Gates Is Antichrist
Well-known Member
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2002
- Messages
- 1,961
Overall, I'm not keen at all on 2002 EXCEPT to save a file gone corrupt in 2000. I have then saved it off, and continued merrily with the file in 2000.
Most blatant de-improvements in 2002:
It frequently hangs the O.S. (Win2K); it is the _only_ app. that has hung Win2K, in my or my circle's experience. The hangs were mainly from (A) as soon as I clicked on manual calculation; (B) while counting off a print (page x of y in the grey box). At least the files weren't irreparably damaged. Hanging's not as bad as file corruption, but still very bad. I'm talking CPU Reset bad (hope you didn't have unsaved work in other apps!).
2002 has an extremely annoying tendency to cover 1/4th of your screen with paste choices, simply because you put something in your copy buffer (i.e. you copied a cell or a range). I'd wager that very close to 100% of all pastes, for all users in all apps, are from the most recent copy; why in the world is this feature inflicted on everyone by default? Trust me, this is FAR worse than the paper clip twerp. (Sure, I'd be happy to hear where you can override it, because in classic fashion, the disable option was not intuitively apparent). Oh yes - if you have a multiline formula in the white formula bar, the pane's close "big X" is obscured, so you have to click an empty cell or something to get rid of the paste pane. Guess that one slipped by beta. And alpha.
A really vile new feature (it's a feature, right?) is that you CAN NOT CHANGE THE ACTIVE WINDOW MANUALLY WHILE A MACRO IS PAUSED. That may be a suitable design tactic to keep AOL users from hurting their little selves, but I can't imagine why 2002 did this. (And if it's overridable, once again, why is the default as it is...)
Of course, there are certain to be other substantial benefits in the 2002 upgrade, and to be fair, I probably just haven't worked to take advantage of them. In particular, by configuration you can avoid the macro warning which is quite pleasant. I'm sure there are other niceties; perhaps after a service release or two I would be persuaded to embrace it.
I'm not writing this to whine; but unfortunately sometimes your best guide to software choices is to weigh the negatives as well. Here I've given all of my impressions, good and bad; this comes from a heavy 2000 user.
Mark informs me that support techs maintain all versions to improve their support versatility; this may be something for you to consider ... perhaps until service packs roll around. I do know that our network department head was hesitant to do that, thinking you had to write over the old version (I believe Mark
).
Best of luck either way. I hope each of you make the most productive choice.
_________________
______________
Because he is.
This message was edited by Chris Davison on 2002-09-08 02:48
Most blatant de-improvements in 2002:
It frequently hangs the O.S. (Win2K); it is the _only_ app. that has hung Win2K, in my or my circle's experience. The hangs were mainly from (A) as soon as I clicked on manual calculation; (B) while counting off a print (page x of y in the grey box). At least the files weren't irreparably damaged. Hanging's not as bad as file corruption, but still very bad. I'm talking CPU Reset bad (hope you didn't have unsaved work in other apps!).
2002 has an extremely annoying tendency to cover 1/4th of your screen with paste choices, simply because you put something in your copy buffer (i.e. you copied a cell or a range). I'd wager that very close to 100% of all pastes, for all users in all apps, are from the most recent copy; why in the world is this feature inflicted on everyone by default? Trust me, this is FAR worse than the paper clip twerp. (Sure, I'd be happy to hear where you can override it, because in classic fashion, the disable option was not intuitively apparent). Oh yes - if you have a multiline formula in the white formula bar, the pane's close "big X" is obscured, so you have to click an empty cell or something to get rid of the paste pane. Guess that one slipped by beta. And alpha.
A really vile new feature (it's a feature, right?) is that you CAN NOT CHANGE THE ACTIVE WINDOW MANUALLY WHILE A MACRO IS PAUSED. That may be a suitable design tactic to keep AOL users from hurting their little selves, but I can't imagine why 2002 did this. (And if it's overridable, once again, why is the default as it is...)
Of course, there are certain to be other substantial benefits in the 2002 upgrade, and to be fair, I probably just haven't worked to take advantage of them. In particular, by configuration you can avoid the macro warning which is quite pleasant. I'm sure there are other niceties; perhaps after a service release or two I would be persuaded to embrace it.
I'm not writing this to whine; but unfortunately sometimes your best guide to software choices is to weigh the negatives as well. Here I've given all of my impressions, good and bad; this comes from a heavy 2000 user.
Mark informs me that support techs maintain all versions to improve their support versatility; this may be something for you to consider ... perhaps until service packs roll around. I do know that our network department head was hesitant to do that, thinking you had to write over the old version (I believe Mark
).Best of luck either way. I hope each of you make the most productive choice.
_________________
______________
Because he is.
This message was edited by Chris Davison on 2002-09-08 02:48
