51–60 of 261 posts
I disabled it recently after it got into an incomprehensible endless CPU loop. It's suddenly like having a new computer - it boots faster, I can switch tabs without grinding, just everything is faster.
I can't think how much time it must have cost me - on every interaction in years.
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I'm with you. My org tries to do so many things with excel, despite that fact that is fails and breaks on us ever single day. What is worse, is that we use excel sheets and a shared folder to monitor projects, tasks, and even track casework. I hate it so much.
Yeah don't get me started on versioning, lol. bondspricing_final_2_withswaptions_final_final5.xls. In a folder with 25 similarly named files. Good luck tracing the diffs. But I guess that's not specifically Excel that causes this, it's people not understanding versioning.
(How it was explained to me once... that person swore they were worked to the bone to keep everything updated but they were SO inefficient and refused to listen to any constructive input because THIS IS HOW I HAVE TO DO IT.)
Microsoft Windows. I lose 10-20 minutes 1-5x a day just logging in to Windows in the NHS...
I second that. I loose 5 to 10 minutes every time I want to change a network setting. No idea how it got messed up so bad. What used to be two mouse clicks away from the desktop in XP is now hidden away by the "settings" app that doesn't contain any settings at all.
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Compared to what?
Exactly. I love the spirit and motivation behind Office Libre, but Excel and Word just _work_ for most basic tasks and an amazing number of corner cases. Open-source products just don't even come close. The only tools people don't complain about are the ones that no one uses.
I've lost my 100 hours trying to get Word to consistently place images in technical docs, only to wind up fighting some of the most unpredictable placement calculations I've ever encountered. I want to punch my screen right now just thinking about it.
WYSIWYG editors... worst: confluence, bottom: desktop office suites, still bad: google docs
3: Windows/Symantec Defrag (pre-Vista era) When I had 10-40GB hdds it used to be mesmerising watching the blocks fly around the screen. Eventually I find something else to do and pretend the computer's broken.
2: Macromedia/Adobe Flash. Sometimes animations just didn't want to work. Tweens are notoriously random with complex drawings. Delete and start all over again.
1: Editing HTML after using a WYSIWYG editor. Code clean-up. It takes ages.
I've built a lot of useful software but there have been years where I've worked on projects that nobody ever used or will use. Half the time the cause is the dysfunctional organization that I'm working for, that doesn't understand their responsibility or won't listen to good advice.
The other portion of the time it's a side project that I never finished.
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Compared to what?
Exactly. I love the spirit and motivation behind Office Libre, but Excel and Word just _work_ for most basic tasks and an amazing number of corner cases. Open-source products just don't even come close. The only tools people don't complain about are the ones that no one uses.
It's a tool for not too long technical documents, for secretarial work, for basic marketing text, for quick an dirty but decently presented invoices, for writing a resume.
It has never been meant for writing novels, for page setting, for writing hundreds of pages of technical documentation, and yet... it is used for that. Everyday.
Simply because it's available everywhere.