Do You Hate Microsoft Word?

I do, sometime, but not as much as I used to now that I started using again WordPerfect on the sly, namely WordPerfect X6.

I know quite a few people who hate MS Word with passion, all of them translators who call it primitive, stupid, and worse on their blogs and on social media. I understand where these feelings are coming from: MS Word does mean things to us, apparently for no particular reason, just because it can, which is one telling characteristics of a psychopathic personality.

For instance, sometime when I write a blog post in MS Word, everything may look fine and dandy while I am still writing in the word processor or even in the “Add New Post” screen in WordPress, but after I click on the “Publish” button, the post is published in an incredibly ugly font that hurts my eyes and looks like something that was vomited by a high school kid who got drunk for the first time in his life.

But since it does not happen all the time, how can I possibly figure out what the problem is?

There are many other mean things that the psychopathic king of word processors likes to do to me, for instance sometimes it messes up pagination, and when it’s messed up on page 1, it simply will not let me fix it!

The problem is, of course, that unlike WordPerfect and presumably also other lesser kings of word processors who want to ingratiate themselves to us any way they can, MS Word does not have a “reveal codes” function, which would make it possible to fix anything easily within a couple of seconds.

Since I bought WordpPerfect X6 8 months ago as I wrote in this post, I was able to put it to good use. Although I still use MS Word (Office 2003) for just about anything that requires me to write, I often start writing in WordPerfect first to make sure that there will be no nasty surprises later, like messed up pagination, or a nasty font on my blog once the thing is posted. I also sometime use it to remove a problem from MS Word which is invisible and unfixable by design within the MS Word software, but which can be fixed easily once the codes are revealed when the file is imported into WordPerfect.

MS Word has its good days too, and I really like some things about it. For example, I can easily switch to a virtual Japanese or Russian keyboard in it, which is very helpful for my purposes and something that I can’t do in WordPerfect.

There are also many nice things about WordPerfect X6 Office Student Edition which I bought for 48 dollars. In addition to the low price and the fact that you actually own it (unlike Microsoft Word), you can install it on a number of computers. The box that it came in said “up to 3”, but I installed it on 5 computers in my 2 home offices, and once you specify to WordPerfect that you need a seamless conversion to MS Word, it does just that and it even automatically saves the file in MS Word.

I don’t understand why people should not be allowed to install software that they legally purchased on several computers, since so many people use several computers these days, especially those of us who are freelancers. Incidentally, I remember that this is something that the Microsoft Corporation came up with first about 20 years ago. Up until the very important invention of Microsoft called “Internet validation”, once we bought a software package, we owned it and we were able to use it.

Now we own software, only temporarily, if Microsoft says that we own it. Once I had to junk a computer because after I restored Windows to an earlier date to get rid of a problem, Microsoft hit me with its infamous blue screen of death displaying a message claiming that the copy of Windows was illegal, which was a damn lie.

I am also using frequently scanning software called “Paper Port SE” which comes with the WordPerfect X6 Office, mostly to create PDF files from my scanners. This means that I don’t need to buy Adobe Writer software at 3 or 4 hundred dollars.

Microsoft originally said that by purchasing the new Microsoft Office, indentured Microsoft servants (they call them sarcastically “Microsoft Office customers”) were really just buying a license to use this particular software on 1 computer for 1 year for about 100 dollars. These are handy numbers because they make it easy to calculate the enormous profits that software manufacturer with a psychopathic personality would be making, but only if Microsoft could make these indentured servants obediently follow instructions. There must have been some backlash already because I now see that Microsoft Office can be installed on “up to 3 computers” again.

But since I would probably still have to buy it over and over again every year, until Bill Gates and the rest of the Microsoft millionaires are even more disgustingly rich than they are now, I plan on using my 2003 version of Microsoft Office for at least another 12 years.

If my 2003 version of Microsoft Office somehow stops working, I will either switch back to WordPerfect completely and keep converting the files to MS Office if files in Microsoft Word is still what my customers want, or learn how to use one of the two MS Word compatible free office suites that I have also installed on all of my computers, just in case.