My Microsoft Office 365 woes: Constant crashes, malware macros – and settings from Hell Microsoft Office remains one of the most important software products available, despite some rather nasty flaws. For me, Microsoft Office and video games anchor me to Windows. While video games seem set to remain largely Windows-only for the foreseeable future, Office is losing its grip. For a long time, I used Office because …
couldn't something like Thunderbird or Evolution do what you want? Thunderbird works very well for POP and IMAP, and I haven't seen anything in the calendar extension for Thunderbird that lacks usability. So maybe the thing you want is an even BIGGER/BETTER calendar extension for T-bird? There might be one available. It's worth checking into, I think.
I've been using Open/Libre office on non-windows systems for a long time. It does what I need, and seems to have BETTER compatibility for "that type of document", i.e. NOT being forced to "UP"grade just to read a particular document format. I had that happen with Office '95, so I bought '97, and ended up with (@#$*(&^(*@#$) CLIPPY on my desktop, when '95 worked perfectly well. Eventually, '97 stopped working properly with XP machines that had 1Gb or more of RAM, so I simply started using Open/Libre Office on Windows machines as well. I *NEVER* went back.
seems like "lack of a mail client" that you like is a nice OPPORTUNITY for the Mozilla project, or for T-bird addon makers. I'm sure that a 'pay for' add-on is WAY cheaper than your 365 subscription.
The problem comes when you need to interoperate with Exchange users. They have their own, proprietary calendar protocol that nothing else speaks well. You *can* send invitations back and forth, and they'll sort of work, but you can't get free/busy information or any of the other things that corporate calendaring systems rely on.
In general calendaring is still a set of walled gardens, with everyone having to be on the same vendor's system for things to work. Even stuff that should work together in theory, like iCal and Google Calendar, mostly only works one way. (You can sync from Google to iCal, but iCal can't sync changes back.)
It's true that finding something that isn't Outlook which will play well with Exchange is difficult, but it's not impossible. At the office, I've used both Evolution and Thunderbird (with an addon called "Exchange EWS Provider") to interact with Exchange calendaring. I can see free/busy information and I can reply to calendar invites. Both clients also have full IMAP support. Ironically I have less problems with Exchange than my Mac using colleagues do with iCal.
I'm hoping another outfit adopts Thunderbird and gives it the love it needs to improve. Like the author, I've done periodic research into different email clients and haven't found an alternative I like better that's cross-platform.
I've tried the Exchange EWS provider. It's picky. It's usable if you sacrifice enough virgins to it and don't look at it funny, but not what I'd call stable. I never understood this because Android can talk to Exchange without any problems whatsoever, so I never got why Thunderbird would only update the calendar when it felt like it.
Also: trying to sync both exchange and gmail calendars on the same Thunderbird? This ends very badly. With Outlook I can use gsyncit. Not the greatest, but it mostly works. I have yet to convince Thunderbird to play ball. :(
Simple: sticking your neck out. Obviously IBM kit is good because they look credible. Actually you can replace IBM kit for any other good looking commercial thingamagick.
Open source is scary because you actually need to know what the heck you're talking about. And if the shit does hit the fan then it'll be on your plate. Because you took it "as is". Obvious result: "Its not my responsibility IBM kit no workie, we need to sue! (and not fire me for not doing my homework)".
The great thing about much open-source software is that there's no big deal about rescuing data if shit should meet fan. Data is usually in a form that can be recovered, and reinstalling an open-source application is generally a doddle.
Compare this with Office 2016 where reinstallation following some hiccup takes hours, followed by the hoops required to convince MS that you are entitled to perform the reinstallation and activate the software. Oh, and has one ever had to use the Inbox Repair Tool?
"Office 2016 where reinstallation following some hiccup takes hours, followed by the hoops required to convince MS that you are entitled to perform the reinstallation and activate the software"
Actually had to do that twice this week. Both times took around 10 minutes from start to finish. This was the complete reinstall/repair option. All sorted.
Something might be wrong at your end.
Ok, perhaps you were lucky. Let me elaborate, with two examples:-
(1) My client bought a handful of pc's from a big, very reputable manufacturer. Office 2016 was bundled on them and the licence keys arrived separately in "sealed" cardboard envelopes. (The "seal" was the standard packaging tape you can buy from a typical stationers, once the cardboard packaging was opened the product keys were clearly visible through a sealed plastic envelope). Initial installation went seamlessly and I successfully activated MS Office. A week later my client was saying that the package would disable if not activated within x days.
MS servers seemed to either have amnesia over the details I'd originally used to activate the software, or I was being told that this particular key had been used too many times. This choice of response was inconsistent depending on the steps by which I troubleshooted this issue and so I reinstalled MS Office after trying to get hold of a support representative. This caused similar messages.
It turned out that there was an alleged possibility that the product keys had been eyeballed and used by third parties at some stage between manufacture and receipt by my client.
The period between installation and final resolution of the problem was measured in DAYS, not minutes.
(2) A client came in one morning to find their pc had been upgraded [sic] to Windows 10. "Ugh, what's this?" she asked. I put it back to Windows 7 again (no problem there), but Office 16 got the right hump and refused to work. Got it working again after some coaxing :-
"If you are experiencing problems with your application, try uninstalling and reinstalling it."
Uninstall Office16.
Error: Office 16 is not installed.
Install Office 16.
Error: Office 16 cannot be installed as it is already installed.
Interestingly it seems nobody with pointy hair or a suit ever seems to want to commit to their data having value when a Microsoft product destroys it.
If Firefox has as much as a hiccup and they throw a hissy fit, but losing their entire career's worth of everything because of a Microsoft product upgrade means nothing.
Sometimes I can even detect some guilty sense of relief, that all the crap they ever produced is now gone without chance of recovery, so none of it can come to haunt them...
I had a 'licensing issue' arise on my PC Sunday night and ended up having to re-install the OS and everything from scratch including MS Office. On my MAC, my Office constantly fails if the computer is not connected to the internet to validate the licensing although I have not had to reinstall the software due to a license validation issue yet. But in the case of the PC, the installer software has been buggy in the past and common functionality (like clicking a file to open the corresponding Office application) has failed due to the Office 2016 to Office 2013 upgrade process not working in Windows 10. In order to sort out that mess, it took a clean install of the OS to get 2016 to install correctly. Not a great product if you ask me.
> And if the shit does hit the fan then it'll be on your plate. Because you took it "as is".
How is that different to MS telling me to piss off - I PAY (my client pays) FSCK'ing dosh to MS Support to get told to F off ???? HELLO???? Don't get me wrong, this was for a customer's file server that was paging like shit ... with 32Gb of RAM ... I repeat, Windows 2008 R2 file server, paging the shit while having 32Gb of RAM ... I replaced that box with Suse, 4Gb of RAM, CPU 5 years older ... customer happy. We put Suse on the former Windows file server with a bunch of containers ...
yes, customer pays Shitloads for me to come over and fix shit, but I have always made sure I replace at least one MS server, so they recoup their expenses for me ... What I work, MS loses 10 fold in cash flow!
PS: I hate Suse, with a passion, but customer wanted that ... I would have unleashed Jessie!
Nobody got fired for buying IBM..
I know plenty of people that got fired for buying IBM lotus notes and IBM CM Synergy...
The point is, things change. 15 years ago, Microsoft and IBM were safe purchases, those days are long gone.
Take a look how poor TFS is compared to Atlassian suite.
Take a look at how poor internet explorer and edge are compared to google chrome
When I moved to Linux, I was suffering from Outlook withdrawal, too. I solved it by using Thunderbird with Lightening and (a bit of evil here) hooked the calendar to Google Calendar. This gave me email, calendar and tasks with the added advantage of having my phone calendar (I use "aCalendar" on Android, also hooked to Google) sync with computer one.
I was even able to find a third-party tool to convert all my Outlook email into a file Thunderbird could read and was able to import everything in all my archives.
Vsio
When I installed O365 it wouldn't let me install my 2013 version of Visio. Said it wasn't compatible. After much tinkering and experimenting, I found that if I installed Visio and then installed 365 it would work. What a pain.
TBH, the only reason I use windows on my personal machine is for VPN to the office and Visio. The rest I can do on mint.
Email client? Meh. I use web mail and it isn't an issue.
I'm not so sure that your assessment of games is entirely true. More and more games are being made available for linux platforms. As Windoze continues to get worse and worse, I see this trend continuing.
Unfortunately, I am a windows sys admin and work in a windows shop. So its windoze all day during the work week.
Have you thought about putting your Windows installation in a virtual machine on your personal machine and installing Mint on it? There's VirtualBox that you can use for free to do this. (I think it will run on there, I'm only running it on my Mac to run an older version of Mac OS so that I can run an old version of Quicken that won't run on new versions of Mac OS. The refuse to buy the newer versions of Quicken because they really cut back on the functionality.)
I had a contract quite a while ago where I needed to use Windows to VPN into a telco and I ran the Windows instance on a virtual machine on my Linux laptop. The added bonus by doing it this way was that the VPN didn't take over my access to the Internet as I was communicating with a telephone switch via the VPN and didn't have Internet access through there. On the Linux side I still had Internet connectivity and in the Windows VM I could still do my tests on the switch.
1) Allows multiple VMs to avoid the "this version of X won't coexist with that version of Y" sort of shit.
2) You can have email / web on Linux with (for the foreseeable future) less total risk than on Windows especially if you use apparmor on the browser, etc.. Though of course having a Linux VM on Windows could also do that.
3) Deters advanced malware from running if it detects your copy of Word, etc, is running in a VM that could be used for analysis.
4) The VM can be moved across hardware platforms during upgrades without the shitty business of re-registering it with MS.
5) In a decade's time the VM's internals (probably) look the same even though you are 3 generations of hardware down the line so you don't get a "sorry Dave, I can't let you run this OS on unknown hardware" sort of problem.
But for games then dual-boot otherwise performance will suck big time for intensive graphics.
1) That's what containers are for. I'm investigating those instead for this use.
2a) We're back to "there isn't a Linux mail client that does what I want".
2bi)Or I could just run browsers with defences. Which, you know, I'd need under Linux anyways.
2bii)Or I could run LINUX in the VM for browsing, since it is lighter weight.
2biii)Of course, if I have my browser in a different OS from my mail, etc, it makes it a pain in the ass to open links.
3)If the malware has gotten far enough into my computer that it detects it is in a VM and decides not to run, I've already really fucked up somewhere. Rather keep the stuff a little farther out, thanks.
4) This is indeed an advantage. Unfortunately, the reliance of modern MS client software on hardware acceleration has really put a damper on this.
5) This is indeed an advantage. Unfortunately, Microsoft's constantly shifting formats mean I'll have to run the latest software, which may require the latest OS, which...
...goddamn it, I hate Microsoft.
1) Probably - not had to look at that so far. But VMs also cover OS version/patch-level screw-ups in dependency...
2biii) If you mean opening a web page, no that is fine as email & web on Linux (assuming you sort out a client, of course). If you mean opening a word doc directly from email, maybe that limitation is a blessing in disguise?
3) True, but accepting the generally crap state of AV tools so far, I would rather like the *smart* malware to fall at this final hurdle.
5) For keeping up with new, yes. But what of supporting clients that stick to Office 2003 (or 97)? In that case you may well keep going for new OS but still want to keep an old OS and software on hand.
1) So do backups. It's not like the bad patch thing is monthly. Especially not if you delay a week or two to let the uninformed through the minefield first.
2biii) that's all predicated on actually finding a Linux client. So far, no fun.'
3) Funny, I'd rather know that I'm infected. Smart malware, dumb malware...if there's a chink in my armour, I want air raid sirens and flashing lights and a world ending almighty push to find out how that SOB crawled in and then go build another wall.
5) If I could stick with Office 2003, I wouldn't have any of the problems from the article, now would I? I *love* Office 2003. It was the pinnacle of productivity software. That inability to read modern formats, however, means pretty much anyone who isn't a self-obsessed dickbag (I need to you put that in an older format) needs to use latest greatest. Securing old software is easy. Coping with the shitty bugs of new software is hard.
2bi) Yes, most browsers support some sort of sandbox protection mechanism. But I quite like apparmor as its a separate protection mechanism (so two steps to p0wning your PC), and it allows you to define *where* the process is allowed to read and/or to write.
That is a nice feature, so you can't have a compromised browser encrypting your files outside of, say, ~/Downloads, nor reading sensitive stuff (say ~/.ssh contents) and sending to some Bad Guy even though it has the same nominal privileges as your own account. Also it can't overwrite your .bashrc file or similar (in your name) and it has two levels to breach to overwrite system files in order to permanently p0wn the machine for a single account or for everyone.
Sure I know its not perfect, but defence is all about layers. Just like Ogres have...
I generally run Windows in a VM for most of my Windows tasks. My standard configuration is Ubuntu (currently version 16.04) desktop and Windows running in a Virtualbox VM. The big advantage is if you get hit by a virus or suspect of getting hit with a virus, all you have to do is restore the VM to a previous snapshot. I generally make a new shapshot every 3-12 weeks, keeping 2 or 3 of the most recent and a couple really old ones in case things have really gone south.
With such a VM, you can sandbox the VM from the internet, if desired, but still access networked or local files with shared folders.
Other reasons you may have to go back to a previous snapshot is a program installation or de-installation gone bad. Recovery takes seconds, not hours.
Maintenance of most Linux installations is usually very straight-forward and not time consuming. I have found that Windows 10, despite of its shortcomings, is also fairly easy to maintain, usually taking minutes instead of the hours (and sometimes days) Windows 7 would sometimes take to perform updates -- I once had Windows 7 take 2 days to finally discover that it had to download and install one update before it could find and install another 20 or so.
Bottom line -while some may not find maintaining 2 (or more) operating systems worth the trouble, I find it very comforting with the security of being able to restore to a previous state very rapidly. The Microsoft method of going back to a 'Restore Point' is iffy at the very best, often not able to get close to the configuration of what should be at the Restore Point. With a VM, even the nastiest of virus/malware infections can be permanently deleted by going back to a clean snapshot.
if I do that, I can't play games.
Of course you can. Give Windows exclusive access to a GPU then all games will work, just like they do on bare metal. That's how I do it a home, look for "GPU passthrough". You will need modern Linux kernel and relatively recent version of qemu or Xen. Also not all GPUs work well and specifix CPU and motherboard features are required to support it (VT-d and IOMMU). Which is a bit of a bother, I agree.
Trying to make games run well into a VM is just looking for unnecessary troubles. You can probably make them work, but you will still have unnecessary levels of translation and transitions, when you just want them to run smoothly and fast. If all you need to run is Candy Crush maybe it's ok, for most demanding games is just a waste of time.
>Trying to make games run well into a VM is just looking for unnecessary troubles.
Most of the games I get run on Linux, but many systems come with some OEM version of windows or other. A windows partition is a small price to pay if that's important to you. Windows in a VM with exclusive access to the GPU is a great goal, but I don't think that ranks as an easy-enough solution for most people.
If you have the super secret magical combination of Thunderbird-based stuff that Actually Fucking Works with Exchange and is still actively maintained, I'd love to try it. I played this game a year ago and damned near through the notebook out the window, the whole experience was so frustrating.
VMs are great but to be honest I can't help feeling those that think running a machine within a machine within a machine to do one task, when you could actually just swallow a little pride and just use bloody Windows in the first instance, are making a bit of a rod for their back.
"VMs are great but to be honest I can't help feeling those that think running a machine within a machine within a machine to do one task, when you could actually just swallow a little pride and just use bloody Windows in the first instance, are making a bit of a rod for their back."
VMs are great but to be honest I can't help feeling those that think running a machine within a machine within a machine to do one task, when you could actually just swallow a little pride and just use anything but bloody Windows in the first instance, are making a bit of a rod for their back.
I feel sure this is what you meant.
Absolutely. On multiple products. It's also worth pointing out that what each or any of us considered "smooth" might be choppy or unusable to others. I, for example, find anything slower than 60fps unusable and I tend to be picky about my mice because some setups - certain wireless USB mice, for example - have noticeable (to me, at least) lag when compared to wired PS/2 mice.
Compared to Josh, however, I might as well be playing a slideshow. For him, anything under 120 FPS is unusable and he's picky about which PS/2 mice he uses because lag matters that much.
Maybe you found a magic combination of hardware and software that works great. If so, congrats! For me, I haven't had such luck so far. And I'm far too poor to rebuy all my gaming gear. To date, none of the software produces anything usable for me, and I cycle through and retry every 8 months or so.
OK so I do have reasonably powerful hardware (what one would call "workstation range" rather than regular desktop PC, with two expensive Quadro GPUs and two Xeon CPUs) and it is running two "gaming class" Windows VMs at the same time, and a number of Linux VMs, and also relatively large ZFS filesystem for VMs to use (which is not relevant here). As for the software side, I am running libvirt 1.3.5 , qemu 2.6 , kernel 4.4.15 (vanilla flavour, i.e. no patches), all setup as instructed by Alex Williamson with OVMF. It is possible to use regular GeForce cards and some AMD models for GPU passthrough as well, however there are gotchas. I guess that might be stopping you, if you are unwilling to shell out for Quadro (or "hack" an old GeForce card) or find the right AMD model, most of them suffer from reset issues.
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