Why do people still buy MS Office?

[givingtnt]

5 minutes ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

The average size for my documents hover around 2-7 MB not KB like you're suggesting. Why would I pay more than $70 yearly for a program just to type KB of stuff? Anyways, what critical thinking 'skillz' do I seem to be missing? You still haven't said one thing that would justify spending $150 once, or $70 a year on a word processor (yes I know it has other things but I'm talking about Word, Excel and Powerpoint).

 

You mentioned that using google docs back in high school was a trash fire. What was so bad about it? I don't see anything straightforward in any of your comments so far.

how are they this big ?
do you put images in them ?

if so, do you resize them ?

[Thunder_Ruler0]

28 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Read the TOS.  Google reserves the right to use any of your content for any purpose.

"The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our services, and to develop new ones." Not 'Anything' like you said, but that's just business jargon. Thanks for pointing it out.

[EPENEX]

Why would I use a text editor that doesn't respect my freedom? Libreoffice > Microsoft Office

[DrMacintosh]

I honestly don’t know. The last office program I bought is 2011 for Mac. Since I’ve been using Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Google drive has also been used fairly extensively. 

[Syntaxvgm]

22 minutes ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

The average size for my documents hover around 2-7 MB not KB like you're suggesting. Why would I pay more than $70 yearly for a program just to type KB of stuff? Anyways, what critical thinking 'skillz' do I seem to be missing? You still haven't said one thing that would justify spending $150 once, or $70 a year on a word processor (yes I know it has other things but I'm talking about Word, Excel and Powerpoint).

 

You mentioned that using google docs back in high school was a trash fire. What was so bad about it? I don't see anything straightforward in any of your comments so far.

those sizes are because of pictures, and will the be the same with any other wp! I have doc files that are multi pages with a lot of formatting and simple images that are under 100kb. 

doc files are just zip folders with assets and xml 

I use google docs for my job. The doc part is ok, sorta, but anything else like slides or sheets is a dumpster fire. 
Still broken as hell even if it works.

[Thunder_Ruler0]

18 minutes ago, givingtnt said:

how are they this big ?
do you put images in them ?

if so, do you resize them ?

Well most of the documents that I make are notes from classes and text books with small clip art to help me understand whatever I typed about. One document I'm looking at right now is 64 pages long with 22 of those pages with little clipart like this alert png.  I exported it to the DOCX format from google docs and the file size was 2.88 MB - Using the compress images feature (compresses - crops - resize) in MS Word it went down to 2.32 MB in size.

 

Something I don't worry about in google docs since it doesn't count against storage space as mentioned before which is also the reason I don't compress the images or permanently resize them to begin with. (i don't do huge images)

 

@Syntaxvgm

[Ashleyyyy]

8 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

I honestly don’t know. The last office program I bought is 2011 for Mac. Since I’ve been using Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Google drive has also been used fairly extensively. 

I use pages for my word processing too. it's so much faster than Office... I guess that's the advantage of using Apple exclusive software  

[Syntaxvgm]

4 minutes ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

Well most of the documents that I make are notes from classes and text books with small clip art to help me understand whatever I typed about. One document I'm looking at right now is 64 pages long with 22 of those pages with little clipart like this alert png.  I exported it to the DOCXvformat from google docs and the file size was 2.88 MB - Using the compress images feature (compresses - crops - resize) in MS Word it went down to 2.32 MB in size.

 

Something I don't worry about in google docs since it doesn't count against storage space as mentioned before which is also the reason I don't compress the images or permanently resize them to begin with. (i don't do huge images)

 

@Syntaxvgm

even with images you're honestly doing something wrong to end up with documents that size. Still, a 1Tb drive would fit 200,000 5mb docs so, yea. 
An 8GB thumb drive 1600

My problem is docs is unreliable, and good luck downloading multiple at once, takes hours for it to zip for me sometimes. 

Even if word breaks I can edit the xml and all is good. 
I suppose I know about making small word docs from the floppy disc days. I'd say the real advantage of docs isn't size or storage or anything, it's having them available everywhere on multiple devices at once, and not likely to lose them. I did use them in college. 

[xriqn]

People buy office because it's industry standard. A decent alternative that's able to read and format M$'s formats 90% of the time is openoffice. Found it to be brilliant in a time when I couldn't afford M$ office.

[KWelz]

1 hour ago, KarathKasun said:

 

 

Until you actually try to use Office applications for more than "I need to write that English paper", you will not understand.

This sums it up quite well.   

 

[Jtalk4456]

1 hour ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

50% of the time you spend on your computer is probably on your browser regardless.

This is a very broad statement, and I would assume to be very wrong. The people I know who use office products enough to have an opinion use them all day long. Also libreoffice is awful at formatting, and google docs is awful at a number of things most of the time. Also most people use it for work, and most work places provide it either free or at a hefty discount (I got my copy for $10). As for the rest of people, most word processing users left over are students. Again most get it free or discounted through the school. The few students who don't get it still need word. It's formatting never messes up in my experience, and school papers are all about formatting. Of the ones who are neither in school or have it for work, there are very few, and most buy it when they buy the computer because they don't know better. Most people haven't heard of libre office. And a lot of people are confused by cloud word processing. 

[Dackzy]

Making a report about a big project in google docs is so annoying. Formatting is completely fucked if somebody without docs needs to open it, pictures are harder to get placed right, you can basically give up on putting in math formulas, at least the complicated ones. Docs from my experience only works okay for a plain text document that you don't need to have a certain layout for. Plus Microsoft offers you things like onedrive and Word online, granted Word online isn't great either, but I would use it over docs any time and with that you don't have to download a document. I honestly don't see how you can have too little storage for documents, are you filling your laptop up with games or programs you don't actually need?

 

I use Word, OneNote and Excel on a daily to weekly basis and I haven't tried anything that can compete with those offerings for what I do. Plus I also use OneDrive for easy backup and cross computer/platform sharing.

[Drak3]

MS office is worth paying for. It's better than just about all alternatives.

[Thunder_Ruler0]

21 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

those sizes are because of pictures, and will the be the same with any other wp! I have doc files that are multi pages with a lot of formatting and simple images that are under 100kb. 

doc files are just zip folders with assets and xml 

I use google docs for my job. The doc part is ok, sorta, but anything else like slides or sheets is a dumpster fire. 
Still broken as hell even if it works.

Maybe it is something that I am doing. I'm still trying to used to MS Word instead of google docs since I have it for free now like @Jtalk4456 mentioned many students are getting.

 

I've personally just never had any issues with Google Docs, the performance when you have documents that are some 70+ pages open is very poor as others had mentioned but that's only with really large documents from what i've seen. I've never had it be unreliable like other are talking about and if im not connected to the internet, yes I need to use google chrome since offline editing is exclusive to google chrome but even MS word has features that don't work offline like the help tab : /

 

I think students would be happy with google docs more than MS word, it's just my opinion, but I understand why M$ Office would be loved by many different companies given its a 'industry standard'.

[Mihle]

14 minutes ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

 

I think students would be happy with google docs more than MS word, it's just my opinion, but I understand why M$ Office would be loved by many different companies given its a 'industry standard'.

No, they won't. Many won't really care, but those that have a preference will most likely prefer office. How many of those that is willing to pay for it is something  else, but students basically get it for free  so it doesn't matter. It just works well.

Like someone else said, some things like getting the document to look as you want, photos and text to be where you want compared to eachother is just easier. It just works.

 

[flibberdipper]

1 hour ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

The average size for my documents hover around 2-7 MB not KB like you're suggesting. Why would I pay more than $70 yearly for a program just to type KB of stuff? Anyways, what critical thinking 'skillz' do I seem to be missing? You still haven't said one thing that would justify spending $150 once, or $70 a year on a word processor (yes I know it has other things but I'm talking about Word, Excel and Powerpoint).

 

You mentioned that using google docs back in high school was a trash fire. What was so bad about it? I don't see anything straightforward in any of your comments so far.

2-7MB per doc still isn't a lot my guy. Stop trying to make it seem like it's big.

 

And the fact that you think spending $150 for just three things is normal is downright retarded, considering you can generally find the Pro versions of 2010 (and 2013 if you hunt enough) for less than that and you get a whole lot more than just those three programs... Hell if you go back a bit farther than that and get an older version like 2007 and give up a few newer features, you can get shit for a LOT less. And having "proficient in Office" on a resume (where it's actually applicable) is a lot less likely to get it tossed in the bin compared to "proficient in Google Docs."

 

And you know, aside from how Docs kinda sucks offline (because believe it or not, not everywhere has internet), formatting shit is an actual pain in the ass the likes of which I have NEVER seen, performance all around is meh at best (especially when a document is being worked on by multiple people at once) the UI is pretty mediocre/clumsy (no customizable toolbars? Really?), it tends to freak out if you do large edits, the lack of an Access-like or Publisher "app" is kinda retarded, and 2-3 years ago when I did have to use it, sharing was an absolute failed abortion and worked maybe 50% of the time if you were lucky. And believe it or not, sharing shit with other people is kinda important when you have group projects.

Oh and lets not forget the handful of times the autosave feature screwed the pooch and made either myself or my group lose a fair chunk of work. You know, that thing autosave is supposed to prevent from happening.

[Syntaxvgm]

36 minutes ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

Maybe it is something that I am doing. I'm still trying to used to MS Word instead of google docs since I have it for free now like @Jtalk4456 mentioned many students are getting.

 

I've personally just never had any issues with Google Docs, the performance when you have documents that are some 70+ pages open is very poor as others had mentioned but that's only with really large documents from what i've seen. I've never had it be unreliable like other are talking about and if im not connected to the internet, yes I need to use google chrome since offline editing is exclusive to google chrome but even MS word has features that don't work offline like the help tab : /

 

I think students would be happy with google docs more than MS word, it's just my opinion, but I understand why M$ Office would be loved by many different companies given its a 'industry standard'.

I think for your uses, especially simple documents with text and photos, google docs is just fine. I personally use it for note taking and stuff like that to this day. I have a ton of desktops and 2 laptops I use daily as well as my work laptop, and it's just damn convenient. When I want to make a more formal document or something more complicated (or any spreadsheet) I use MS. 

[homeap5]

I really prefer to pay for something that start in 0.5 second than wait 10 second to some stupid LibreWrite / LibreCalc / whatever initialize.

And I'm also using VisualBasic.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

2 hours ago, homeap5 said:

I really prefer to pay for something that start in 0.5 second than wait 10 second to some stupid LibreWrite / LibreCalc / whatever initialize.

Curious. Both Office 2010 Word and Excell and LibreOffice apps open in three seconds on my notebook when opened for the first time after booting the computer. When reopening, LibreOffice apps come up faster than Office 2010.

[LogicalDrm]

Google Docs/Sheets lacks functionality compared to  MS Office and LibreOffice. Simple as that. They work for making notes and stuff like that. But using them to make stuff I need for college/uni or even for hobbies, nope.

 

Currently I'm on MS Office as I can get for free. The main advantage over LibreOffice is still better grammar support. I will probably use LibreOffice again after graduation.

[Jtalk4456]

16 hours ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

1. some 70+ pages open is very poor as others had mentioned but that's only with really large documents from what i've seen.

2. I've never had it be unreliable like other are talking about and if im not connected to the internet

3. but even MS word has features that don't work offline like the help tab : /

4. I think students would be happy with google docs more than MS word, it's just my opinion, but I understand why M$ Office would be loved by many different companies given its a 'industry standard'.

1. 70 pages of text is still a tiny file. A one page .doc file with normal formatting (i.e. paragraphs and headings and stuff) is about 26kB plus 4 kB per page, while for a .docx the size is about 10 kB plus 3kB per page. 70 pages would be about 300 kb or 1/3 mb. There's no excuse for a file of that size crashing.

2. You've been lucky. The track record is poor for most people

3. No one uses the help tab really, no one cares about those extra features. What's important is the main word processing functionality is made available offline, where google docs is not available offline

4. since most teachers give formatting templates in the form of word documents, the answer would be no. google docs is worst for students where the formatting rarely sticks and is literally part of the grade for most teachers

[Thunder_Ruler0]

2 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

1. 70 pages of text is still a tiny file. A one page .doc file with normal formatting (i.e. paragraphs and headings and stuff) is about 26kB plus 4 kB per page, while for a .docx the size is about 10 kB plus 3kB per page. 70 pages would be about 300 kb or 1/3 mb. There's no excuse for a file of that size crashing.

2. You've been lucky. The track record is poor for most people

3. No one uses the help tab really, no one cares about those extra features. What's important is the main word processing functionality is made available offline, where google docs is not available offline

4. since most teachers give formatting templates in the form of word documents, the answer would be no. google docs is worst for students where the formatting rarely sticks and is literally part of the grade for most teachers

1. I completely agree with you, performance in Google docs is poor in comparison to MS Word. Documents with lots of images tend to slow down a little but documents with text only don't really have this issue in my experience. And just yo be clear, "poor performance" means slow scrolling (which sometimes is super unbearable with older computers?) and loading times but typing and editing is just as responsive as normal.

 

2. As @tmcclelland455 said in one of his previous comments. I'm surprised that people seem to have issues with Google Docs not working for whatever reason and it's reliability. I know for a fact that Chrome OS + G-Docs is shit, so I'm completely disregarding it until google decides to fix the OS as a whole.

In the past 5-6 years that I've been using G-Docs, I've used it thoroughly on my old 2013 iMac, Thinkpad T430 both on Linux and Windows, an Acer Aspire One netbook running Lubuntu (for about 2 months while I was without a laptop), my old 2010 MacBook pro, and now my Dell XPS 15 without any real issues. Yes I know that performance was a problem on the 2010 macbook and the craptastic Lubuntu Netbook due to hardware, and yes I agree that using something like Libreoffice and Pages ran much smoother than G-Docs since it's not in a browser but the fact that I could just log in and have everything is damn convienient.

 

I've had a spreadsheet shared to some 13 people (for cataloging supplies at my local highschool  in G-Sheets) without any real issues. Something someone else mentioned they couldn't do in a class setting.

 

3.As a new user, I use it all the time, it's sometimes faster to search it than to look through the crammed panels. Same goes for G-Docs (im really just trying to learn all the keybinds still.)

 

You along with other users keep pointing out that G-Docs can't be used offline? I know that M$ Office can run some 70% offline but so can google docs, which seems to be a huge misconception. It's just limited within chrome offline - And if you don't like the browser feel it's not a real issue if you make the Docs page as a 'application' by creating a desktop shortcut anyways if you don't want to see the browser panels. The explore feature, and dictation are the only two things that cannot work offline.

[Jtalk4456]

52 minutes ago, Thunder_Ruler0 said:

1. I completely agree with you, performance in Google docs is poor in comparison to MS Word. Documents with lots of images tend to slow down a little but documents with text only don't really have this issue in my experience. And just yo be clear, "poor performance" means slow scrolling (which sometimes is super unbearable with older computers?) and loading times but typing and editing is just as responsive as normal.

 

2. As @tmcclelland455 said in one of his previous comments. I'm surprised that people seem to have issues with Google Docs not working for whatever reason and it's reliability. I know for a fact that Chrome OS + G-Docs is shit, so I'm completely disregarding it until google decides to fix the OS as a whole.

In the past 5-6 years that I've been using G-Docs, I've used it thoroughly on my old 2013 iMac, Thinkpad T430 both on Linux and Windows, an Acer Aspire One netbook running Lubuntu (for about 2 months while I was without a laptop), my old 2010 MacBook pro, and now my Dell XPS 15 without any real issues. Yes I know that performance was a problem on the 2010 macbook and the craptastic Lubuntu Netbook due to hardware, and yes I agree that using something like Libreoffice and Pages ran much smoother than G-Docs since it's not in a browser but the fact that I could just log in and have everything is damn convienient.

 

I've had a spreadsheet shared to some 13 people (for cataloging supplies at my local highschool  in G-Sheets) without any real issues. Something someone else mentioned they couldn't do in a class setting.

 

3.As a new user, I use it all the time, it's sometimes faster to search it than to look through the crammed panels. Same goes for G-Docs (im really just trying to learn all the keybinds still.)

 

You along with other users keep pointing out that G-Docs can't be used offline? I know that M$ Office can run some 70% offline but so can google docs, which seems to be a huge misconception. It's just limited within chrome offline - And if you don't like the browser feel it's not a real issue if you make the Docs page as a 'application' by creating a desktop shortcut anyways if you don't want to see the browser panels. The explore feature, and dictation are the only two things that cannot work offline.

like i said you're lucky if it's been working well for you. I've tried using everything from open office, to libre office to google docs. none of them work even half as well or have most of the major formatting and editing features that are simply necessary for most use cases. If you like it fine, but I didn't I tried them all, and then went right on back to word

Edit: Also it can't be forgotten that MSOffice comes with far more than just word and excel. It's a whole suite of extremely powerful and well functioning software. 

[Supportsneedlove]

I get you. In my opinion, google docs is way easier to use and much more convenient. 

[Teddy07]

I like MS office as I have never used something else. I would however never buy it for full price or a subscription. I bought office 2016 for 5 Euro on ebay and that is all that it is worth to me. Same is true for windows 10