Ask HN: Have you Sworn off Microsoft? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have you Sworn off Microsoft?

7 pointsmeesterdude10 comments

This would be more appropriate in 2004. There is a lot I don't like about Microsoft (and to be fair I have sworn off windows), but they are not the greater evil in office suite or email and are competitively priced while still being, at least in appearance, professional, and not just a search company trying to drive traffic in.

Maybe there is some paradise where we move beyond commercial software, but until we get there, Microsoft has some competitive products

Microsoft Office is nice, but not nice enough to pay for when Apache OpenLibre Office .org works enough.

Microsoft is terrible to work with for email, but I think you're right that Google is worse.

I'm currently planning not to do Windows 11, but we'll see. I'm also retired, so I've got lots of time to be a curmugeon. Windows Phone was nice until they stopped caring and released Windows Mobile 10 anyway.

> Microsoft Office is nice, but not nice enough to pay for when Apache OpenLibre Office .org works enough.

I disagree. LibreOffice (which I DO use on a few machines) is still miles behind the latest features in MS Office. MS Office 100% designed around collaborative working these days, with live document sharing and editing, teams integration, cloud saving etc.

Plus some of the latest design options in PowerPoint are simply amazing and Excel has some great time-saving features.

I'm not a Microsoft fanboy, as I do believe in using the right tool regardless who makes it, but in large organisations there's no way you can use LibreOffice seriously.

Yep, I distinctly remember the last time I had to use a Microsoft Office product and have genuinely enjoyed not using windows since I don't play video games anymore. Occasionally I plug in my SSD with windows to edit video with Adobe products but otherwise, around 30% of the time windows breaks for inexplicable reasons.

I genuinely have no issue looking down on people who work for microsoft - sure they have a monopoly on certain industries but their product is basically shit.

"Sworn off" ?

Do you mean "sworn at"?

I've sworn at Microsoft many times.

I still have to use Windows and Office at work.

I use RHEL for software development work, but the Windows 10 desktop environment is better than Gnome 3 desktop environment.

We don't always get to choose what we use, so it can be hard to swear off anything unless it is entirely personal use

Visual Studio code is alright. Can't stand their other non free offerings.

What do you mean?

There is a recurring dream I have that includes swearing off MS for good.

Just for development.

No. No need to swear off Microsoft. That's no longer necessary. And hasn't been for some 15 years or more.

For most people today, Microsoft is irrelevant. Maybe a few software developers might think Microsoft is important, but the rest of the world's population and software developers know that it isn't.

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