Hyperlink insert crashes Office 2016 & Windows 10 Creators Update

I understand what you are feeling and saying.

I worked for DEC and without going into long winded detail, the state of computing today, from both a hardware, operating system and application perspective is absolutely not the way I wanted to see the industry go.

There is a malaise in the technology world where deriving solutions to problems and making intelligent design choices has taken a back seat to the marketing mavens. Apparently it's all about features. Frankly, I like toasting my toast in my toaster and not in my car. I don't need a PC that can rapidly bake cookies in Timbuktu, I just want to do real work. Why the heck do I want Contacts in My Task Bar. Which idiot thought that **** up.I don't need to be instantly connected with some **** on the far side of the world. There's a long list of things where Microsoft and others toss piles of **** against the wall, and if any of it sticks, they turn around and says it's a feature so they sell it.

Over the years, Microsoft has had numerous **** tossing ideas when it came to photos and they've all been abandoned.

This latest **** storm of Windows 10 and how I am being forced to take it, is really pissing me off. I had to figure out a way to turn off the stupid font cache so that my fonts wouldn't disappear. It doesn't look liek they fixed that **** up yet, since they introduced it in the first Creators Update.

Oh, don't get me started...

You said it!!!

So, what do we DO about it?  They've got me by the short hairs.  I need to get my work done, not rant on unmonitored fora.

Do we class action them via the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC.gov)?  Do we send copies of these rants to our local newspapers' Opinions page?  Do we march down the street carrying signs and getting CNN to cover us incessantly for 10 hours/day?

I've copied some of my rants about micros*** to my local newspaper's Watchdog Column (Dave Lieber - look him up!)

WHAT DO WE DO?

I just want XP and Office 2002.  Microsoft could expend its brilliance on modernizing XP/Office 2002 security for today's sicko world. 

It could also spend its marketing energy into getting its software to toast in your car, yell at your dog and fine-tune the shower temperature for those nutcases who want it, or are too uninitiated to know better because they never read Orwell's 1984.

SO, COME ON, Y'ALL...WHAT DO WE DO???

DEC's premier OS was VMS, later renamed OpenVMS when all the world was going to open this and open that and i this and i that.

VMS was developed as a 32 bit OS, with a minimal memory footprint, and ran on the VAX architecture, also designed and developed by DEC. By the time VMS came out, DEC had already developed and sold more than five different Operating Systems, and had the finest engineers in the world.

VMS steadily evolved over the years and when the Alpha architecture was developed, those super fine engineers developed a binary translator to convert OpenVMS 32 bit to OpenVMS 64 bit. This was no small feat, as that was a big leap from a 32 bit von Neumann architecture to a 64 bit Harvard architecture.

Compaq bought DEC and OpenVMS continued. HP bought Compaq and OpenVMS continued. Intel and HP collaborated on a new architecture, Itanium, also a 64 bit Harvard architecture and OpenVMS was again brought to this platform.

A while ago, Intel announced the end of the Itanium architecture and HP decided to spin off OpenVMS to an independent development firm, remarkably called, OpenVMS. (that is supposed to be interpreted as humor)

OpenVMS has announced that they are porting OpenVMS to the x86-64 bit architecture. At various times within DEC, Compaq and HP, this has always been perceived as the holy grail of development for OpenVMS. They are now talking about first boot, I don't know when this will be, but it has always been a significant event, as each new variant of VAX, Alpha and Itanium has had a first boot, and by now that would be almost a hundred or more, different systems.

For a moment I shall digress.

Dave Cutler, used to work for DEC and while there, he and his engineering teams developed a number of different Operating Systems, OpenVMS being one of them. Dave was poached from DEC by Microsoft and laid the foundations and developed Windows NT, which was ultimately hijacked by the Microsoft Marketing team, so the design went the wrong way. Oh well, this is called Windows today. Just for fun, "VMS -WNT".

I personally like OpenVMS over Windows. I believe the design is elegant, it is mature, and there is none of this funny, Workstation, Server, Home, Office, Pro stratification of systems. One OpenVMS version, and it self tunes to the workload on the system that it is running on.

VMS does things that all other Operating Systems can only dream of.

For example, one OpenVMS computer system ran in Sweden, non-stop, for more than 25 years, and was physically moved three times over that 25 years and continued to run while it was moved. That is the power of a Cluster and the power of solid networking.

Should OpenVMS get a first boot, and the resultant product is sold at an affordable price, I'll be kicking Windows to the curb, faster than you can say, Hasta la Vista baby!

ReactOS may also become a strong contender as an alternative to Windows. ReactOS is hoping to be a drop in replacement for Windows, capable of using the drivers that make the hardware work with printers, scanners, tape, disk and more. it's an ambitious project, driven by the Open Source Community, and there are those that give it short notice at their peril. Linux, and Apache Web Server and PHP and so much more all come from humble Open Source community development and the internet runs on that stuff. I believe that ReactOS is a serious contender and is worth reading about it's updates on a monthly basis. Today, it's for early adopters, but soon, it will be for mission critical use.

Thank you, Richard!  

Micros*** (I prefer this spelling.  It leaves it to the imagination...I've filled in those blanks with a variety of different letters, depending on how miserable they've made me at that moment) has me as addicted as a heroin user, but there is no methadone equivalent for me.  I can't afford to switch everything to Apple.  Because I work like a maniac, self-employed, I don't have the time to stop working and move 24 years' worth of records to a new architecture that I don't know how to use.

I built my computer to last me awhile.  I just had no idea that the new Windows and Office software was such a tremendous downgrade in functionality. 

I also didn't know that a company could get away with treating its customers in such a deplorable manner. 

Seriously, like a moron, I called tech support for Excel 2016/365 'click-to-irritate' and their tech's first question, when I asked why Excel would no longer total a list of hours/minutes, like it always could before this miserable iteration, was, "Do you have a formula in your spreadsheet?"  I answered, "Yes.  It is 'sum(above)'."   She answered, "We don't support spreadsheets with formulas (sic)."

All that said, I say bring on OpenVMS and/or ReactOS.  I'll find the time to learn it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for being gigantic jerks, Micros***!  

But (genuinely), thank you, Richard, if nothing else, our back-and-forth has been very cathartic!  I still like the idea of a good ol', hippie-style why-is-micros***-allowed-to-get-away-with-this protest in the 50 largest cities in the US.

And really, why do they wish to harm their customers?

I did notice 'they' edited your previous post (I enjoyed getting to read it in its virgin form!), so, unless they have robots that edit certain words, I imagine some lowly micros*** employee did read what we're saying here.  So, deductive reasoning: they don't give a flying f***!  My only conclusion - I hate their guts!!!