It seems to me that there must be another sensible and serious word processing programme out there somewhere. If there is, can someone please let me know?
I've been quiet on this blog for a while - nearly a year I'm shamed to say - struggling to make my new computer work. The old one blew up noisily at the beginning of last year, just when I was at an exciting part of my writing. Now I hate computers at the best of times, but this was a disaster. It took seven weeks to sort out insurance and find a decent, large enough memory, no stupid gadgets computer. It's taken the rest of the year to try and make the stupid thing work as I want it to. And it still doesn't!
And a hint about insurance. I had a sweet voiced, sympathetic woman take me through the forms but the questions she slipped in between the chit-chat were all designed to prove I hadn't looked after my computer. Do be wary of not having a single, separate wall socket to plug in your computer. If you have it on a multiboard they won't pay. No, they had to pay me. I knew that and had a special wall socket installed when I moved here.
Anyway, back to the computer. My kindly understanding, does-not-patronise-women-over-forty IT specialist supplied me with a new, business standard HP computer with the new Word and new Gmail programmes. Ah me! The computer is fine, it's those bloomin' programmes.
The new Gmail wanted to take over. It did. It deleted my old emails from my editors which I keep in my inbox as a reminder that I have work on file to write for them. It kept trying to make my unimportant emails important. I got junk and spam saved in the important file. I saved into a special folder my marketing information for my columns for Writing magazine. Two weeks later the whole file was vanished. Apparently I could spend time hunting all my missing stuff in the Google Cloud. Don't people work any more? I don't have time to go hunting things down, especially as I am not tech savvy and don't know where to look in Google's cloud. Even my clever tech man threw up his hands and swore at Google. So now Gmail is out and a local New Zealand company is in as my main email server. At least I can ring them up and get things fixed. But what a frustrating waste of writing time it's been trying to sort it all out and I lost so many email addresses in the muddle up too.
.
As for this impossibly dumb Word programme! I don't know what the idiots at Microsoft think people do when word processing. Not serious work obviously. The default font is Calibri, a tiny size 11. That is not a standard business or publishing font. I had to spend hours and money getting a proper standard publishing format fixed as my default with Courier or TNR 12 point, and with decent margins, indents and header. Even then the bloody programme keeps try to run back to its default.
And I am driven mad by stupid pop ups. I don't need idiot Word to say Hello or show me a note saying 'Welcome back. You were working on this page.' This morning I opened my files and got a huge banner saying 'Relieve
some stress. Let's colour.' and offering some sort of
colouring game. What the Hell?!!!!! Don't people work anymore?
I don't want or need fancy fonts and layouts. I want a computer to be a serious working tool, not a plaything. I don't want or need a computer to try and think for me. I hate the fact that when I go into Word it gives me a list of what it thinks I want to work on. And it takes several clicks to actually get to what I want to use. And saving is a pain and attaching stuff is a pain as the computer keeps telling me I want to save or attach this or that file when I want another one. Every time I want to do something the computer tries to make me do it its way. I have been so frustrated by the darned Word programme that my actual output of writing has been noticeably reduced. Something must be done. I need a real word processing programme for serious workers!
Anyone out there know a decent, plain, sensible,word processing programme I can have installed instead of stupid Word?
