Hardly a new opinion, but goddammit…
2 years into Windows 11’s launch, and we still are yet to see many features that Microsoft promised. Why? Why Microsoft?
What happened to testing shit before releasing it?! What happened to making a good release worthy Product that could potentially get improvements over time?
WHY DID YOU ABANDON WINDOWS 10 WITH LITTLE TO NO EXPLANATION?!
I still cannot uninstall apps without being diverted to the fucking Control Panel. Seriously Microsoft?! You ALREADY have the “Add or Remove Programs” page, AND SOMEHOW YOU CAN’T LINK THAT UP?!
Oh! oh! Get this! You couldn’t uninstall more than one app on the Control Panel because devices couldn’t handle it back then. And you STILL CAN’T DO THAT!
And while we’re on the subject of disappointment, WHY IS MICROSOFT EXCEL the most powerful piece of shit?!
It can do mind-blowing tasks in seconds, but god forbid you want to undo an action in another Workbook after doing an action in the current Workbook. Because the Action history for all workbooks open at the same time IS THE SAME.
SO IF I DELETED SOMETHING IN BOOK1 AND DID 5 DIFFERENT THINGS IN BOOK2, I CANNOT UNDO THE DELETION IN BOOK1 WITHOUT UNDOING ALL THE 5 THINGS I DID IN BOOK 2!
why??
BECAUSE FUCK YOU THAT’S WHY!
You also cannot SHIFT+SCROLL to scroll horizontally, on a program that famously has more horizontal real estate than vertical. (Even OneNote has this fucking dumb issue. HOW DO YOU LAUNCH AN INFINITE CANVAS NOTE TAKING APP WITHOUT HORIZONTAL SCROLLING?! HUH?!). And this is present everywhere else in Windows. EVERYWHERE ELSE. Except where you’d need it the most.
Plus, if you have one window active, and scroll on another, the inactive window will scroll. This is the default behaviour of Windows. YET ON MICROSOFT EXCEL, YOU CAN ONLY SCROLL THE ACTIVE WINDOW. Whether or not you are actually SCROLLING OVER THE WINDOW is just not important.
Why Microsoft?! Why?!
Still the delightful process of install windows 11, check for updates, install 20, reboot, check for updates, install 5, reboot, check for updates, install 1, reboot, check for updates (why are there now 5???)
Every other OS has a single pass to update, and usually you can plug in repositories for applications to keep them up to date as well, all in one pass, with one command…
It seems like you aren’t enjoying your time with Windows and Excel. Are you able to try alternatives like LibreOffice or Linux? Or even Apple? (I like Apple even less, but you might enjoy it!)
I love F# and .Net a lot, but we can admit that Microsoft won’t always do everything right - and on those occasions, it’s worth trying alternative products.
I’m big on alternatives. I tried libreoffice and I love it, but it’s not Excel. No VBA, so it’s hard to make macros work. I’m fine with that… But my main machine has to be Windows due to my job. I don’t have the money for a secondary machine yet… And dual booting isn’t really my thing. I have this feeling that dual booting Linux will impact Windows. (Anything can happen with Windows and I’m really not ready for that).
As for Apple, fuck no. I might actually kill myself.
I can tell you from experience that dual booting is nothing to worry about!
- Make sure you install Windows first - if you’re already running Windows, you’re good here.
- When installing Linux, make a Live USB to try it on your machine before installation. Keep the USB. (There’s a Windows program called Rufus that’s excellent for flashing ISOs to USB.) Also make sure your Linux distro of choice is friendly with dual booting - in my experience, Linux Mint is great for it, and QubesOS definitely isn’t.
- The main risk is that a future BIOS update will cause your system to forget its boot configuration. The USB you made on step 2 will save you - look for a program called BootRepair. It’ll fix your system. You can also flash BootRepair by itself onto a USB if you want, but Live USBs usually come with it anyway for this exact case.
That said, if this is a work machine, they might not appreciate you doing all this to their computer. Running a small distro on a VM might meet your needs. (My Mint bias compels me to recommend Linux Mint XFCE for this purpose.)
Love the energy here, but let’s be honest they abandoned Windows 10 to sell PCs. Even if MS actually thought Windows 10 would be the last version (which even they did, apparently that was the perception internally in MS), that was bad news for OEMs because people had no reason to upgrade. I’m sure the OEMs were one of the reasons they pushed to get Win 11.
IMO the only reason that Windows 11 released without much protest from non corporate user base was because of the pandemic. People had been abandoning desktop PCs for mobile (or iPad) for a long time even if the mobile experience was inferior, but with everything happening at home they realised they might just need a computer and it was a perfect time to buy. They didn’t care about how half baked the OS was because whatever was missing mostly affected power users.
This made consumers happy, the Windows upgrade made OEMs happy, the (near arbitrary) processor requirements made hardware manufacturers happy, and the TPM requirement made corporates happy (because S3CUR1TY). Win win.
So I’m not alone when I freaked out this morning because a file refused to save in Excel this morning. From what I can surmise, some kind of onedrive issue.
I’m using Office cause compatibility hassles are more annoying that the occasional dumb thing from MS. But these dumb things are slowly becoming less occasional.
