Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 591 posts

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#31

Post by bornfreddy »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #20
munchler wrote: post #6

My problem with this isn't the price increase. It's the blurring of what used to be a clearly understandable suite of products (e.g. Office) and services (e.g. OneDrive) into a soup of weird AI and cloud stuff that all goes under a single unhelpful name (Copilot). My mental model of what I'm actually purchasing is broken in this new paradigm.

Clearly understandable? Every time someone tells me on Teams about "the file they shared last week", I struggle to find out if I need to go to Onedrive, SharePoint, the Teams channel "files", the Teams channel "documents", etc. It's the most confusing piece of software I'm forced to use...

You aren't wrong - however GP didn't use the terms "Teams" and "SharePoint". Those terms should never be used next to "understandable" unless properly negated or followed by "/s".

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#32

Post by surfingdino »

the_snooze wrote: post #28
for_i_in_range wrote: post #8

Hate that if you use Word for Mac, you now have Copilot next to your cursor with no way of turning it off. I just want to use Word. I like its print layout features better than Pages. I don't want to switch. Just let me write and leave me alone. Now they're jamming AI down my throat without any opt-out mechanism.

>Just let me write and leave me alone. Yeah, we have networked supercomputers in every pocket and on every desk. And word processors and spreadsheets have been around for decades---that use case is a solved problem. I suppose we can be charitable to Microsoft and say they're trying to innovate, but these AI features lack a clear practical need that they're meeting. It feels more like Big Tech flopping around trying t…

Microsoft is trying to stay relevant and have an answer to Wall St analysis asking them questions about their AI strategy. They will delete AI tools and helpers as soon as the industry goes after another "big idea".

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#33

Post by graypegg »

fullshark wrote: post #26
tapoxi wrote: post #9

Is this the absolute death of the high school essay? Even if you didn't want to cheat by avoiding ChatGPT, AI is now right there, in your word processor, and you have no way of turning it off.

We will solve the cheating problem with more AI, all essays will need to be written in 3 hour time windows in web portals with key-logging + copilot off and children on webcam the entire time. An AI will assess all the data and tell you if the child cheated or not. Of course no one will care if you're good at writing essays in the future, and having that skill just means you're working a low paying training data crea…

That sounds dystopian…

Essay writing is not a task intended to make you specifically better at writing more essays. It’s supposed to train your ability to explain your point of view clearly and with sound reasoning.

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#34

Post by rsolva »

A lot of people use Microsofts products out of old habit and because they are simply not aware of any alternatives. I have helped alot of people try LibreOffice, which offers everything they need from their office suit. Most people also like that LibreOffice looks like what Word and Excel looked like before Microsoft changed up the menu system.

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#35

Post by duxup »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #20
munchler wrote: post #6

My problem with this isn't the price increase. It's the blurring of what used to be a clearly understandable suite of products (e.g. Office) and services (e.g. OneDrive) into a soup of weird AI and cloud stuff that all goes under a single unhelpful name (Copilot). My mental model of what I'm actually purchasing is broken in this new paradigm.

Clearly understandable? Every time someone tells me on Teams about "the file they shared last week", I struggle to find out if I need to go to Onedrive, SharePoint, the Teams channel "files", the Teams channel "documents", etc. It's the most confusing piece of software I'm forced to use...

Every task I do in teams feels compromised as far as UX goes.

I loathe using that app.

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#36

Post by narrator »

for_i_in_range wrote: post #8

Hate that if you use Word for Mac, you now have Copilot next to your cursor with no way of turning it off. I just want to use Word. I like its print layout features better than Pages. I don't want to switch. Just let me write and leave me alone. Now they're jamming AI down my throat without any opt-out mechanism.

Libreoffice is way better than Pages.

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#38

Post by WaltPurvis »

for_i_in_range wrote: post #8

Hate that if you use Word for Mac, you now have Copilot next to your cursor with no way of turning it off. I just want to use Word. I like its print layout features better than Pages. I don't want to switch. Just let me write and leave me alone. Now they're jamming AI down my throat without any opt-out mechanism.

You can turn it off. Go to preferences -> Copilot and uncheck the Enable Copilot checkbox.

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#39

Post by smt88 »

tapoxi wrote: post #9

Is this the absolute death of the high school essay? Even if you didn't want to cheat by avoiding ChatGPT, AI is now right there, in your word processor, and you have no way of turning it off.

I think it's the death of essays and also of reading. Why read a book when AI can read it for you? Teachers I know have already seen this happening.

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#40

Post by optionalsquid »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #22

Worse than CoPilot is the new Notepad. Can close the program without saving the file, open it again and it is still there! WTF?

Sublime Text and VS Code both do the same thing. I can imagine that it takes a bit to get used to, assuming that you'd even want to, but I've found it to be very handy: At this point in time 6 unsaved text documents open in Sublime Text, covering a variety of subjects that I haven't quite finished working on, or that I just want to remember for later
Post reply on HN