7 Best Alternatives To Microsoft Office Suite — 2019 Edition

In article , Ken Springer
wrote:

Have you ever tried voice input? It's something I've wanted to try for
a long time, but it's low on the priority list. The coupe times I've
tried it, I've found it difficult to find a list of the voice commands
available to the user.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised...

3 people thought they knew what I was talking about. None did.

don't keep everyone in suspense. explain what you were talking about.

You're smart, you figure it out.

i'm not interested in playing your games.

Nor I, yours.

no games here whatsoever.

you mentioned voice input then criticized people for misinterpreting
what you supposedly meant yet refuse to explain what that actually is.

it's very clear who is playing games and who is not.

On Sun, 8 Dec 2019 10:36:58 -0700, Ken Springer
wrote:

On 12/8/19 9:16 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sun, 8 Dec 2019 14:09:30 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
wrote:

On 2019-12-08, Char Jackson wrote:
It's not hard to tap, double tap, long tap, swipe up/down/left/right, and
those are just about all the things you need to master.

I don't have time for that crap. I loathe touch screens.

When I'm sitting in front of my computer and my phone is also within reach,
it's the phone that I reach for 9 times out of 10 because I get my answer
so much faster on the phone. I can type a word at a time rather than a
letter at a time, or better yet, I use voice input and don't have to type
anything at all. If you don't have time for that, you surely don't have
time for standard PC (kb, mouse) input.

Have you ever tried voice input?

On my Android phone? Yes, about two dozen times a day. Since it's Google
powered, you just speak naturally. That always works, assuming an Internet
connection. OTOH, the satnav system in my car has a finite set of commands
that it understands. As a result, I tend to not use voice there.

It's something I've wanted to try for
a long time, but it's low on the priority list. The coupe times I've
tried it, I've found it difficult to find a list of the voice commands
available to the user.

For my car's satnav, the list of commands is in the owner's manual. The
Android phone has no list. I assume Win 10 is similar in that regard. You
just ask your question and get the answer.

--

Have you been approached by David Brooks (DB, ~DB~, and 50+ other nyms)?

To prevent yourself from being a victim of cyber
stalking, it's highly recommended that you visit he

https://tekrider.net/pages/david-brooks-stalker.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20191103112509/https://tekrider.net/pages/david-brooks-stalker.php

On Sun, 8 Dec 2019 20:10:17 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
wrote:

On 2019-12-08, Ken Blake wrote:
I loathe touch screens on desktop computers or laptops. But as far as
I'm concerned, they're fine on handheld devices such as smart phones.

They probably are, but I have no handheld devices. Don't have a touch
screen (or any computerized device) in my car, either, just a radio
and tape player.

8-tracks are cool.

Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| Yes. The attention to detail is a delight. I'm not
| wild about hiring a 12-year-old girl to design cutesy,
| Looney Tunes icons, but aside from that it's almost
| astonishingly tasteful.
|
| Imo, the quality of the icon design has gone downhill over the last few
| years. Not just Apple, but every where. They are no longer visually
| intuitive.
|

That's odd, isn't it, given that they're often bigger and
could have more detail. I saw a Microsoft icon recently
that was something like a blue oval topped by a blue disk.
It's supposed to represent "people". Maybe that's an
internationalization thing. If they got any more specific
someone might complain about sexism, racism, hair-colorism,
fattism, thinnism, or some new ism. So icons are becoming
like symbols on car dashboards. They're a great equalizer
because no one understands them.

| A few years ago I tried Suse and noticed that was
| also much better looking on the same hardware as
| Windows. I don't know why Windows graphics are not
| better. But it does seem that with Mac you get better
| display and better design. Maybe MS make a point of
| making it look generic. Like a pickup truck or sedan.
| The design says, "get something done".
|
| Since the hardware was the same, isn't that an indication the answer is
| in the quality of the driver's code?
|
Certainly seems that way. But Microsofties seem to
write brilliant code, from what I can see. So it doesn't
seem to make sense.

Given Microsoft's historical and continued shambles with updates and
software decisions, not sure how you can say that without your tongue
embedded in your cheek.

Having said that their newly released *open source* Visual Studio Code is a
very powerful IDE. I wanted to hate it, but it's now my go-to.

On 09/12/2019 04:46, Ken Springer wrote:
On 12/8/19 9:15 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Ken Springer
wrote:

Have you ever tried voice input?Â* It's something I've wanted to
try for
a long time, but it's low on the priority list.Â* The coupe times I've
tried it, I've found it difficult to find a list of the voice
commands
available to the user.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised...

3 people thought they knew what I was talking about.Â* None did.

don't keep everyone in suspense. explain what you were talking about.

You're smart, you figure it out.

i'm not interested in playing your games.

Nor I, yours.

A civil conversation is worth its weight in gold!

Do try it, Ken.

On 09/12/2019 01:21, Beauregard T. Shagnasty - still wriggling!
David wrote:

Amazing what happens when the truth is told!

It certainly is. You should start sometime soon.

[rest not worthy of a reply]

Other readers of Usenet groups will eventually question *WHY* you,
someone who doesn't ever use Microsoft Windows, deems it ethical to
INSTRUCT newbies in the mysteries of one of /the/ most vulnerable
operating systems on the planet.

=

*WHY* does a Linux aficionado promote a website discussing Windows?

You don't even HIDE the fact that you are doing it! www.tekrider.net

I *DO* tell the truth.

Now it's *YOUR* turn.

--
David

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Ken Springer wrote:
On 12/7/19 7:43 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| I'll admit, it was a single thing I saw with the iMac that sold me. The
| quality of the display. The image was astounding, far better than
| anything I'd seen with a Windows system.

Yes. The attention to detail is a delight. I'm not
wild about hiring a 12-year-old girl to design cutesy,
Looney Tunes icons, but aside from that it's almost
astonishingly tasteful.

Imo, the quality of the icon design has gone downhill over the last few
years. Not just Apple, but every where. They are no longer visually
intuitive.

Were they ever though? I mean, about the only one that I can recall
(ever) looking like what it's supposed to be is trash / recycle bin.

Everything else I can think of is either a logo of some sort that really
doesn't mean anything (e.g. the "E" logo for IE, or the Chrome logo,
etc.)

Maybe I'm just too young for the meaningful logos


A few years ago I tried Suse and noticed that was
also much better looking on the same hardware as
Windows. I don't know why Windows graphics are not
better. But it does seem that with Mac you get better
display and better design. Maybe MS make a point of
making it look generic. Like a pickup truck or sedan.
The design says, "get something done".

Since the hardware was the same, isn't that an indication the answer is
in the quality of the driver's code?

Well, that, or the actual images used for the icons themselves.


A lot of that was database software. Microsoft bent over
backward to make it possible for people to write highly
functional software by pasting together components. They've
always provided lots of tools for all levels of expertise.

Some businesses will have departments create a database or two in Access
for a department's use. I know of one, anyway. Then they fired the
person who created it. She left no instructions about it either. Hope
they never need to modify it. LOL

In my experience, those departments just happen to have someone who
knows enough to write up an access tool to get them away from poorly
designed spreadsheets.


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|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
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David wrote:
On 09/12/2019 04:46, Ken Springer wrote:
On 12/8/19 9:15 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Ken Springer
wrote:

Have you ever tried voice input? It's something I've wanted to
try for
a long time, but it's low on the priority list. The coupe times
I've
tried it, I've found it difficult to find a list of the voice
commands
available to the user.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised...

3 people thought they knew what I was talking about. None did.

don't keep everyone in suspense. explain what you were talking about.

You're smart, you figure it out.

i'm not interested in playing your games.

Nor I, yours.

A civil conversation is worth its weight in gold!

Do try it, Ken.

It should be pretty obvious by now, you're "on the short leash".

It's got nothing to do with being civil.

We've already been through umpteen examples of you
going to a forum and getting banned. Where is the
entertainment value in that ???

Don't expect anyone else to enjoy such antics.

Paul

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Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote
| I wish I would win the lottery. Then I could hire maids and handymen,
| so I would have the time to learn more about Linux. LOL
|

I explored it a fair amount but ended up feeling that
it was a big time sucker. Everything changes. Everything
requires tweaking.
So, your basic progression of "new stuff changes". I mean, it's not like
Windows behaves the same as XP (or 7) these days.

Nothing is simple because the people who use it like to feel like
coding commandos.

I haven't run into that myself ... maybe I got lucky.

So everyone brags about using a "shell", by which they mean a console
window where they run DOS-esque commands.

Which can be the "easier" approach (in terms of less effort on your
part) than using a GUI. Granted, there are hurdles to the effect of
"user is familiar with both GUI and shell such that they can
differentiate when one is easier".

The problem I always ran into was that once I got settled and
comfortable there just wasn't anything to do. No software to speak
of. There are thousands of half-finished things created by geeks and
teenagers trying to impress their friends. But not much in terms of
stable, supported, finished productivity software.

I suppose this depends on what you define as "productivity software"
(and, more specifically, what you actually have to do). I find that
LaTeX and vim are typically easier to use to get what I want out of
documentation than MS Word (but then again, I've always had a dislike of
software that in trying to be helpful gets in the way).

But it took (a lot of) time and trial-and-error to wrap my head around,
and is certainly not something for everyone. But hey, neither is cherry
pie, or chocolate ice cream; so if "* Office" works for you, then have
at it

Even the OS itself gets very limited support.

This certainly depends on the distro you choose. Some are better than
others -- although if you're looking for "professional" support, that's
pretty much limited to Red Hat.

It's beta mania. I've always thought of it as the race
car owned by a greasemonkey -- always on the front lawn
with Bondo and primer on it; never actually being driven.

Again, this will be defined by your choice of distro. You can either get
the bleeding-edge "beta mania" types; or the plodding-along "it's been
stable for 4 years" types.


| Didn't desktop publishing get it's start with Macs?
|

Probably. And graphics. But that was way back when Apple

"Desktop Publishing" being a graphical environment? I think Xerox or
Sun was "first" in that regard. Apple just took it away from them
pretty quick (and the whole "IBM (clone) with MS Windows" thing didn't
really help anyone out).

was ahead of Windows with graphics. They ended up having
a reputation for being superior for a long time. Long after

IIRC, the reputation was well earned -- the M68k and later PPC chips had
better pipelines when it came to graphics processing than the Intel x86
processors of the day.

want their own control. Macs never became popular until
there was a market for casual entertainment use of
computers.

I recall them being pretty popular when I was a kid -- couldn't find a
school around here that didn't have apple ]['s in the computer lab.


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|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
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On 09/12/2019 05.15, nospam wrote:
In article , Rene Lamontagne
wrote:


I don't see many teletype RO 35 printers
hanging around much anymore, Not to mention Teletype ASR 33s, or
Interdata 7/16 computers with magnetic core memory or Honeywell Alpha
2000s, Need I go on? :-)

that's up to you.

Ah, those were the good old days, with so much exciting new stuff to
learn and work with. I started on computers in 1975. :-)

that hasn't changed. in fact, now there's much *more* exciting new
stuff to learn and work with, things that people could never have
imagined back then.


No. It is not the same thing, by far.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 09/12/2019 05.15, nospam wrote:
In article , Carlos E.R.
wrote:


Something that some people need someone to demo in person before not
being afraid of trying. God forbid if something goes bad and they can't
stop the printer. Pull the plug! And the daft thing continues printing
the one thousand page book (the wrong book) after being plugged again.

that's a stretch.

It happened to me, actually. Took me a way to find where the printer
spooler was and could reset it. Windows 3 or 95 perhaps, I don't remember.

once in 25 years, not exactly a major issue. as i said, it's a stretch.

Because now I now know how to stop it fast, and because I use Linux
instead :-p


Somebody had designed the system so that if the printer failed, on power
up it would resume printing on the same page it had stopped.

that's a desirable feature.

Depends...

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 09/12/2019 06.02, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sun, 8 Dec 2019 10:36:58 -0700, Ken Springer
wrote:

On 12/8/19 9:16 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sun, 8 Dec 2019 14:09:30 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
wrote:

On 2019-12-08, Char Jackson wrote:
It's not hard to tap, double tap, long tap, swipe up/down/left/right, and
those are just about all the things you need to master.

I don't have time for that crap. I loathe touch screens.

When I'm sitting in front of my computer and my phone is also within reach,
it's the phone that I reach for 9 times out of 10 because I get my answer
so much faster on the phone. I can type a word at a time rather than a
letter at a time, or better yet, I use voice input and don't have to type
anything at all. If you don't have time for that, you surely don't have
time for standard PC (kb, mouse) input.

Have you ever tried voice input?

On my Android phone? Yes, about two dozen times a day. Since it's Google
powered, you just speak naturally. That always works, assuming an Internet
connection. OTOH, the satnav system in my car has a finite set of commands
that it understands. As a result, I tend to not use voice there.

It's something I've wanted to try for
a long time, but it's low on the priority list. The coupe times I've
tried it, I've found it difficult to find a list of the voice commands
available to the user.

For my car's satnav, the list of commands is in the owner's manual. The
Android phone has no list. I assume Win 10 is similar in that regard. You
just ask your question and get the answer.

Yes, that's it.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

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Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| Though I think your Spanish ANSI would
| probably work OK for me. Tilde, for example, is in the
| English ANSI system. Presumably they had the sense to
| use the same character codes in all Euro ANSI codepages.
|
| That's because "we English" pave over the language of
| other people. That's how, magically, everything we
| type "can be represented in ASCII".

No. What I mean is that the basic English codepage includes
most Euro characters in the 128+ range.

Sure, but that's not typically considered to be the "ASCII" characterset
anymore. At least as I recall, "ASCII" is only the characters contained
in the lower 128 bits (0x00 to 0x7f) of the larger "ANSI English"
character set (well, in Windows as codepage 1250 or something. As I
recall, ANSI never released anything after the draft -- it got rolled
into ISO8859)

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Carlos E.R. wrote:
[...]
Like people that call me to extract the photos from the camera or phone,
because the camera is full and refuses to take more photos. They always
see the photos on the phone or camera.

Camera was easy with my parents. Conversation went something like this:

"Yeah, mom, remember the 35mm you replaced?"
".. yes..."
"How many pictures fit on a roll?"
"... I dunno, 20-something."
"Right, so what did you do after you took 20 pictures?"
"Oh, well it re-wound the film and wouldn't take any more until I
(dawning realization)... replaced ... the ... film... "
"Yep! So your new digital camera has "film" that stores a hundred
pictures, instead of 25. Go in your camera bag, and swap out
the 'Compact Flash' card -- that's what this one uses as film."
"Oh great! It's working again!"

(Thankfully, I was only away at college or something, so getting the 256
MB of pictures off onto her computer only waited til like Christmas).


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In article , Carlos E.R.
wrote:

I don't see many teletype RO 35 printers
hanging around much anymore, Not to mention Teletype ASR 33s, or
Interdata 7/16 computers with magnetic core memory or Honeywell Alpha
2000s, Need I go on? :-)

that's up to you.

Ah, those were the good old days, with so much exciting new stuff to
learn and work with. I started on computers in 1975. :-)

that hasn't changed. in fact, now there's much *more* exciting new
stuff to learn and work with, things that people could never have
imagined back then.


No. It is not the same thing, by far.

i didn't say it was the same.

i said there's *more* new stuff to learn now than ever before (a *lot*
more), which can do things that were once deemed impossible.