That's it, I'm finished with Office. I had a situation yesterday which, while rare, still made me call it quits with that terrible suite. (Sorry in advance for the rant-share)

I have a client who is a little stingy when it comes to upgrading equipment and software, but he needed to replace one of the computers in his office so he went and bought a Windows 8 computer and Office Home and Business 2013 (including Outlook 2013).

The problem is that he still has Exchange 2003.

So I installed an older version of Outlook (2007), and everything seemed to be fine, but soon problems developed which I traced to the fact that there were now two Mail snap-ins in the Control Panel, so the two of them were fighting over who got to handle the Exchange account, and the 2013 version was winning out.

So I went to remove Outlook 2013 because it wasn't being used. Guess what: can't be done! When you purchase Home and Office 2013 through the online store, it is impossible to select which components get installed. I had no way to install just Word and Excel from 2013 and run them alongside Outlook 2007.

This, combined with all the other crap that MS is doing with Office, has made my resolve to push things like Libre Office even greater. Or, heaven forbid, I'll even start pushing Macs. MS is not moving in the right direction and I'm sick of it. They topped out at Windows 7 and Office 2010, and I simply can't see them recovering. I don't know, maybe now that Balmer is out things will change, but they need to push Gates out too.

Ugh, I'm sick of it. Sorry again for the rant.