Microsoft Office (any version) is garbage. Period. Of course i will try to elaborate why later.

Also it is hard to make people to just stop using it right away, but awareness needs to be raised. Knowing is half the battle.

You are not paid to think, you are paid to work. With tools provided by your employer. And the chance of those tools being from Microsoft's family of office programs (namely: Word, Excel and Powerpoint) is very high.

I myself only recommend plain text for all normal text usage including, but not limited to note taking etc. also software such as Notepad++ on Windows and gedit on *nix-like systems may actually blow your mind with tabbed viewing/editing (stuff that revolutionized web browsing some two decades ago). The x64 minimalist version of NP++ is super-fast and super-responsive and does not even feel like a ''minimalist'' version at all to an average Joe.

an example of NOT using MS Office : A plain text editor and Libre Office shared by 4 different machines with different operating systems; Windows 10, Windows 11, Linux Mint and Ubuntu. In music club we first compile the playlist to a plain text file (using a plain text editor such as Microsoft Notepad) as we go then at the end we copy the .txt content to an .odt file that is open in Libre Office then save and exit. (The files are on a removable USB drive which can be used on any of the machines and the files in it are usable/accessible without paying a cent)

You as a MSO user are using a proprietary system within a paywall and you without intention force others to pay up just so they can access/use whatever you have created within the prison of golden barriers. Your material is also limited to systems only supported by Microsoft namely: Windows Operating Systems and also often to specific versions of MSOffice too... They are notorious for being incompatible with each other and the business model is to make you buy the newest version over and over. Plain Text files from fifty years ago are still fine, but Word documents from last week may already be fuxored LOL (obviously exaggerated there a bit, but you get the idea of how bad it truly can be.)

Basically you should limit your usage of MS Office products only to situations where you are more or less forced to use them (such as work or school) and opt for free and libre products when you are not forced to use MSO. Thinking and caring is allowed. Peace out!

Also funnily; apple has been often accused of the whole ''gilded cage'' thing when microsoft is practically doing the exact same thing with the apple critics often being windows/microsoft product users themselves. One should not see themselves as MS or APPLE users, they should see themselves as free computer users instead of blind consumers. One should use platform-independent programs and files that can be used by any Operating System. You are free to stay on Windows or MacOS or Debian GNU/Linux or OpenBSD or whatever, but do not force others down with your own sinking ship of premium (office) software.

Then there is the often misguided perception that paying for something would implicate (high) quality. Hahaha no! PS. Most used is often most targeted by malware developers too. PPS. Macs written backwards is Scam and pwn2own fux your s*it up swiftly.

I'd love to use the CrowdStrike Falcon co_ck up to bash Windows, but for once it wasn't Microsoft behind the problem. It was a quality assurance failure by CS that crashed a ton of corporate-level computers and send them to a BSOD loop. Tiny bug with massive repercussions... https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et

Scams like WinZip still exist Use 7-zip with .7z and .zip while avoiding .rar which can be opened and extracted thanks to a free component called UnRAR, but creating them requires WinRAR the program which you should not install/use.

Accidentally just deleted the above post and am not feeling like rewriting it atm. EDIT: Did write some of it back, but not everything. EDIT2: This is a sweeping generalization, but programs that are limited to one platform and ask for money are often pure scams / highway robbery.

Reminds me how when s60 was a thing the developers of almost anything tried to gain money from the users by making even the simplest thing cost you money. Also some of them may have been entirely illegal such as the video game emulators were running on stolen code from free emulators on the computers and charging money from something they were not licensed to do. In short: They should not have asked for money for them at all. By default emulator devs can not / should not ask money for using the software directly. Apple Store and Google Play are not free from opportunists trying to capitalize on user's lack of understanding and knowledge on things. '' There is an app for anything you can think of '' but they are not always gratis or scum-free. Though real free projects have ported some of their stuff to mobiles, for free of course.

Obviously the daylight robberies in the mobile scene started with ringtones and operator logos long before s60... Was it like s10 or something ? i don't even remember myself lol

The mobile scene including the devices themselves suffer from super-inflated prices, but again the trend has been the same for decades already. Also the value of used phones has been trampled to the ground so the new phone you just paid like 1000 euros for became a sub-200e brick...