This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Would I see Copilot in the OHook'd Office 365? If not, yay!
Oh shit maybe we'll see someone companies switch to an alternative instead of paying microshit more money
I keep seeing posts by NextCloud on Mastodon. Has anyone had any experience using those guys?
Nextcloud is decent but it depends on what you want. Personally, I'd never use it again due to performance reasons but it's a decent platform for cloud editing and stuff.
I switched to Syncthing for file management across my devices. With it, I can sync my Joplin notes. It's all I need in life. It was also easier to set up than a Nextcloud instance.
Yeah. So it's
right? I forget the name of that add-on.
No, that's not it. I thought it was Open-Xchange; yeah, that's it. But it's only web-based, and not Tbird-based. Let's ask Co-pilot again:
THERE it is.
But I learned there's a second alternative, so that's cool. See? Co-pilot has value!
Zentyal replaces windows server. It has active directory, file server, print server, domain controller and mail server, all in a way compatible with Microsofts products, but it's Linux. I worked with it many years ago and it did what it says on the tin. I haven't worked with newer versions.
In this case the AI is kinda wrong. It's not a Thunderbird replacement in any way, rather an OWA replacement and Exchange alternative. You could use Thunderbird to connect to it probably.
What you could use is the Thunderbird extension TbSync, or Owl. Both work, but TbSync is free.
Like using Edge to download Firefox, I approve
I doubt Microsoft Word has changed that much for me to theoretically subscribe just to see it's 365 counterpart. Still rocking the 2007 version.
It hasn't.
I will forever hate 2007's ribbon with a passion.
Microsoft probably added or changed unnecessary shit to the OOXML format that your old version can't handle.
Do all documents open without any problems?
For existing customers, the price hike won't be kicking in until plan renewal, and there are options to downgrade the plan. Those who want to avoid using AI can downgrade the plan to the "Classic" or "Basic" Microsoft 365 plans.
Thankfully we can roll back to the "Classic Family Plan" without the AI features. But annoying that they automatically switched plans and I had to switch back. If I didn't see this article I'd be up for a big price hike when it renewed.
Everyone experiencing this should be thinking "man, I gotta ditch Microsoft before they try to fuck me again"
NO one using Microsoft is doing so by choice. If we haven't learned in 30 years, then fuck us.
Meanwhile, smart people: I sure do love Libre Office.
Libre Office.
Honestly - and flame away - I hate the name. I hate saying it. It's the 'moist' of borrowed words. Leeeeeeeebr. And I'm a Canadian who did French up to university-level conversational "explain something for 20 min" French (from a gorgeous caribbean dynamo teacher, but I justif--uh, digress) so I know how to say the word and what it means.
And I still hate it. I'm a horrible person -- even before I continued French study because the prof was so engaging and energetic and brightened every room and every day and made French interesting just on inclusion.
Glad I'm not the only one questioning the name! I have a pet theory that if they changed it it'd be more popular.
"You remember that llm we spend billions of dollars on, that nobody asked for? Well we're done half baking it into all our apps and now we're almost doubling our prices to help pay for it all."
The logic of the utterly deranged...
They did the same with 3.5 jack removal from phones, charged more for less
So glad I got a free phone from Visible after they were going to update their network and claimed my Galaxy S8 wouldn't be compatible.
Best phone I ever had, and it has a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Suck on that, apple losers.
I spent about 20 minutes today trying to get Copilot on Word to tell me how to disable Copilot on Word. Worth every penny.
The clippy we all deserved
I really wonder what their long term plan is here.
Hardly anyone really wants copilot, it doesn't add a lot of value, yet makes the product less competitive.
I totally get rent seeking, Office is so ingrained that it's almost impossible to get away from it. But why force AI on everybody? Why not add it as a bonus?
Is this just a desperate attempt to soften the massive losses of the AI investment?
To please the shareholders. Then, when AI is no longer deemed valuable and its tremendous costs sink in, they will remove it and layoff the teams that worked on it, to please the shareholders.
You can call the sales team and ask them to change your subscription to the classic version to opt-out of Copilot and get the old price back, if you still need the subscription over changing to other open source office suites.
Fuck the MS suite is such garbage. My work was sold in for Teams with all the BS. Now I have to either map up the filepath creating what we used to have, or I can't see the file folder and make a call at the same time. Onenote with it's arbitrary syncing. And good luck finding it again since it stored at some random place if you loose access.
Word and excel is decent, but for a person who likes to tinker with versions it's a nightmare to invite people to edit it.
Cluncky interface, slow and bloated all around
It's very "lipstick on a pig", but you can run the PWA side by side with the native desktop. I have many screens so I keep non-call activity in the PWA version to avoid this nonsense.
I'm sure they will add tabs eventually as an afterthought and make it even more obtuse though.
I also reflexively delete the personal OneNotes and start a new one where I want it to be, but the war between me and Microsoft about how I want my personal documents stored has now raged for many many years.
The degree to which MS Teams can get fucked by the horse it rode in on is proportional to the number of registry entries their bloatware has on first install.
So Libre Office is free?
If it does what regular office suit does i would happily pay 300 dollars for it to have it as mine and not be fucked with
Free forever, and works great.
