calendar client I'd switch now but I use journaling a lot as well as storing docs, etc. in Outlook folders. Pity really....

Thunderbird does have email, contacts and calendar but if it does not cut it try Evolution. That does have all 3 and can connect to MS authentication like AD.

More importantly Thunderbird and Evolution still use mbox or maildir formats whereas with Outlook all of your mail is in it's own proprietary database. So it is only a matter of time till you find you can't access your emails on another system.

Mike

[Markf]

Hi



Thunderbird does have email, contacts and calendar but if it does not cut it try Evolution. That does have all 3 and can connect to MS authentication like AD.

More importantly Thunderbird and Evolution still use mbox or maildir formats whereas with Outlook all of your mail is in it's own proprietary database. So it is only a matter of time till you find you can't access your emails on another system.

Mike

I'm not worried about e-mail, contacts and calendars. They're easily transported to the client of my choice. What the sticking point is is the ability to store all sorts of docs, etc. in the Outlook folder of my choice. The other thing that I use is the outlook journal which MS are letting wither on the vine.

If there were an e-mail client that could store things the way Outlook does in, say, a MySQL database in place of the PST file(s) I'd be happy but I haven't found one yet.

I've given myself until the end of Jan '21, when my current Office 365 subscription runs out, to find a workable solution and then convert my wife to another e-mail client and Open Office.

[travelrover]

Microsoft kills off Windows 10 update that had been slowing down PCs | TechRadar (https://www.techradar.com/au/amp/news/microsoft-kills-off-windows-10-update-that-had-been-slowing-down-pcs)

[speleomike]

If there were an e-mail client that could store things the way Outlook does in, say, a MySQL database in place of the PST file(s) I'd be happy but I haven't found one yet.


Why do you wish to do that? A small mbox file (one for each year) is far more likely to be readable in the future than any SQL DB, even open source ones. A DB is only useful for that if you actually extract metadata from the docs that arrive in the email and add that to fields in a DB table, which is what Outlook does in its PST files.

Mike