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Comment by csdreamer7 | Hacker News Reader

> Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office.

My mom had to buy a copy of MS Office. Her university provided free ms office online, but there were certain features missing from it she needed for her papers. I am remembering wrong, but it was annotations? Citations? I do not remember.

Libreoffice kinda could do it, but I could not find how online, while MS had it properly documented on their website and so many youtubers making videos on MS Office had it listed on their website.

Edit: also found out MS Office can screen record and record her webcam. Very useful for her giving a remote presentation during covid.

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Annotations, citations, bibliography management I can understand, even if I use LaTeX for that and consider it a far superior tool.

But video recording and streaming? Why would anyone prefer to use MS Office for that when OBS exists?

Is it as obnoxious as having to use Teams for chat?

That's certainly a case of having a hammer and thinking all problems are nails xD

> But video recording and streaming? Why would anyone prefer to use MS Office for that when OBS exists?

OBS is very powerful, but the complexity of its UI can scare non-technical newbies away. MS Office gives you a lot less power, but is much more welcoming when you aren’t technical and this is the first time in your life you’ve ever done it

> But video recording and streaming? Why would anyone prefer to use MS Office for that when OBS exists?

OBS was a lot more complicated. Yes, professional streaming you should use it.

She was doing a ph.d in social sciences. She had little desire, or really need, to use it when MS Office did what she wanted out of the box. Screen recorded presentations with powerpoint.

> Is it as obnoxious as having to use Teams for chat?

They did not use teams for chat. They used gsuite for almost everything else.

> That's certainly a case of having a hammer and thinking all problems are nails xD

No, it really is not.

> Annotations, citations, bibliography management I can understand, even if I use LaTeX for that and consider it a far superior tool.

Really? My mother was struggling to remember how to use a Windows desktop. You really want to suggest learning latex when she had term papers to do for a $60k degree? The required document format was ms word.

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