# Last decent MS Word was 2003?



## Ray McCarthy (Feb 24, 2015)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/0...s_word_dumped_by_scifi_author_charles_stross/

Charles Stross switches to Libre Office.

I use Word & Excel 2002 on one laptop only and Libre Office 4.4 on it and others.

The ribbon is ghastly.
The incompatible docx versions a nightmare (The Office Converter plug-in doesn't open the more recent   docx versions but Libre Office 4.4 does).
Ribbon is a GUI stupidity.

MS is getting like Oracle. A licence fee rip off.

Libre Office .doc files work in every version of Word I tested from Word 2002 onwards.
Libre Office .xls files work in every version of Excel I tested from Excel 2002 onwards.

The charting in Libre Office Spreadsheet is easier to use than Excel 2002.

A publisher given a .doc from Libre Office can use it as if it was done on Word.


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## thaddeus6th (Feb 24, 2015)

I use Open Office. Had to change OS (due to XP getting outdated) and didn't have the money to spend/waste on Word, so I tried ye olde Open Office. Apart from great difficulty shifting to curly speech marks (I did manage it, but forget how) I haven't had any real problems.


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## Ray McCarthy (Feb 24, 2015)

I used to use Open Office. But the Libre Office fork (caused by Oracle's interference) is now better.


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## HareBrain (Feb 24, 2015)

I use Office 2003, and everything I've seen of the newer ones makes me want to keep it that way. I could use the extra columns in Excel, but that's about it: in every other way the changes seem regressive in terms of usability and efficiency. Access is now a joke.


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## Lacedaemonian (Feb 24, 2015)

I have a fairly new version of office and I struggle to find all the functions and tools. The older versions were bad for this but not like the version I have which maybe 2010 or summick. Not heard of this Libre Office until now.


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## Lenny (Feb 24, 2015)

An important distinction the article makes is that Stross is using Microsoft Word _*for OSX*_.

In the Office for Windows space, I rather like Office 2013 - might be that I simply think like the developers, but I can find everything easily, and believe some functions work better in the modern versions (such as styles throughout the document, and image insertion).



HareBrain said:


> Access is now a joke.



The less said about Access the better - it was horrible in the past, it's horrible in the present, and it will be horrible in the future.


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## Ray McCarthy (Feb 24, 2015)

It's the successor to Open Office, which may be somewhat connected in 1990s origin of Star Office*, which was first decent nearly free alternative.

http://www.libreoffice.org/

Notepad++ is open source but not yet (bizarre) on Linux, it's the absolutely best ever text editor for a Windows style GUI. It works fine on Linux under WINE,  a native Linux version is in the works. On Android I just take notes with JotterX.

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Edit:
(* Yes:  Star Writer 1985 on Z80 CP/M originally. The Windows Star Office versions about 1994 (bought by Sun 1999)  --> Open Office (Sun then Oracle)  -->  Libre Office)


> OpenOffice.org was open source, and gave rise to many derivative versions and successor projects to StarOffice. As of 2014, Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice and NeoOffice remained.


from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Office#Derivatives


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## Ray McCarthy (Feb 24, 2015)

Lenny said:


> The less said about Access the better - it was horrible in the past, it's horrible in the present, and it will be horrible in the future.


Even MS has offered a free MS SQL (Access Applications can be easily ported) for maybe 10 years.

Office 2013 is bloatware and earlier offices with MS DOCx and XLSx converters can read the files unless saved in compatible ".doc" mode. Though Libre Office 4.4 seems to manage.  There is no future to MS Windows or MS Office unless they start listening to users and developers. They have lost the plot since Server 2003. Any usuable versions of either since then are only bug fixes of a previous atrocious version.

I sold, installed and supported MS Software / Workstations / Servers in SoHo, SME, schools and Colleges for over 10 years. I wouldn't touch their products with a barge pole now. I'd get ulcers / mental breakdown / heart trouble trying to support it now.


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## Ray McCarthy (Feb 24, 2015)

HareBrain said:


> I could use the extra columns in Excel,


You need an application, maybe using SQL backend if even the number of columns in Office 97 is too few. Or something else is wrong!
I wonder how many "pages" Excel 2002 supports?

(Office 2003 and 2002 are very similar, The 2002 version was also branded Office XP, which was a little odd).

I used Visio before MS bought it. I must see how latest Libre Office 'Visio replacement' compares. MS did very little with Visio or the evil Power Point (there were and are better slideware packages) after buying them. They did do a lot of decent work to Sybase SQL after buying it (MS SQL 6.0 to 7.0 anyway).
I think only Word and Excel in Office were actually written by MS, ironically first on Mac as Windows didn't really work till 3.0 and first decent version was 3.1 (There were at least 4 versions before 3.0).
First NT was 3.1, nothing to do with Windows 3.1,

NT: NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 5.0 (Win 2K), 5.1 (XP), 5.2(Server 2003), 6.0(Vista). Win 7, Win 8 and Win 8.1 are all NT 6.x. The forthcoming Win 10 is actually NT 7.0, but they are skipping and internally it will be NT 10.0

DOS based GUIs: Win1.0, Win2.0 Win286, Win386. Win3.1, WFWG3.1, Win3.11, WFWG3.11, Win4.0 (Chinese), 3 versions Win95, 2 versions Win98 and last was Win ME, an evil version of Win98 with DOS hidden.

There was also an MS only version of OS/2 for Servers with MS Lan manager in 1989. Earlier in mid 1980s there was MS Xenix, a UNIX version, but MS sold this completely to SCO, which is NOT the same SCO as involved for the last 10 years in litigation with IBM and Novell. The  current SCO troll used to be called Caldera Systems and also bought CP/M from Digital Research. MSDOS is based on a bought in 3rd part clone of DR CP/M86.

I'll write the book some day as I was a computer user / programmer off and on since 1969 and followed the Industry.


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## HareBrain (Feb 24, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> You need an application, maybe using SQL backend if even the number of columns in Office 97 is too few. Or something else is wrong!



Not sure what you mean. I sometimes need to dump an spss file with thousands of variables to Excel, one variable per column. So the 256 columns in Excel 2003 are too few for that, and I have to get someone else to do it. That's what I was referring to.


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