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Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

pcworld.com

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Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#221

Post by PuppetSoup »

rafaelmn wrote: post #187

At this point I view Windows as a legacy/compatibility OS, all the news about Windows is how they are making it worse for everyone. And using it now and then it feels like that too. Windows 10 Mail app had integration with system calendar, you would get itsycal built into the OS. Windows 11 removed that and made the OS Mail app spam infested shit, and they expect me to pay a subscription for something that comes bund…

> Linux desktop is getting better but I still wouldn't daily drive it,

I'm genuinely interested what Linux is missing for you? I've been daily driving it for years and do all my work and gaming on it. Is it specific software or?

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#222

Post by fakedang »

smackay wrote: post #189
rafaelmn wrote: post #187

At this point I view Windows as a legacy/compatibility OS, all the news about Windows is how they are making it worse for everyone. And using it now and then it feels like that too. Windows 10 Mail app had integration with system calendar, you would get itsycal built into the OS. Windows 11 removed that and made the OS Mail app spam infested shit, and they expect me to pay a subscription for something that comes bund…

Microsoft at least sees the writing on the wall... Microsoft announces new European digital commitments https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/04/30/europea...

Idk, seems stupid, given that Europeans are very aware now of the Cloud Act and other similar shenanigans the USG wants to pull.

That being said, European bureaucrats are even stupider and will largely take these commitments at face value, allowing them to have a tighter leash on the market.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#223

Post by bgro »

tsimionescu wrote: post #182
Aeolun wrote: post #178

Once in a while I’m happily reminded that I haven’t had to worry about this circus any more since I switched to Linux some 5 years ago.

You can get the same effect by uninstalling Office on Windows. In that you don't have a bloated start time anymore, but also can't use Office.

Windows update reinstalls office even if you never installed it or opened it or own it. It’s reinstalled through most updates and on reboot.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#224

Post by krembo »

vjk800 wrote: post #192

I use Office software at work daily and I don't understand how that piece of shit can be so fucking slow. It's a serious productivity sink too; I often procrastinate small tasks just because I know half of the time doing it is spent waiting for various part of the office to load and that is somehow very stressful. I realise it is not a huge amount of time per se, but the psychological effect of the piece of crap stop…

It's so shitty and slow because it's a bloatware. Lucky for MS they are kind of a monopoly in the corporate world.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#225

Post by amiga386 »

fnordsensei wrote: post #216
rafaelmn wrote: post #187

At this point I view Windows as a legacy/compatibility OS, all the news about Windows is how they are making it worse for everyone. And using it now and then it feels like that too. Windows 10 Mail app had integration with system calendar, you would get itsycal built into the OS. Windows 11 removed that and made the OS Mail app spam infested shit, and they expect me to pay a subscription for something that comes bund…

I was disappointed that I had to upgrade to Steam Launcher 11, since it provided no benefits in launching Steam over Steam Launcher 10, or 7.

Windows: What is my purpose?

Rick: You launch Steam

Windows: OH. MY. GOD.

Rick: Yeah, welcome to the club, pal.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#226

Post by bambax »

spapas82 wrote: post #202
bambax wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office 2003 still works absolutely fine and is free if you bought a licence some time in the past. It doesn't have the stupid ribbon or any other annoying new feature. I recently wrote a macro so that Word could call an AI API to do AI-assisted translation, works like a charm.

Main problem with office 2003 is that it can't reliably open docx and friends making it more or less non compatible with anything newer. Being able to open only docs you create yourself isn't very useful in a collaborative environment. The main advantage of office 2003 of course is that it's the last office without activation and other crap: you pass the serial and own it for life, it won't bother you again. I wantwd…

Office 2003 can absolutely open docx and xlsx and pptx files. It is annoying because it usually opens those in read-only mode, and then you need to "save as" to do your modifications. But it works fine otherwise.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#227

Post by torben-friis »

bgro wrote: post #214
torben-friis wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t used a windows machine for like 15 years, but back when I was a teenager I could swear computer magazines included all kinds of tips about unchecking things from the auto startup menu, some modifying the registry. Did this pattern stop being a thing and we’re back to it now? Or was it just “forgotten”?

Startup shortcuts are one thing to manage but it’s gotten pretty out of control for most standard software now. Perhaps it used to be one-off annoying programs like 15 years ago. Now there’s scrolling through hundreds of scheduled tasks called dfddg.exe with no title or description and located in c:/windows or %appdata%. Disabling the wrong identically named one bricks your system or software licenses. Then you also…

Oof. Yeah it definitely wasn’t this bad, I remember that having an unclearly named app in your startup menu was considered a clear tell that you had a malware infection.

This sounds like Microsoft is failing spectacularly at enforcing strict limits on what software can do.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#228

Post by taurath »

bArray wrote: post #110
mrandish wrote: post #50

Between Office's increasingly bloated size, slow booting and super annoying CoPilot icon right where I'm working (which still can't be turned off in OneNote) - I'm on the edge of dumping Office. I pretty much only use OneNote and a little OneDrive (3% of the included storage plan) to sync files between machines and I run Word and Powerpoint less than a dozen times a year combined. Even as a paying customer, all the O…

I use LibreOffice for 99% of documents completely fine, and generate my own documents via Pandoc. The setup has served me really well so far.

I can’t stand libreoffice - between tons of bugs (waiting for printers on startup is a default..), extremely janky UI from 20 years ago, poor performance, exceptionally slow load times, and bad formatting issues and incompatibilities.. it’s just an awful experience overall.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#229

Post by graemep »

worldsayshi wrote: post #203
rafaelmn wrote: post #187

At this point I view Windows as a legacy/compatibility OS, all the news about Windows is how they are making it worse for everyone. And using it now and then it feels like that too. Windows 10 Mail app had integration with system calendar, you would get itsycal built into the OS. Windows 11 removed that and made the OS Mail app spam infested shit, and they expect me to pay a subscription for something that comes bund…

What is really missing for Linux desktop nowadays? Still drivers? And I guess office software and gui configurability.

Mostly games and photoshop.

Libre Office is more than sufficient for most people.

> gui configurability

A bit confused by that. Linux desktop environments tend to be more configurable, and you can configure most things end users want to configure in a GUI with the major DEs.

Do you mean the sysadmins cannot configure as much in a GUI? I think that probably is a major barrier as it means a lot of retraining.

Also, when you do something different from everyone else, every problem will be blamed on you for doing that.

Re: Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup

#230

Post by jajko »

vjk800 wrote: post #192

I use Office software at work daily and I don't understand how that piece of shit can be so fucking slow. It's a serious productivity sink too; I often procrastinate small tasks just because I know half of the time doing it is spent waiting for various part of the office to load and that is somehow very stressful. I realise it is not a huge amount of time per se, but the psychological effect of the piece of crap stop…

If only slow... it has tons of accepted bugs and nobody seems to care.

Yesterday I was using Outlook 365, there was one URL in one of the emails and I needed to find other emails containing it. Trivial and one of main use cases, right.

Put URL in search box, 0 finds (including email I just copy&pasted it from). Mkay, maybe non-alphanumeric chars are messing with some internal regex or similar, stripped those into bare hostname, still 0 finds (when searching all mailboxes, including body).

Maybe its some exchange settings, who knows, who cares. Pissed off fighting such basic tech instead of doing actual work.

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