I cant stand anything microsoft anymore. Teams, outlook, word, every iteration just makes me more angry.
I got a new job, fully remote, and we use Teams. Not gonna lie, I don’t get the hate. It seems as exactly adequate as WebEx or Zoom. None of them make me cum, none of them make me upset.
What is it about Teams that people hate so much? How does WebEx or Zoom do it any better?
Fully onboard with hating new Outlook though, fuck it sucks. Can’t even browse the global address list, it’s search only.
It uses a fucking inordinate amount of resources to accomplish its task, mostly.
That's Electron baby!
Several years ago I inadvertently (because I didn’t realize who they were) got in a twitter argument with someone who I seem to recall as the creator of electron about how it was fucking embarrassing how bad electron apps are. At the time I kinda felt bad because he seemed like a decent guy and I let loose but I wonder what the carbon footprint of his little side project is…
I think what started the rant was that back at that time, if you scrolled one page back in a chat, it would display a graphic representing a chat while it loaded the chat. And the fucking software was sitting there using a GB of ram and couldn’t keep 5 min of conversation cached. Just inexcusably bad.
I don’t know who at Microsoft had such a hard-on for electron back then, but it seems to have spread and it’s still nowhere close to the good old windows GUI for resource usage.
Thankfully it has gotten better. Slightly. Still pegs my CPU but I think that’s because I have a shit CPU with integrated gfx
I could see the benefit if they wanted it to work on other systems, but I doubt that's why they chose it. Someone up high just saw it as the cool new thing and forced it onto projects, even when it didn't make sense.
Microsoft can’t render text properly. Which is embarrassing for the company that makes the most popular document tools. Every app Microsoft makes that renders text well is running chromium at some level.
Ahem… it’s Edge Webview 2. Which I promise is in no way exactly the same as Electron…
Comparing the amount of noise my laptop's CPU fans make between the two of them when doing moderately intensive tasks like screen sharing a 4K display, Zoom is measurably worse.
Possibly the one time that Microsoft's inexplicable inability to make their own software run well on their own OS has somehow not manifested.
Don't get me wrong, it is still death-by-a-thousand-cuts terrible, but the most current iteration of Teams is not the worst in its field... at this one specific thing.
Teams randomly selects the wrong microphone, so either people can't hear me or they can hear everyone around me too (laptop mic).
How hard can it be to store my microphone preference?
Teams meetings aren't really that much worse than Zoom, it's mostly minor gripes, although there are quite a few of those. The Teams chat client on the other hand is an absolute garbage fire that's significantly worse than Slack, Discord, or pretty much anything up to and arguably including IRC.
An organization , "team", channel, and chat are confusing as hell, that breakdown does not in any way align with the way communication works in a large organization. Why is there so little configuration available for notification settings? Why can't I completely silence or ignore a "team", channel, or chat? Why do I not receive notifications half the time for the things I actually want to be notified about? Why aren't there threads or at least a sensible and easy to follow "reply to" option? Why can't anyone seem to agree on the correct way to organize things? Half our groups are creating gigantic "teams" that include half the company, while the other half are creating shared channels nobody knows about. Both options suck.
For me, it has nothing to do with how good or bad the actual application is, it's the terms of service that go along with it. Basically microsoft hoovers up every morsel of data you put into their system, including your voice and face. I liken it to giving all your personal data to someone (including your voice and face), they put in a pretty looking safe on the side of the street and then they sell the keys to it.
Ignoring the fact that the data could be stolen from one of the many third parties it partners with, microsoft could (will) also give the data to the government which will then be used as evidence to deport or jail you or people you know for speaking out against the American regime or acted against Gods will and had an abortion. Or maybe someone in DC makes up some bullshit law targeting some arbitrary demographic which includes you, they request data from microsoft which is promptly provided; you get arrested and sent to jail or deported.
Data privacy is important, especially when the government is corrupt and insane. It's prudent to protect ourselves and the people we know.
Haven't needed to use it myself, but here's an open source alternative I've heard a lot about:
Not sure it'll help with your work though.
So when my old job had it, about 5 (out of 30) people in my area just couldn't open it.
Not the same five, IT would frequently reinstall it to fix it, but it would just break constantly.
Work computers, very locked down, couldn't do any alternative to it at the time, and we worked remote, so while everyone else had chat, some unfortunate people needed constant updates via email.
The question was who would be SOL, not if someone would be, that day.
I had to use teams with multiple accounts with multiple organisations. Sometimes my account is added to their organisation, sometimes I used their provided account. Microsoft was going for a one sign in approach and the whole thing just totally failed to account for my situation. It never successfully let me switch accounts, running multiple concurrently certainly never worked.
With one situation the work around was to follow the original organisation invite again, reset my password then proceed with my meeting. I'd do this maybe ten times a day sometimes if I had to bounce between different companies.
And all controls are basic as fuck. It's a business tool that thinks its target market is my grandma. All controls were apple-ified. I'd get a long error code and I couldn't select it to copy and paste it, and if I clicked off the window the notification displaying the error code would go away, so i'd have to print screen the error code, paste out somewhere, and then type it out manually into Google to try and diagnose. This was a solved problem 30 years ago. Why are we going backwards?
Anyway, rant over. It's a pos. Slack is light years ahead.
I'm in the same shoes about new job having to use teams and I wildly disagree. It is awful.
The best part of it is the noise cancellation on the microphone in calls seem pretty good and having a chat created for meetings is a good integration. BUT..
Compared to zoom, I guess it's not a big deal really. I'd prefer zoom but it's oh well. Compared to slack (which has it's own set of problems, but still) however it seems like a pile of shit in my opinion.
I use it for school. I'm in different groups and I need to use it for chat, file and image sharing on different projects and its an absolute nightmare trying to keep track of channels, I'd rather use literally any other software to accomplish this task. Most of us just jump on discord and use that.
Teams is fine for video calling and screensharing. The mess begins when organisations, as MS encourages them to do, try to embed everything there is into teams. Then it can very fast become a black hole where no one finds anything anymore
I manage teams in a MacOS environment and ive seen teams fail to notify when people get a message or phone call straight up. Ive seen it fail to deliver a message, automatically select audio devices (because it has to use its own selection of audio devices) sharing screens is like watching a slideshow no matter what network you are on, controlling another users computer is even worse. Our headsets are Plantronics “certified for teams” or whatever its called and the mute button sometimes desyncs with the client and the headphones may be muted but the client not or vice verse. Theres much more but im so tired from dealing with teams all day. I also think its just a wildly unintuitive ui, settings are completely strewn across all sections
automatically select audio devices (because it has to use its own selection of audio devices)
Dude, this so fucking hard. It doesn't even respect the system volume on my Windows 11 work laptop; despite being set at like 30%, my eardrums always get blasted at the start of the meeting. Every single time, I have to go into the volume settings and turn down the individual application (which has TWO volume controls for...reasons?), because apparently per-app volume is higher priority than system volume for reasons I have yet to find an answer to.
I want the old Volume Mixer back. At least that worked as any reasonable person would expect.
Yeah no shit. Then the new ones literally have less features than the old one. Like connecting SharePoint calendars
Or having a button to refresh RSS feeds.
Seems like they wanted the web and app version of outlook to work identically. Some things don't work on the web though, so they decided to cut features on the app until they were the same as web. It's just such a corporate move.
Microsoft sucks and so does Outlook. My dad uses Outlook personally and I just can't imagine that. It's like taking your torture rack home with you for personal usage.
The new M365 Outlook is just webmail. Every upgrade is actually a reduction in functionality as they align to the web version. The good news is this eliminates the need for Windows.
Yeah I feel this. Outlook pisses me off. So does Microsoft in general.
What pisses me off more is HP.
Yes but I don't use HP for email because it won't let me send one if my cyan ink is low.
Sometimes I think about the billions of dollars of wasted productivity caused by Outlook being so bad at rendering email.
I think every day about the productivity lost because people use Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. Maybe even multiple times a day.
this entire article is about a single tweet some guy made as a joke
Hah, I JUST had a conversation with my boss about whether or not I was using the "new" outlook or the "old" outlook.
He's apparently using the "old" outlook because there's a toggle switch in the upper right of his window that says "try the new outlook!" and I don't have that, meaning...I guess I'm using the "new" outlook?
Who knows at this point. It's all trash.
I still think there is a group of people working at microsoft, pulling the strings to dismantle the company from the inside. I haven't seen an update that makes things better for any of their projects in years
In my last job I installed Outlook on my personal phone to access my work calendar conveniently. Found out from a colleague that if the admin for an Outlook server you're signed into on any device fucks up badly enough you could end up having that device completely wiped so I promptly uninstalled it.
Yeah, you're talking about MDM (Mobile Device Management) solutions/tech. I'm not an IT employee myself, but I am familiar with these things from work (similar situation as yours), and also because I'm a nerd and like researching these things.
On some phones, like Samsung's ("Secure Folder"), you can have [essentially] a second, containerized instance of Android running. Or you can think of it like a virtual second user that ultimately you have control of. So what I did was install Outlook in that. Because the MDM permissions (e.g. wipe the phone) would only affect that container.
Otherwise, for everyone else -- yeah don't install work apps/accounts on your personal devices.
"new" outlooks has less features than the old one. And its even harder to find things in settings (they removed a bunch of stuff). I dont look forward to this being on work devices...
Whichever version it is, I hope that one day I can delete a mail, change my mind, press ctrl-z and it will actually undo the last delete and not some random one from earlier in the day.
My work and my former university uses outlook and Ms apps as their primary line of communication . It's like the most counterintuitive site there is
New Outlook for Windows sucks. I tried it a few months ago and it is like a mobile app for idiots. It lacks many settings and many things. It is like windows 11, you need to do extra steps for stuff and settings you want. Also if you have only a standalone office and not a Office365 subscription they have ads, like their mobile app. Fucking Microsoft.
I've been paying for Office365 home for years. Recently I started a business and signed up for 365 Business for the company email address.
Outlook stopped working, because the 365 Business account - which I specifically signed up in order to do email - doesn't include local Outlook, and my existing home-licensed one throws a hissy fit if I try connecting it to my business account.
Microsoft sucks.
I work in government, and on mobile devices Outlook government accounts are restricted so that all other accounts have to be removed from the app.
It sounds like a great security feature, but since I need access to 3 accounts for reasons, I've got one version installed on my city phone, one on my tablet, and had to install another on my personal phone.
We're budgeting in a second city phone for me next year because Outlook sucks.
As a help desk worker, I am starting to get tired of Microsoft's bullshit.
Try something new and it doesn't work out? Fine. That's reasonable.
But can we stop breaking what was already working?
This is what happens with innovation when only monopolies are left on the board.
Name an industry, it’s the same. But here’s the dog shit. You still have to give shareholders returns. When you ran out of shit to innovate like 25 years ago, ran out of companies to buy 10 years ago, and already captured the regulatory bodies. Congrats it’s game over.
Except it’s never game over. Just squeeze one side til the toothpaste runs out.
I asked my magic 8 ball about this and it said "Outlook not so good"
So, we can expect more security breaches?
Microsoft: Move along .. Nothing to see here.
The corp I'm working at moved to Outlook Web.
It's so hostile about downloading attachments through anything but OneDrive it's comical.
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