Computer operating systems

[GiveMeABreak]

You have to watch for non-365 versions (usually the older stand alone products) as pirates and dodgy IT admins often sell you a licence key on places like ebay, intended for corporate volume licensing. When Microsoft get wind of it they will disable it, leaving you with a trial version and 30 days to purchase a valid key.

With Office 365 you are basically renting the software and this way you are always using the latest version and features, so no need for upgrades. You can also get a family subscription too which is a lot cheaper.

[mickthemaverick]

Bear in mind that 365 is an online resource and your documents and spreadsheets are stored on the cloud with the related security risks involved!!

[MattBLancs]

Also bear in mind that O365 will demand you shut it, outlook, teams and various other things down at regular intervals for "essential updates". No it won't wait. No it doesn't care you've opened Office to do something useful, oh no, flipping updates are top of the list.
Note you will unlikely ever see any discernable difference in the updated version.


Have Office 365 in work computers and I hate it. Also seems disproportionately slow opening some times (and not others) though this aspect could be company provided add ins that are slowing it down.


I'm yet to be convinced there's anything positive about a cloud based Office solution, other than a handy way to sign folks up to regularly drip feed funds to Microsoft.


So I recommend anything else! Use Open Office on my home machine, admittedly for shorter periods and my livelihood doesn't depend on it, but it seems "fine".

[mickthemaverick]

Totally agree there Matt. I still run office 2003 and it works just as well as it ever did!!

[GiveMeABreak]

Unfortunately it's all going that way chaps. And I should say that personally, I prefer to have a standalone product, having used all version of office. I currently have Pro Plus 2019 and will be sticking with that, but I still have my Office 2003 and 2010 setups for sentimental reasons.

You don't have to save in the cloud of course - you can save locally, but business implementations of 365 can be different to the personal versions don't forget.

[Ross_K]

For those of you who use Office 365 at work, school or college - you might not know that most 365 subscriptions allow you to install it on up to five devices (which can be at home ).

Just log in at https://www.office.com/ and download the installer file for PC or Mac. When the install is finished, just open Word and log in with the same email address/password you use at work/school/college.

Or you could use LibreOffice (the successor to OpenOffice), which is perfectly fine for most uses

[MattBLancs]

For those of you who use Office 365 at work, school or college - you might not know that most 365 subscriptions allow you to install it on up to five devices (which can be at home ).

Just log in at https://www.office.com/ and download the installer file for PC or Mac. When the install is finished, just open Word and log in with the same email address/password you use at work/school/college.

Or you could use LibreOffice (the successor to OpenOffice), which is perfectly fine for most uses

Ah yes, we've been offered that "Home Use agreement" but I've had my fill of it during the working week!

You don't have to save in the cloud of course - you can save locally, but business implementations of 365 can be different to the personal versions don't forget.

Oh yes, I'm pretty sure work's IT department have done their best to knock all the functionality out of it!

[Paul-R]

Totally agree there Matt. I still run office 2003 and it works just as well as it ever did!!

So do I! It has a much nicer interface compared to the space hogging ribbons of later versions and I defy anyone to find a simple way of converting a complete document from US English to UK English.

Despite being told otherwise, I was able to get running in a 64 bit environment. Add-ins mean I can work with later XLSX and DOCX formats and the competing ODF format as well.

[myglaren]

You have to watch for non-365 versions (usually the older stand alone products) as pirates and dodgy IT admins often sell you a licence key on places like ebay, intended for corporate volume licensing. When Microsoft get wind of it they will disable it, leaving you with a trial version and 30 days to purchase a valid key.

With Office 365 you are basically renting the software and this way you are always using the latest version and features, so no need for upgrades. You can also get a family subscription too which is a lot cheaper.

Exactly what he is concerned about.

[myglaren]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

He has it on his work laptop but hates Windows, wants it on his Mac for personal use.
I dread to suggest Libre Office although that is what I use.

The comments here make me glad I dumped MS. I will pass them on to him though.

[myglaren]

This from The Register:

Cult dad rockers the Pixies have apologized to a Google Pixel owner for repeatedly turning off their smartphone's alarm in the morning, presumably when they have important stuff to do.

While this might sound like a gaggle of out-of-shape 50-somethings standing over a sleeping beauty and snoozing their wake-up call out of spite, the reality is a little more mundane if not wonderfully serendipitous.

Posting on the dedicated subreddit for Google's flagship smartphone, user "asevarte" explained their predicament:

For the past few months, I could not figure out why on random days, with seemingly no reason, sometimes my alarm would either not go off, or turn itself off very quickly. Maybe once every other week or so, I would wake up 30 minutes later on my backup alarm, with no indication as to why the first shut itself off.

Well this morning, I woke up about 5 minutes before my alarm went off, and I have cracked the code.

Anybody else who has also twigged what is going on here by now must have both an abiding love for late '80s/early '90s alternative rock and a deep understanding of Pixel features – a vanishingly slim overlap in the Venn diagram.

You see, the author's alarm starts a Spotify playlist. And on that playlist is a widely celebrated little ditty by the Pixies about snorkeling called "Where Is My Mind?" If you're not familiar with the song for its appearance on their absolute smasher of a debut album Surfer Rosa, you've probably heard it as part of the Fight Club soundtrack.

What's unique about the track in this instance, aside from the iconic lead guitar part, is that it opens with "Ooooohhh- STOP!" before the actual song starts, perhaps the result of some minor recording mishap that the band decided to leave in.

Google in its infinite wisdom scrapped the need to say "Hey Google!" before stopping or snoozing an Assistant alarm with the Pixel 6, but obviously didn't account for the clarity with which Black Francis barks the command – because, to be fair to them, it's a bit of a fringe case.

"My Pixel has been hearing that 'stop' and turning the alarm off. Since it's a playlist on shuffle, it only comes up every once in a while, so it's not happening every morning," the Redditor reported.

Android Police and comments on the post confirmed the issue, while we'll have to take their word for it as elite iPhone enjoyers. Amusingly, a lot of people in the thread expressed frustration that they can't get the feature to work with their own voices, but hey, that's Android for you.

Black Francis aka Frank Black aka Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV was probably googling himself when he came across the matter, leading the Pixies' Twitter account to say: "Sorry about that!" ®

[mickthemaverick]

Although amusing to third parties I bet that was b****y irritating for the chap. However, no sympathy from Maverick Manor, the sort of thing you have to live with if you open your house to G****e monitoring!!
PS. He'd be better off with one of these:

BFTW

[CitroJim]

I never use or need an alarm clock... That's been the case all of my life... The very thought of waking up unnaturally to something making a noise is abhorrent...

[myglaren]

Same here Jim. I do have one but never set the alarm.
I always knew what time it was, even waking in the middle of the night, always within ten minutes, and could always wake at whatever time I wanted without using any alarm devices.
My mother was the same.
Not so accurate now though.

[CitroJim]

Same here Jim. I do have one but never set the alarm.
I always knew what time it was, even waking in the middle of the night, always within ten minutes, and could always wake at whatever time I wanted without using any alarm devices.
My mother was the same.
Not so accurate now though.

That's exactly me Steve