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ACCORDING TO LIZ - As I set this up, Microsoft Word had replaced my default font with Aptos, its stealth replacement, which is harder for me to read. And, to add insult to injury, after I changed it back to Calibri, it converted all cut-and-paste edits to Aptos making my work a frustrating chain of reformatting.
Why?
I should be able to set my defaults and leave it at that. And NOT have Microsoft add them back. Again and again.
Then yesterday I had to spend an hour researching some CoPilot icon that magically appeared on my taskbar without permission and figuring out how to go into my tablet’s registry to remove it and all its spidery tentacles. You can, too!
Doesn’t anybody remember the basis for the Terminator movies?
Doesn’t Microsoft get it that some of us, maybe even a plurality, despise having our lives taken over by computer algorithms designed and applied by technocrats who absolutely do NOT have tech users best interests in mind.
Indeed, they work for companies whose sole purpose in life is more profit. And Mammon continues to be king.
No wonder people today feel helpless – and it’s less the fault of DC politicians than you might think.
Although those pols should be doing a far better job curbing corporate abuses and greed. And ensuring Big Tech works for the people, not the other way round.
Why does it take six or seven steps to save this document in the clunky and difficult-to-write-in Office 365 instead of tapping in Cntl-F-A? Why does its neurotic editor-on-board insist on clinging to every collection of letters it doesn’t recognize, making it difficult for me to progress in my work?
And what’s with Windows trying to force me to use their Cloud? How are they profiting? How many of our children will die sooner because of Microsoft’s massive energy demands to maintain their Cloud Campuses aka server farms in Virginia?
What happens if there’s an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse caused by a powerful magnetic disruption from a major solar storm or from nuclear blasts Putin is threatening to rain down on the Ukrainian freedom fighters and we get cut off from all our saved data and selfies?
How secure is my data in a world that is rapidly becoming less and less secure, between hackers and the alphabet agencies authorized by our government and others?
How come Microsoft allows its innovators to get so busy innovating that they ignore the users’ need for functionality? Why when I go to paste or type something where I want it to appear in a document, does the writing program now whip me back to where I was before?
Why, when I try to delete a word, does the program delete a different word elsewhere in the document? Something I needed to keep?
Why does it open documents with the Navigation pane taking up over half the page? And make me reset this annoying quirk each and every time I open it?
Why does it want me to search for “Headings” when I and nobody I know use them? Why won’t it easily allow me to set “Results” as the default?
Why when I try to correct one letter in a word does it insist on seizing the entire word and not permitting me to surgically insert my cursor?
Then there are other annoying changes like listing documents in the reverse order of when they were opened rather than having the last one saved lead the list – I don’t know about others, but I occasionally have to open a multitude of files before finding what I was looking for but Word 365 strands me with unneeded documents and, too often, in a folder far from where I want to be.
Why do I have to enable editing every time I go to open something I’ve transferred from my other computer?
What’s with all these intermediary screens and choices? I used to be able to type in Cntl-S-A and I could save my work, now it’s a never-ending fight with having to select whether I really want to save it or do I want to share or transform it or upload it to the cloud. Get real!
And why has Microsoft added so much crap to the header I can’t read more than the first couple of words of the title? A farcical frustration when so many documents start the same way: I Hate Microsoft: Volume 1, I Hate Microsoft: Volume 2… you get it...
I’ve been forced into using Word 365 for almost a year now because Microsoft no longer supports the Office 2010 program that I own and will not allow it to install in Windows 11. I have yet to find any improvements and am consistently being delayed by their techies’ not -so-innovative disimprovements.
Just because they want to justify their paychecks, does not mean they should impose inefficiencies on the many to satisfy one or two esoteric proposals.
If people want to have a Navigation pane that blocks half their page, search by headings or constantly return to where they started from – fine. Make it an option.
But, please return our tools to the rest of us. That’s right. Computers and programs are tools and they should not be dictating how we write.
P.S. This was written in Microsoft’s retired Calibri font that is much easier to read than its Annoying, Power-Tripping, Oligarchically-imposed System-font replacement.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
