Computers, The luddite and the genius.

[Rally]

We went all wireless a couple months ago. Had to change service providers, so had to change email address also. Never dawned on me that my "subscription" to office 365 couldn't get in touch with me before billing me for this years subscription, so my subscription, and all my office 365 timed out! That's an oops when I need to write beaver bids, but really rarely use it otherwise. So yesterday, had to do all the renewal stuff and tried to download it again, notice the tried part of that. Even left it on the downloading box all night, and much to my surprise, it was still there this morning??? I'm the luddite part of the title, and about 3 hours later, 2000 clicks, and a lot of words my mother thought I'd ever even know, I got in touch with a brilliant young lady (Anuj) at Microsoft India, who only took about 45 minutes to figure it out. We did that thing where she gets to run my puter remotely. I'm sure watching me do the two finger pecking while entering stuff on my end was quite amusing to her, but she never let on. She was quite impressive just watching her work on my screen. I could hear her talking to someone at one point, a supervisor I assumed, who was not aware of a glitch in the Office 365 program, but insisted she run a different course. I heard her reply to him something about the glitch and using a level two something to eliminate it, which she did promptly. Download took just a couple minutes, then she went through and explained, to the luddite on the other end, what the problem was. I still don't understand it, but told her I was better informed now. LOL I could barely keep track of the cursor as she worked. She just broke it down program by program and fixed everything the old email was attached to and could cause problems later. For all the talk about the younger generation that some of us older folks do, I was pretty impressed. They just have a different skill set. Don't believe it? Just give your 4 year old grandchild your laptop and sit and learn. While just waiting on the programs to download, I had to ask how long she had been working for Microsoft? She replied one year!!! She said they trained their employees well. Bravo Bill Gates.

 

[DougGuy]

You could have opted to download and install Libre Office, an open source package that does everything M$ office does, except it is FREE.

 

[Rally]

Now ya tell me! They have a customer support team too? Took me a couple years to figure out the on button.

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

Rally You and i are on the same playing field with computers. My son works in Computer Animation. He can get on my comp. from Georgia and fix problems also.
If it wasn't for learning bullet casting i still wouldn't know where the on button is.

 

[Rally]

I hear you Kevin. I have a half brother in Florida that writes code for banking systems. When he comes to visit he gets quite a giggle out of my computer skills. However, he fell out of the boat last time I took him fishing. I was laughing so hard I could barely help him back in the boat. In his defense he didn't lose my rod!

 

[Pistolero]

Glad that you found a competent person to fix up your computer.

People who work with computers, know computers. People who just USE computers usually don't
WANT to know "too much" because the computer is just a PITA way to get mail and news for many.

Me, I had to know what the heck was going on to do my engineering job, big computers, PCs and
all in between. I sorta care about what is going on, but I despise the direction that Win 8, Win8.1 and
Win 10 took so much that I absolutely refuse to install them on any of my computers.

I have installed and updated and used Win 8, 8.1 and 10 on various out of town relative's computers, but
that hardened my hatred for them all. Microsoft did NOT improve the user interface (the part that WE
see and use) with these products. They may have made the functional guts work better, not really sure,
but the User Interface irks me continuously.

Bill

 

[Rally]

Bill,
I would love to get to know how they are suppose to work, and in fact make all my business forms. Not a big deal to some, but what they cost to get done is scary. I just don't have the time, and messing with them winds me up some, so I do what I can and let my kids fix the rest. LOL About the time I get it figured out what each icon means/ does it will probably be obsolete.
I'm using windows 10 on this puter and the problem was a glitch in the Office 365 Home version. I had the download right but the glitch kept sending up a box said it was downloading and to wait! I don't wait well, but let it run overnight, and it was the same window in the morning. The tech (Anuj) broke it down as she worked and it was pretty cool to watch her work on my screen, and talk to her on my cell at the same time. I appreciate someone who is good at what they do, no matter if it is build rockets or skin muskrats. There is a difference in a good waitress and a bad one, just like a good doctor and a quack. I appreciate their efforts and talents, and it usually shows in their output.
I could hear her talking with someone in the background, I imagined a supervisor, that wanted her to run a certain regime of tests that didn't work, a couple times. She mentioned something to him about a glitch and going to a level two or something, and it worked the first time. I didn't hear him after that. I'm guessing he went away with his tail between his legs. It was amazing to me, just to watch how fast she could work. She got the job done and got my stuff working again. I have her work center number and name, I may just call her boss tomorrow and put in a good word for her.
I did manage to update my Ipad and Iphones today, even got them all sync'ed. Maybe there is hope for me yet, if I live that long!

 

[Pistolero]

It is good to watch a skilled practitioner work in any field, especially if you know enough to
compare to your owns skills.

Sounds like she had done this same thing, or something very similar before. I have gotten slugs who
just were reading a script more than a few times. They are not fun to work with, because they are generally
in as far over their heads as you are. As you said, a skilled person is fun to watch work well.

Often there are tutorials that you can run to learn more about a particular piece of software. But, IMO,
Win 10 is just harder to use than Win 7. Not sure what Office 365 is, have used MicroSoft Office for decades,
although have had a couple of "relearn from scratch" because they decide to entirely change all the
functions, menus and such - for no good reason except to CHANGE IT. I despise punk programmers who
cannot imagine that millions of users have many years of learned skill to use software quickly and efficiently
and when they rewrite the whole interface, they flush literally millions of dollars and hours of other people's
time and work down the toilet. But they DO NOT care.

I assume that Office 365 is some sort of a version of Microsoft Office, maybe a more affordable version with some
different characteristics.

Bill

 

[Rally]

I did the tutorial thing most of the morning, where I could ask questions on a screen and it gave me a set of things to try. Always ended up at the same place/screen with the program just running. Then got on a split screen chat, which couldn't fix it either, who sent me to Anuj. I also got a young Philipino one time who was definitely reading off a prompt screen, about a iPhone question. My mind doesn't comprehend their dialect, nor English women with the Whales accent very well, but we got my phone working correctly. LOL

 

[Pistolero]

I wasn't thinking so much of the tutorial helping you solve this problem as much as just learning
to use software better, more a general idea, not just for this situation. It is fairly clear that the software
was "effe up", and you were not going to work it out with an expert.

Bill

 

[Rally]

I think most of my problem is I don't know what all the icons and formats do. If I play with them awhile I can figure it out. I find Publisher to be rather entertaining. I finished up a big snare order today so got a chance to make a bid sheet for beaver jobs. Even put a picture of a beaver on it! Excel scares me! LOL

 

[Pistolero]

Ok, from your comments, I can tell that Office 365 is just a version of Office. Since you mentioned
Publisher (very useful at times) and Excel.

I have used Excel for decades, very powerful and useful tool.

I used to put out a newsletter to 7000 gun rights supporters in the state of KS, and put out the
newsletter each month with Publisher, so I learned to use it well.
Word can now do a bunch of things that used to be only in Publisher, too. Yes, adding photos
and such is a good thing in Publisher. I put out a Christmas letter each year to friends and family
and did it with Publisher for a long time, but now Word will do the relatively simple formatting
that I want, so just use Word. For more complex things like a multi column newsletter with articles
jumping to different pages, Publisher is better.

As an engineer, the math that Excel does is just wonderful. I have used it for many different
simulations of various engineering problems from designing a propeller to predicting and tracking
my retirement investment accounts and net worth. Very cool software.

And you mostly DO learn them from playing with the icons and see what they can do. Or if you
know what you want, use the help to see if they will tell you how to do it.

Bill

 

[Rally]

I play with Publisher more than anything else just to see what it can do, or import onto my business forms, which about anything. I used word more before but never really spent much time on it. I've barely played with Excel, it's way over my head, but my son, who is also an engineer (is the mine manager of Hibbing Taconite mine) tells me to play with it more just to get used to it. All of them would help promote my business, but I really don't need any more work.

 

[CZ93X62]

Computers and I have a love/hate relationship. I am NOT savvy at all. They love to mess with my mind, and I hate it when they do that. I suppose they have added quality to my life in some ways. If you note a tone of grudging acknowledgement in this post, I have succeeded in setting the mood correctly.

 

[Bret4207]

Bill, you hit the nail on the head. Change for the sake of CHANGE! I've sent a mess of responses/complaints to MS noting that probably 75% of their buyers/consumers/whatever probably just do a bare minimum on their computer. Read the news/forums, do some banking and email, watch a movie or do some shopping. That's about it for most people I believe. I'm not sure why anyone thinks we'd want a PC or laptop to look like a smart phone when the thing doesn't work like a phone in the first place. Different tools. But I suppose they have to provide the "NEW! IMPROVED!" version to get sales. They certainly haven't done us any favors by making things harder to use.

 

[KeithB]

I use OpenOffice, it's a free download that has virtually everything that that MS Office suite contains. I use it all the time, works great for me.

 

[JWFilips]

Plus one on Keith B! Open Office is the way to go and you can save in many other formats that are accessible by other programs