^_^

[farla]

I have a new laptop. (Better still, a new laptop without having my old one break first!)

There is exactly one thing I don't like it, which is that it comes with a webcam. A webcam is one of those things that I would pay extra to avoid. And it comes with a manual volume control! That was probably my most important consideration. There's also a neat toggle for on/off wireless, which I wanted but wasn't expecting to get. On top of all this, it was cheap, probably because I'm not supposed to want these things.

Navigating the programs is an exercise in horror. I didn't really realize how much I'm avoiding standard products until I saw what sort of stuff is coming preloaded. It's enough to make me want to replace the whole operating system on general principles. The new version of Word believes hitting the enter key means you want a double return! No, Word, if I wanted that I'd hit the key twice, like God intended! And I can't even find the undo button to tell it to stop autocorrecting what I type. It's too busy being shiny to actually function. I used Internet Explorer once, just long enough to find and download Firefox, and in that time my eyes began to bleed. Currently, I'm installing OpenOffice.

I just need a few more tweaks (stop grouping things on the taskbar, Pute-chan) and things should be perfect. Well, aside from the fact it's running Vista.

Now I'm off to see how many Youtube videos I can run at once.

Comments

[negrek.livejournal.com]

It's enough to make me want to replace the whole operating system on general principles. The new version of Word believes hitting the enter key means you want a double return!

Oh, God. I don't know who in their right mind could possibly think that was a good idea. The worst part is, for some reason my copy of Word doesn't get it when I uncheck the option that makes it do that and tell it to make the setting default. Every time I load the program it goes back to double-spacing paragraphs.

If you ever have to use it again 'cause OpenOffice dies or something, the undo button's way at the top next to the save button, or you can use ctrl+z.

Congrats on the laptop, though. New hardware's always fun.

[farla.livejournal.com]

We actually had this old book that was just for tweaking Word98 - like, finding the overwrite option and making sure it was firmly disabled. And this was not a small book.

Oh, yeah, Mom managed to find it eventually, because she's used it at work. The shortcut's useful, though, since I can't seem to find where the help section is and find these things out myself. (I don't think it'll matter - it's on a license where you can only open it twenty-five times, and there is no way in hell I'm buying it. If OpenOffice fails, it'll be less frustrating to convince Vista to run pre-2000 Word instead. Even if that's impossible, it'll still be less frustrating.)

[charizamdc.livejournal.com]

I had the same problem, only with word not accepting selecting text and hitting backspace as deleting the text.

[charizamdc.livejournal.com]

Congratlations on your new laptop. It's a pity microsoft always forces their new OS on everyone.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Oh, they're basically using Vista as extortion now. I asked if I could trade operating systems - remove Vista, put on XP, and the computer guys were all LOL NO, you have to pay for the Vista we put on, and then buy XP too, and THEN we'll remove Vista and put XP on.

[purple-drake.livejournal.com]

Is this Word 2007 you're talking about? I wanted to kill it dead when I realised I had it on my laptop and couldn't get 2003. D: I have no idea why they changed half the things they did.

In any case, if it is, then here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100744321033.aspx

You can download a flash file which basically shows you where everything is in comparison to the 2003 program (assuming you know the 2003 program well). And then when you get used to it, you won't be all, 'wtf what do I do?!' when you come to a public computer with 2007 (which is the one and only reason why I stuck it out).

As for the double return thing, it's because for some reason the default spacing is now 10pt in between lines. D: I didn't even know you could set the default to zero, I've just been changing it manually every time I start a new file.

[farla.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I've used 2003, either. Come to think of it, I don't even know what the last Word version I used was - the last computers that we reliably used Word on have both been dismantled for years. We had the version that came with XP...

...wow. When I try to work it out, it's really been a long time.

[bay115.livejournal.com]

You probably got Microsoft Works Word then, not Microsoft Word when you first got the computer with XP. Microsoft Works is a similar and cheaper version of Microsoft Office. I remember buying my laptop years ago and it had Microsoft Works installed in there. I was fine with it for a while but for some reason they're not able to catch most of basic grammar (and I suck at grammar). O.o

[purple-drake.livejournal.com]

IIRC, all versions of XP I've ever used came with Word 2003 ... but then, as far as I'm concerned XP and Professional are interchangeable, so our computers may well have had the latter instead and I just can't remember. Whatever the differences are, I don't know them; that could well be one of them.

In any case, Farla, you could always try downloading the file and seeing if the version of Word represented in the program looks familiar; if not, then I guess that question's answered.

[bay115.livejournal.com]

Try doing a resume on Word 2007 and trying to have the bullets line up with each other or not have different circle sizes. Now that's a bummer (to me, of course). :P

[farla.livejournal.com]

Arg, really? The bulletpoints were like the only thing I remember Word did better than OpenOffice.

[bay115.livejournal.com]

Yep. I almost pull my hair out cause I hated how the bullets were all funky and such! ._.