Despite my best efforts, I actually do have a lot of work to do today in the office, so I only have something brief to share right now though have lots of personal updates later.
In its effort to save cash money, my very large company has decided to no longer install Microsoft Word on computers. If you already have a copy, great, but if you just got a new laptop as I did in my transfer, you’re out of luck. Instead you’re equipped with a viewer called “Open Office,” which requires one to save the document you’re trying to view not once but twice to the hard drive before one can view it.
By the way, I know only half of you know what I do, but let’s just say my company sort of is heavy in the communications field, therefore I get a lot of e-mails with Word docs attached. (If you ever want to know exactly what it is I do, you can ask me an e-mail.)
But that’s not even what kills me, as it’s par for the course in my business. What kills me is that I just got the new Blackberry … ok, Palm Treo … that was also promised to me in my transfer.
Guess what program it has on it.
Seriously.
That seems pretty ridiculous just to save money. Talk about an inconvenience!
Oh, I LOVE Open Office for writing, but it is a pain when you have to communicate with the outside world. Otherwise, it’s better than Word.
Word is so freaking expensive, but thankfully we got them on our computers from the start. I can see my boss trying to make the open office switch for newbies, though.
Hmm, I haven’t done much writing on OO yet, so I guess I should reserve some of my complaints.
But I will say that I’d sacrifice Word on my cell phone to have it on my computer.
They couldn’t have had more of an oxymoron if they had tried. Way to go, big business!
Wow. I’d think they could cut back on another area first.
I do feel for you! I don’t understand what is going on inside the heads of these “exec” making saving decisions. Good luck to you.
As a technical writer this would kill me. I feel for you.
Dude. They took off our copies of Microsoft Word and Excel and replaced them with open office. That’s right: actively removed. Do you know how hard it is to do a spreadsheet when you use a program that doesn’t follow the same commands as Excel? Also — cutting and pasting anything from the Web into an open office document sucks. It is among my big-time rants.
Good luck.
P.S. At least you get a Treo, you lucky dog! 🙂
That’s pretty nutty — I know Open Office is a good program, but in your line of writing-intensive (and information-intensive) work, it seems like compatability and ease would be the name of the game.
The last thing you need is to be crashing on something and get hung up dealing with trying to properly open some Word file.
Noodles: They did the same thing with Photoshop. I don’t get it. Do more! with less!
Jay: Don’t send any communication to us as an attachment. We’ll claim we didn’t see it. 🙂
We don’t get Word at work either … (I’m still waiting for a program I need much more for work, actually.)
I’m becoming a big fan of Google Docs. One, I can get to stuff I save at work (on a PC) from home (on a Mac). And after my computer died a horrible, tragic death that stole everything I’d saved, I’m a bigger fan of saving things online. And Google Doc’s sharing feature is nice too, so I can collaborate with others on a project.