Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

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Fill in the blank: The worst software I ever used was…

What is the kludgiest, most poorly designed, buggiest, counter-intuitive, prone-to-breakdown, driver-devouring, update-eluding, worst piece of crap app you’ve ever had the displeasure of using?

Name the software in the title of your reply, then use the body of your post to expound upon the absolute wretchedness of the application in question.

Topic

Inhouse Payroll Batch system

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

COBOL, batch, Maintained by dedicated folks who did a lot of hacking and praying at year end. 36 separate Unions demanding weird, illogical pay options. When the company shut down the plant, they laid off all but one Payroll programmer, and he died of a heart attack trying to keep it running until the plant was completely closed.

I maintained the online front end of it, in ADF.

In-house ERP system

In reply to Inhouse Payroll Batch system

No, it was our home brewed ERP system, written and maintained by the worst much of nimrods who ever dared to call themselves programmers. Test software changes before releasing them? Not on their watch.

Medical Software – Practice Partner

In reply to Inhouse Payroll Batch system

Practice Partner without a doubt has them all beat. Like it was programmed by a retarded 10-year-old with dyslexia. Runs only on windows, but doesn’t use Win GUI calls; database is proprietary and bug ridden, no functional search mechanism, doesn’t interface with other programs well – what a nightmare. Absolutely not designed for medical practitioners, they’ve taken no time to consider HOW the program will be used, but only whether the hospital administrator guy will be happy.

Anyone ever hear of Macola? All I have to say is “Oy Vey!”

In reply to Inhouse Payroll Batch system

It’s supposed to be a financial application, but is loaded with bugs that cause all sorts of database file locking issues and file corruption.

Winfax

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I have had more trouble with this than any other software I have ever used. It is poor poor coding or somthing. Im no programmer, but just messing around with this so long, I have figured out how to modify the files of it to make it work correctly. You shouldnt have to do that!!!!!!

Winfax 10.3

In reply to Winfax

Since it?s inception with Delrina 7.x, Winfax was ?the? program to get. With the advent of version 8, prior to being bought out by Symantec, it was still the best program out there. Symantec took over the program but never did anything with it. Matter of fact, they won?t even support it in a network environment, though it can be networked. If you get it up and running, great, but if it crashes, leave it alone. There are more hassles removing it than there are leaving it alone. I believe the last version to ship was 10.3 which was the worst of the worst.

Winfax is bad?

In reply to Winfax 10.3

I used Winfax at my last job to run a stand-alone Fax-On-Demand system. Never had problems with it.

What I [b]don’t[/b] like is that Talkworks is not automatically included with Winfax anymore.

used to be great…

In reply to Winfax is bad?

I ran Winfax/Talkworks in my small business and in my county IT job for several years. I, too, was miffed when the upgrade excluded Talkworks and quit using it.
Travis

I concur winfax was a mess.

In reply to Winfax

Nice printer…

I hate WinFax

In reply to I concur winfax was a mess.

Its horrible.

Had to add my 2 cents 🙂

Take time to learn

In reply to Winfax

I’ve used Winfax with my ME for years without incident.
The rules changed when they brought out XP.
But all it required was a knowledge of how to make it work.
It’s all very well to complain about the difficulties of programming, however what I read here is a bunch of people who would rather not have to do anything and have the Winfax do it for them.
Sorry, this is the real world.
Bone up, Put up, or better yet if all you can do is cry and put it down the Prg then the obvious becomes clear.
Thank you

Aaron

between Norton and a few others

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

As far as Windows is concerned… any original Symantec app really. aside from their firewall which i haven’t bothered to install individually. The AV tends to miss a lot, and it damn near cripples a system. mind you i haven’t tried a version since system works 2003, and Norton internet security 2004, but from what i hear it hasn’t gotten any better. Originally replaced them with AntiVir,NoAdware and BlackICE, but now have settled into ZoneAlarm Security Suite, and haven’t tried anything else since, as it has been VERY effective…almost perfect really.
It’s not neccesarily poor by design, but it fits most of trivia geek’s discriptions listed;

“What is the kludgiest, most poorly designed, buggiest, counter-intuitive, prone-to-breakdown, driver-devouring, update-eluding….”

It Caused just about every BSOD i have ever seen…I also got plenty from “non-digtally signed Drivers” on Windows 2000 that worked flawlessly in XP; not to mention some that were digitally signed….go figure.
McAfee’s AV is right behind Norton…a little better but still about as slow.(last version tried 8)

As for Linux(Ubuntu 5.10 specifically)…Totem v.1.2.0 …it just doesn’t work…at all. Mplayer has some issues too, but i’m on dial-up and have had a chance to get updates for everything on Ubuntu “Breezy” yet. hopefully i will do that tomarrow. in the mean time Ubuntu, and Kubuntu “Dapper”TLS(v6.06) is in the mail. other then totem i haven’t really had a problem in Ubuntu Linux.

Over all….it’s virtually impossible to come out and really say what app is the worst above all other apps in the world, but i’m almost positive Norton is among the top ten worst.

Totem and Linux Media Players

In reply to between Norton and a few others

Linux media players are a bit of a minefield. I’ve never had totem behave for me either. The main problem with Linux media players, from XMMS to MPlayer, seems to come down to patent issues which make it difficult for free software to legally read DVDs, play MP3s, etc.

This is typical software/music/video industry mafia crap and can be worked around. See http://plf.zarb.org/ for the penguin liberation front, or livna.org (I think that’s correct; livna dot something anyway) for lots of useful packages including a working libdvdread, win32 codecs, an MP3-playing plugin for XMMS and other patent-violating code that comes in very handy but has been stripped from official distributions.

Also worth mentioning: VLC. It makes a great video player and runs on Windows and Linux; I use it for nearly all videos. Gxine is a pretty decent xine frontend, too, if you’re looking for one. A nice feature of VLC is easy, GUI-driven video transcoding and the ability to stream video over your network from a disk or video file.

I agree – Norton and Symantec products

In reply to between Norton and a few others

I don’t even know where to begin, there are so many problems with Symantec and Norton. They started going downhill in 2001. Their 2003 products were full of bugs. The 2006 versions can’t even remove previous versions. They are the biggest resource hogs and bring most computers to a sreeching halt. The corporate versions are just as bad. rtvscan.exe should be classified as a virus. It interferes with core os functions. Try upgrading or uninstalling any of their products. It will fail 80% of the time. Their support site has you following pages and pages of instructions, sending you into the registry and jumping all around Symantec.com just to remove their software. They have had to create all kinds of special utilities and tools for each version of their software just to remove their own software (RNAV, SymNRT and Norton Uninstall Tool come to mind). Have you ever run Live Update for just their AntiVirus product? They have taken a simple antivirus product and broken it into a bunch of confusion: Subscription Services, Subscription Client Update, Symantec Shared Components, Symantec Security Response Submission Software, Symantec Redirector, Symantec Common Driver SymEvent, Symantec Common Client Updates, Live Reg, Live Update, it goes on and on. It’s antivirus software, for Pete’s sake! It’s not rocket science… sheesh!

Yes Norton Has to be the worst

In reply to I agree – Norton and Symantec products

Its anti virus software when it does finally find something to repair it sends you off to the symantic site to download bits to fix the problem. and that is despite taking over the network connection at least daily to update the virus definitions?? on top of that it is so resource hungry that it slows everything down with it.

Norton’s saving grace

In reply to Yes Norton Has to be the worst

Norton caused a system crash. It used its evil voodoo powers to cause the service “Web Services” to commence stopping. Whether it was a direct Norton attack (was Norton written by hackers?) or Norton merely failed to stop a virus (as it failed to stop the Nail last year).

But the good news is that after system reformatting Norton thinks it is clean installed and gives me another 90 days free.

So every time Norton fails i get anothe free 90 day trial (feels more like the trial is over and I was found guilty).

yay -_-

PS. I use Ewido Security Suite at home.

Norton & Symantec

In reply to I agree – Norton and Symantec products

It is really ironic, because in the old days both Norton and Symantec were great software companies. I think Norton Commander was one of the greatest pieces of software ever written for DOS systems. The original Norton Utilities made my life very easy in the late ’80s.

Symantec Q&A was the definitive flat database and word processor for users who did not require a brazillion unused features.

It was only after they merged that they both became bloated and eventually practically unusable.

Symantec & Norton gets my vote, too

In reply to I agree – Norton and Symantec products

Has anybody successfully migrated to SAV 10.1 Corporate Edition? I have tried following their instructions posted on the website – don’t work.

Their code is so convoluted, it is as much monster code as the IRS software.

I just update to SAV, and now I’m looking into ditching them.

Does it take all of us to actually state this? Don’t they kinda get it themselves?

And now, I get the invitation to a webinar on migrating from SSE to SSEP. What the h&ll is SSEP? Don’t count on the Symantec website for an answer. They don’t even have a topic for their own product!

Hey Symantec – DUH! Get a clue or go out of business!

What is a good Antivirus Software

In reply to Symantec & Norton gets my vote, too

If Norton isnt good what do you suggest? I am in a new position and the previos antivirus software was Norton

Try PC-cillin

In reply to What is a good Antivirus Software

PC-cillin works great, I got it after Ihad a virus that Norton didn’t detect, seems like when Symantec gets a hold of a good piece of software they trash it, winfax as well.
PC-cillin comes with virus checker, spam checker (gets 95%, ad ware checker and firwall, it works great.
I had to re-format to finally get rid of Norton, what a piece of garbage it turned into, it used to be great

Just Installed PC-cillin

In reply to Try PC-cillin

It seems to work very well, system is generally faster and it is less intrusive. I am about to convert all of our Symantec/Norton systems. It takes some time to even remove Norton fully but it is worth it. So far PC-cillin is a high value and well running solution for us.

Norton’s Internet Security

In reply to between Norton and a few others

No matter which version it’s something that I’ve never got to work correctly and is my [b]Bug Bear[/b] application the one that I simply just [i]CAN NOT GET TO WORK![/i]

Norton System Works used to be half way decent prior to the XP Version but it’s all been downhill since then but they reached the pinnacle of unusability with [b]Internet Security[/b] it makes MS Pre Beta’s look positively perfect.

Col

Norton Products

In reply to Norton’s Internet Security

I agree that Symantec/Norton products are resource hogs. On my system, I noticed a boot time of 2.5 minutes with symantec installed. I switched to AVG Professional and ZoneAlarm, and It boots in under a minute!!

Ditto

In reply to Norton’s Internet Security

I have to agree on this one. I’m an IT guy and had this dog hose my system every time I attempted to install it. Luckily I took the proper precautions beforehand and was able to recover. Total waste of money!

Totally agree

In reply to between Norton and a few others

The HP desktops I buy for my company have started shipping with Norton – the first thing I do when I install a new machine is take the wretched thing off!!!

Same here!

In reply to Totally agree

I get HP desktops/laptops for the company I work for too, Norton goes straight in the bin! – it’s just such a load of rubbish and it does it’s best to avoid being uninstalled, why oh why do they ship with it?!?!

I have had a few users come to me for help with their home systems that Norton has messed up, PC world seems to push Norton on the unknowing public when it’s one of the worste ones on the market, mind you PC world is another rant I could go on about.

I would recommend command antivirus software from http://www.authentium.co.uk, very good and powerful, small definition updates that all happen in the backround and it does not effect PC perfomance

Norton Firewall

In reply to between Norton and a few others

Norton Firewall is something I actually bought hoping to solve some problems. It was a waste of money. Attempting to configure the firewall to work with my internet connection was a nightmare. I gave it two attempts, then it was gone. I kept the CD, but it never leaves the case.

Norton Utilites for Windows 2002

In reply to between Norton and a few others

I had the mis-fortune of installing and running the Norton Disk Doctor, and it found a bad block of some type. After having it fix it which I wasn’t experiencing any problems on my system, it trashed the HD and I had to re-install W98.
I lost a lot of data because of this, what a sinking feeling when your system goes out with some important data.

Symantec

In reply to between Norton and a few others

Our company has decided to discontinue use of all Symantec products. Not just at the Americas sites but world-wide. The support that is offered is an absolute joke. So now we are scrambling to find a replacement since our Symantec contract ends in 4 months.

Try Panda

In reply to Symantec

I have been using Panda for a couple of months and it has found adware, spyware and viruses that Norton has neglected. http://www.pandasoftware.com

Norton is OK, or (more correctly) was OK…….

In reply to between Norton and a few others

….. until Symantec got hold of it.

Norton products peaked in performance about version 2000/2001, and went rapidly downhill from there.

I totally agree with all the negative comments as they apply to Symantecs bloatware, and I am dismayed at what they did to a fine product.

I still keep *old* Norton suites for my older systems, and they work fine, fast and efficient.

I first noticed the drop in performance when I HAD TO buy 2002 (reason: previous versions didn’t support XP, and refused to even install). Symantec also started dropping good features and adding useless ones. *** sigh ***

So like many others here, I began looking at the market alternatives, and found some good ones to replace Symantecs offerings. (but that isn’t the subject of this topic)

I wonder how easily Peter Norton sleeps these days, when he sees what has happened to his world class system, after he had sold out to Symantec?

Terrible software…

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

The worst software I have ever had the displeasure of using (and indeed administering) has to be Lotus Notes R4.6.

Later versions of Notes/Domino are much, much better – but 4.6 was just shockingly bad.

It’s as if all the developers were drunk when writing it.

Lotus Notes 4.6+

In reply to Terrible software…

Agree with Notes being an interesting user experience – especially between updates where features appeared and disappeared and changed behaviour between updates and then in subsequent updates they changed back.

It became very important to manage which release was installed on the company desktops.

Finally a decision to install an update to fix a troublesome bug came with new bugs that stopped other apps that previously worked flawlessly.

Two steps forward – one step back… close your eyes, spin around…. we all fall down.

Surely that should be one step forward, two back

In reply to Lotus Notes 4.6+

Big companies in the Software industry appear to have little use for backwards compatibility: ‘Buy our new, improved, perfect version and watch all third party apps written for any previous version get trashed’ seems to be the accepted view. Lotus Notes and MS Outlook are particularly bad but Access and SQL server follow close.

I agree, I hated Lotus Notes

In reply to Lotus Notes 4.6+

I used to have to use it. WHen I started a new company the first thing I removed from consideration was Lotus Notes. I had forgotten how bad it was until I read this 🙂

Who uses Lotus Notes anymore? Very few companies I know of still do

In reply to Lotus Notes 4.6+

It’s usually Microsoft Exchange 2003 dominating the messaging platform of choice, or GroupWise here and there. The company my wife works for used Lotus Notes, but I think it’s because their IT department doesn’t know anything else, based on all the problems my wife has with her company provided laptop computer.

We use Notes…

In reply to Who uses Lotus Notes anymore? Very few companies I know of still do

Although not for mail. We use Notes for a shared document database with thousands of documents.

Notes is showing it’s age, but once your familiar with it Notes is actually a very useful, robust application. Most of my documents have table and links, and many of them have pictures and embedded .pdfs. Being an author I access it through the Notes application itself but the most of the people who access my documents use IE.

Juno e mail

In reply to Terrible software…

I teach, and those using it, are at dissavantage before even click…They even tell that student never call for help again.
Another programs or programs is Cam programs, never work with package disk, have to find addons.
rr

What about Lotus cc:Mail? If that wasn’t a dog, I don’t know what was?

In reply to Terrible software…

From the crappy menu screens to the confusing commands, it was a piece of crap to begin with.

What about Lotus cc:Mail? If that wasn’t a dog, I don’t know what was?

In reply to Terrible software…

From the crappy menu screens to the confusing commands, it was a piece of crap to begin with.

MS SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manager

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Even for Microsoft, this is an astonishingly bad piece of software. Between a tendency not to refresh the display of information that has changed, dialogs whose tabs refer to data which interact where changing one tab fails to provoke an update to the other unless you close and reopen the dialog (e.g. creating a filegroup and then putting files on it), sticky and unresponsive behaviour, inconsistent shortcut keys, general ugliness, bloat, and the mind-buggeringly bad DTS Designer with its apparently willfully perverse default layout and total lack of a ‘snap to grid’ to aid alignment or an ‘undo’ feature, this is definitely the worst piece of software I’ve ever used. Obstructive modal interactions where a modeless window would have been a better solution are a sign of sheer laziness, and even the superficial finish that MS often get right when everything else is wrong is terrible: apparently trivial problems like a ridiculous (proportional!) default font for editing code and incorrect terminology in automatically inserted code comments (e.g. “Java ActiveX Script” – come again?) do nothing to make the environment pleasant.

I met this after several years in open-source land, where often user interfaces and documentation lag behind the backend code and half-finished projects are occasionally released without much warning of their flaky behaviour. I’d actually grown quite used to rolling my eyes and muttering to myself that it was worth it for the solid underlying code of the more mature projects, the more flexible development environment and the power of a good shell. Until I met Enterprise Manager, there was always a part of me that thought that there were aspects of open source software that would just never quite match the slick professional exterior of commerically developed systems with massive budgets.

But this pathetic excuse for a piece of “Enterprise” software has cast the last doubt out of my mind about Free Software. This is a code-fart, a pointless waste of time that nobody would use except that we’re forced to, in order to use SQL Server. Fortunately things look a lot better in 2005, to give credit where it’s due. Notably, Enterprise Manager is nowhere to be seen. I guess it turned out to be as unmaintainable as it was unusable.

Word(s) of the week…..

In reply to MS SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manager

The new champiom is………CODE-FART. Write it down and use it often…LOL again!
Charles

ITI Banking software

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

ITI software is the WORSE software ever. From a user standpoint and an IT administrative standpoint. All the software is still 16 bit, most of which is badly ported from Unix software. The backend hosted by Fiserv is updated sporadically at best and there infrastructure forces me to adopt terrible security policies. I cannot use IPSec nor can I use DHCP so I’m forced to use static IP Addresses.

Applications crash constantly and upgrades never go as planned. They’re still using INI files and not taking advantage of the registry. Individual applications make use of a ID code that is linked to the IP address to ensure connection to the mainframe (yes the main frame). Problems that arise, even tech support doesn’t know half the time, although tech support is good, I can’t blame them for the horrible programming.

Rather than expanding and improving infrastructure I’m constantly bending best practice to it’s breaking point just so these applications work…kinda sort of.

Sidenote

In reply to ITI Banking software

INI files are cleaner and easier to use and maintain than Registry. Ofcourse Registry is little more secure than INI files.

These days, Config files that use XML formatted data is gaining some momentum. For sure in the .Net world.

Theses INIs…

In reply to Sidenote

These INIs are far from clean. They’re zero logic to them, they’re impossible to keep standardized b/c everytime you upgrade the system it overwrites half of the modifications you have to make to it, so you have to re-mod the file to make them work. Plus somehow during certain upgrades the INIs get moved (well new copies are added) and the program points to them.

I just wish they had there config files a little more centralized and organized. I don’t care if it’s an INI, registry entry, XML or a JPEG file for that matter. just some kind of structure.

Windows Registry Repair Pro

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I use this program on an older computer a while back and it screwed up my windows registry so much, it froze my computer. I WOULD NOT USE THIS PROGRAM ON MY NEW COMPUTER IF THE AUTHOR OF THIS PROGRAM PAID ME $10.00 TO USE IT!

Time Matrix/Great Plains

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

This stuff is the worst! Time Matrix is a time keeping system, or rather it’s designed to keep my time fully occupied. The time clocks lock up and/or display strange messages. I can’t trust it to correctly calculate time. I can’t trust it to correctly post time. I can’t trust it to corrctly export time to our payroll system. The same information displays differently depending on what window you’re using. I could type an export file by hand faster than using this stuff. It’s ungodly bad. Give me the old Unix software back!

How long?

In reply to Time Matrix/Great Plains

We are evaluating this application, may I ask what company you work for and how long you have used this application?

ME, Medical Spectrum and Optus Messenger

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

The ME is self explanatory it was a disaster from the very beginning and should never have proceeded past the predesign stage.

Medical Spectrum and Optus Messenger work together to do the one job the Medical Spectrum program is as the name implies a Medical Practitioners program which can be used to bill the patients and holds all the patients records. Optus Messenger allows this program to communicate with the Federal Government to upload the Medication Prescribed and any Bulk Billing that is done at the practise.

You can not use a Default install for either of these disasters and you have to waste hours attempting to get things working to a point where it looks as if it’s working even if it isn’t. Also being a [b]Bureaucratic Blessed[/b] Application the Medical Practitioners have to use the [b]Bloody Awful[/b] thing and even the company who supplies it doesn’t know how it works and to top it off the 2 entities play off against each other claiming that the problem is with the other program but the reality is that it really the same company but you’re dealing with different divisions.

Last time I worked with this nightmare was when I replaced a computer with a new one for Tax Purposes and the fact that the old one was so slow didn’t hurt either. Time spent was 4 hours building & Loading the computer part time while I was doing other work. After it was fully loaded & Patched 100 Hours Burn In.

Then 1.5 hours to install the unit and transfer the existing data across and have it working so that all the patient records where accessible and all the templates available.

Then 4 days to get Medical Spectrum and Optus Messenger to do what they are supposed to do and worse still most of that wasted time was spent waiting for return Phone Calls from one of the different departments who then blamed the other party for the problem. Then there was the constant phone calls from the Bureaucrats who insisted that I send them that Days transactions and all the previous days which of course I couldn’t do.

Then Medical Spectrum requires Norton’s PC Anywhere to allow the makers to regularly update the program as they log in through PC Anywhere and apply the updates as they become available and this is on something that [b]By Law[/b] has to be secure as there are patient details held on the system and a Open Door deliberately locked into the system.

You have to secure it down but all the time leave a gapping hole in the security because the Bureaucrats who insist on it’s use accept the problem with Security but none of the responsibility so if there is a breach it’s the Doctors First and then the IT People who get hit for failing to comply with the existing Privacy Legislation.

I no longer do Medical Work on any form of regular Basis but there is one system that I’m [b]Blackmailed[/b] into doing and when I insisted that I knew next to nothing about this program I was finding myself telling the so called [b]Top Tier Experts[/b] what was wrong and how to fix it.

[b][i]YUCK![/b][/i]

Col

The worst software I ever used was…

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

ConsoleOne by Novell aka Conslow One

Conslow One

In reply to The worst software I ever used was…

Yeah ,the early releases took about 5 minutes to load on a PIII 450 w 256 megs of RAM back in 2000/2001.

Not one of Novell’s finer products.

How about WordPerfect Office when Novell acquired it?

In reply to Conslow One

The original WordPerfect was awesome, but as soon as Novell got hold of it, they bothced up the GUI so bad that I started to use MS Word and never really looked back at WordPerfect.

You must lead a lucky life then…

In reply to The worst software I ever used was…

Agreed, C1 definitely has it’s share of issues, but if that is in fact the worst you’ve ever had, consider yourself lucky.

Command AntiVirus Software

In reply to The worst software I ever used was…

I haven’t used this for maybe 10 years, so it could be a whole different story now. 10 Years ago it was a nightmare!

Borland Turbo C++

In reply to The worst software I ever used was…

http://bdn.borland.com/article/0,1410,21751,00.html

Still the worst. The worlds 1st shitware.

In it’s inception

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

One of the hardest installs and most difficult programs I’ve used was called KNOWLEDGEWARE. It was festooned with multiple key actions and left me with wrist cramps after 1 hour. There was no mouse in those days and you had to have an ABOVEBOARD with at least 2MB memory expansion. The whole thing was floppy based, something like 36 five and a quarter floppies.

Tie: Mapics Point.Man and Applix iEnterprise

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Both are pieces of junk that are over-priced, slow, and use non-intuitive, non-standard GUIs, and are prone to frequent problems.

Point.Man is perhaps slightly more offensive in its user interface — who uses a picture of a window as an icon for a search tool?? (Search = “Window shopping”, get it???) We’ve basically had to write front ends for most functionality and call their APIs. Unfortunately, they don’t provide APIs for everything…

Early versions af MAPICS.

In reply to Tie: Mapics Point.Man and Applix iEnterprise

The versions of MAPICS (Manufactoring And Production Information Control System) marketed by IBM prior to MAPICS/DB was just plain awfull. The Order-entry and Invoicings was so bad that almost evry MAPICS installation used something else or wrote their own.

One good thing to be remember: In order to interface with other systems, they had a ‘transaction library’ wher data was placed. MAPICS then handled these incoming data as if they were it’s own. This transaction library was UNCHANGED for I think 15 years, making it easy and secure to connect other system to it.

Novell Netware 4

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I would have to say Novell takes the cake. I did hear that LANtastic was really a big pile of S*** also but I never had to endure that hell.

Well,

In reply to Novell Netware 4

not that I want to start up a long dead war, but all I can say is “bollocks”. For you to diss NW4 and NDS marks you down as someone who has absolutely no idea what you were dealing with. It was a ground-breaking piece of software which rightly won several major awards. Remember that it was a contemporary and rival of Windows NT4 server.

AD is [b]still[/b] not even close to what NDS was way back then – nearly ten years ago and over three years before AD was born – in both usabilty, scalability and ease of management. I use AD now because I have to but I still get absolutely hacked off with its limitations. Gah!

LANtastic predates Windows for Workgroups so what on Earth would you expect from it? As a peer-to-peer DOS network it did exactly what it said on the tin! Easy enough to use in the correct environment.

If you’re going to rubbish products then at least have the decency to know what you’re on about.

Neil

p.s. As an MCSE and an MCNE, I know both NDS and AD systems so [/b]I’m[/b] not posting a criticism because I don’t know a product properly.

right you are

In reply to Well,

Netware 4 was a big change from 3.x and I recall that we had some challenges with it on certain off brand hardware but it was ahead of it’s time. We ran tons of clients on it and all was well in the world until the Netware 5 fiasco.
As for Lantastic, we ran several small clients on this with offices of 5 to 20 PC’s. It was great for small business that couldn’t be convinced to invest in Netware (“Why would I need a PC sitting in the corner that nodbody actually sits in front of?” 🙂 )
Lantastic certainly had it’s limitations but 15 years ago it was pretty good – printer sharing, file sharing, messaging – fun stuff in the DOS and early windows world. Trouble was memory management which was more of the old DOS problem. Trying to stuff all those TSRs high and all…ahh those were the days…

Netware is still the best

In reply to Well,

The dot Oh! (4.0 and 01) were a bit flakey,but 02.,10,11 and 2 were solid set and forget.

ALL software should be that good.

But I guess anything without a GUI for everything can be considered hard to use from folks that are too lazy to RTFM.

Norton SystemWorks 2004!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In reply to Netware is still the best

A complete and utter piece of GARBAGE!

The DRM would always ask you to reregister.

It slowed the system to a crawl.

It would then not want to update and you had to go in and manually clear things out.

If you were to uninstall and reinstall (which was often),the DRM would say you have registered it too many times and to call Symantec to re-register.

It EFFED the partition tables so you couldn’t Ghost or clone it(caused by the built in Go Back product).

So you have one bundled product that breaks another bundled product from the same manfacturer!

It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder why the folks that made this CRAP,shouldn’t be jailed.

Oh,by the way,I am a Symantec dealer.

Norton until vista 5803

In reply to Norton SystemWorks 2004!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Norton is the number one thing I get rid of when I repair a non working or gooberd up computer for my customers. Now after pre-viewing Vista I can say for sure I am not looking forward to fixing this mess. I put it on my Hot Rod Rig 3.73EE and 7950 card. It made my old 286 mhz seem fast. No add or remove programs in control panel either, Who thought of that!

Symantec dealer!

In reply to Norton SystemWorks 2004!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You might as well admit to being a crack dealer! LOL!!

Totally agree

In reply to Netware is still the best

Some years back I worked at a college and we had a 4.11 server, that was rock solid. In the two years I worked tere it was rebooted only a couple of times, and never due to an OS problem.

Granted, but Netware shops are converting to Windows

In reply to Netware is still the best

or already have converted to Active Directory and Windows 2003. There are very few firms these days that still have Netware running or have any plans to keep it running. I was a hardcore Novell CNE and stood by the company back in the late 90s’ and early 2000s’, but every company I have set foot in, Novell Netware 4.x, 5.x, and 6.x with NDS/eDirectory, was being migrated to Windows Server 2003 and active directory. I was even involved in a few conversion projects where I was in charge of the conversion using Quest Software to do it. I didn’t like the idea, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Vendor support was dropping for Netware drivers, and many software vendors wouldn’t even have Netware versions of their middleware and would laugh if you would even mention that you run Netware or GroupWise. Having wireless PDAs’ was an even bigger challenge because GroupWise had issues with servicing IMAP devices, such as Blackberries (BES) and Treos (NotifyLink). It wasn’t until GroupWise 7 that Novell got a friggin clue about Wireless devices, but by then, it was too late and their clients were not former clients running Windows 2003 and Exchange. Netware was good back in the booming 90’s of IT, but they now serve a niche market of loyal customers who will find that they are left out to dry when vendors don’t have any legacy Netware or Suse Linux drivers and software vendors don’t have any legacy Netware or Suse Linux compatible software. I like Novell and their products, but to be realistic, if I don’t support Microsoft products or even touch them, I won’t be able to put food on the table and put a roof over my head.

Netware has any MS server OS beat

In reply to Well,

I have used everything from Netware 2.x to 4.x before having to switch over to the Windows NT/2000 products (wasn’t given a choice). Netware still has them beat hands down. Just Gates has more money for marketing and everyone is on the same path as the IBM philosophy. You can’t get fired for buying IBM, well now that holds true for Microsoft. Netware is the best file and print sharing OS and now with the addition of GUI it is just as good if not better than Windows 2000/2003. NDS was the best advancement to come along and although Microsoft claims not to have ripped it off it seems interesting that AD looks very much like it.

*nods*

In reply to Well,

I’ve got to agree, it was damn stable and well written. I did have some difficulties with it due to some machines having DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95 AND windows 98 (original and SE). The company I worked for at the time wanted to spend as little as possible on the ‘IT budget’ (I literally had to beg a few times to get things fixed, and even sabotaged my own work to get their attention). Netware was the best purchase they made, and that jury rigged system I made 7 years ago is still running smoothly (not that I particularly care anymore, I’m long gone).

Novell was top notch but…

In reply to Well,

Novell’s NDS was top notch but the real problem was the Windows Client. To be more accurate, Microsoft seemed to break Novell’s Windows client with every service pack and update. Then it was the aggravating wait for the update from Novell.

AD is strung all over the place requiring many different management tools. NDS is very logical and most things are in one place.

I trusted NDS, with AD I wait each day to see what surprises it will toss at me. Exchange 2003 is even more scary partly because it is so heavily dependant on AD. But that’s another post.

Isn’t GroupWise integrated into NDS/eDirectory as well?

In reply to Novell was top notch but…

But I do see the point in your statement. With Netware/GroupWise, one uses a single management console, ConsoleOne, to manage both NDS user objects as well as GroupWise mailboxes, post offices, domains, and gateways. In Exchange, it’s a constant juggle between AD Users & Computer and Exchange System Manager as well as having to remember which one to use based upon what one needs to accomplish. That has always been my main complaint against MS because they have way too many tools out there and fail to provide a single management console for simple tasks.

I AGREE!

In reply to Well,

Novell 4 was much more stable than NT. I thought it a novel idea that it was recommended to reboot the NT servers every 30 days to head off the BSOD. If a Novell 4 server Abended after only 6 months of continuous running, I was digging to see what in the world caused it.

My vote for the buggiest software would have to be Windows ME. A lot of neat ideas, but most of it did not work. (system restore) I think it was trying to do too much.

Novell finally got it right with NDS in IntraNetware 4.11

In reply to Novell Netware 4

but they took a lot of sh*t from customers because the earlier versions of NDS in Netware 4.0.x had major issues with object synchronization and the ever so dreaded and annoying stuck obituaries that never purged out.

Windows 95!

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Original release (95 A). Total POS. I still have nightmares…

I can remember all the hype, and how those fools with the MS recommended “minimum” requirements (a 386 with 4 MB) made their machines completely unusable with it.

Subsequest releases were somewhat “better”, but, with such a low standard already set, anything was an improvement.

Runner up? IE 4.

Windows 95 and Windows Millenium!

In reply to Windows 95!

Windows95 looked great, but was not as stable as Windows 3.11. But, Windows Millenium (yes, as a Network Admin, I was blessed with two PCs running this- purchased outside of IT) was the worst! It sucked on all levels!

Windows ME

In reply to Windows 95 and Windows Millenium!

Ahh… the famous Windows ME virus

Jeff DeWitt

That’s it??

In reply to Windows ME

That’s the jist of your reply???
Aaron

I thought Norton was bad till I tried Panda

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Norton is a resource hog which is a pain in the a$$, but it doesn’t compare to Panda in my book.
Panda was the fastest install then uninstall that I have ever done.

Dan

What was wrong with Panda?

In reply to I thought Norton was bad till I tried Panda

I am looking for a good antivirus solution for small businesses. I recommend AVG for personal use, but thought Panda might be a good product for small businesses. Any info/suggestions?

Thanks!

I thought it was a resource hog

In reply to What was wrong with Panda?

It basicatly dropped my home machine to it’s knee’s. My home machine is a 1.4 mhz with a gig of memory. I found that Panda was just killing me. Now, please understand that at the time I loaded Panda. I needed to do a reformat and reload of everything. But, once I uninstalled Panda. I was definatly running a whole lot quicker.
I have also talked to friends about it, and they agree’d that they thought Panda was a resource hog.
I use AVG free addition now and am thinking of trying their paid subscription version.
As for buisness, every place i’ve worked have either gone with McAfee or Norton. But, these have been large companies(State of Pa/Cell Phone company).

droolin

AVG – paid or free best all around

In reply to I thought it was a resource hog

Wether it is the Free version or the Paid Version of AVG, it is still the best all around virus product on the market. We repair computers. Norton, McAfee, & Panda all seem to slow computers by hogging resources. AVG runs in the background all the time and you never notice a slow down of any kind. Norton, McAfee and Panda are not stopping all viruses. Yet when we run AVG on an infected amchine, it always finds it. The paid version, which I use, is quicker and allows you more options as far as scheduling, etc. but most would not notice a difference. If you like AVG and have tried the free, why not pay? 38.95 for 2 years is not a bad price for good protection.

Stay away from AVG

In reply to AVG – paid or free best all around

I have seen AVG crash an OS beyond repair and have had to use a utility to restore the boot record. You get what you pay for. If it is was so good why so cheap. I have always found taking something for free or a low price is not a good deal when dealing with computers. That is just looking for trouble. I have not found that it finds as many viruses or keeps as up to date as they claim. I have run Norton after running AVG and it has found viruses that AVG has not found. Plus Norton is not a resource hog if configured correctly. It depends on how the configuration is set to check for viruses. If set to run at highest level of protection and it checks each email coming in then it will be slow. There is no reason in any anti-virus to monitor every email coming in as most are text and don’t contain viruses. Just have it check when attachments are open which is what it does anyway. I have been using it since the DOS days and have not had a problem. It usually is because of not knowing the product rather than it being a resource hog. Not sure how an anti-virus product can run in the background as it needs to be actively checking the entire OS and hard drive for virus like activity. If it is passive, how can it be checking the system. Background operations are good for printing and non-essential services but bad for virus checking.

Stay away from bad advice

In reply to Stay away from AVG

Your reply has statemets that indicate you do not have sufficent technical knowledge about how AVG works and have made some generalised statements that put free and/or low costsoftware in unfavourable light.
I would suggest you pose your questions to the AVG forum and update your understanding.
Next time don’t trash a software on which you have insufficent knowledge.

I agree

In reply to Stay away from bad advice

I agree .. price has nothing to do with the quality of the software. AVG is one of the best things I have ever used. Well another thing what I dont’ understand is how ppl get virus so easily? Mostly I know what kind of software or application will bring virus to my machine. Still we should have an antivirus, who know when someone tries to break security and its then when we need a guard and AVG is best.

AVG is great!!!

In reply to Stay away from AVG

I just started using it a few months ago, and it just runs in the background. I installed it on 5 computers I have running W2k Server, WXP pro and WXP home without any problems. Maybe you just had a bad os which was previously infected/corrupted.
Also, don’t dis free. Pair this program up with SpywareBlaster (probably the most important anti-spyware software to own) and you have a very tight system. SB is free, and instead of catching spyware after you have it, it just prevents you from getting it. Also, there is zero overhead, none what so ever after it loads. Check it out you won’t be sorry. It just broke into the top 25 most downloads on CNET.

You are Wrong! AVG works best…

In reply to Stay away from AVG

I have instaled free AVG on 100s of computers with no issues. All are updating every few days as any new updates come out. I had to rebuild my dad’s computer every week or so until I installed AVG to protect his system. No more viruses. He was using Norton, but it did not do the trick, plus the cost was too much for the retired folks.
As for running in the background, that is how Norton works too. We use it at work and it runs every day at noon in the background. So you obviously do not know what you are talking about.
Further, AVG is no resource hog, because I have no issues on my laptop now while it is running and I am writing this and surfing the net, and downloading files simultaneously. However, we schedule Norton for noon every day because it is a resource hog and the users are not able to do much on their machines while Norton is running. (Luckily we are switching to McAfee EPO which is much better without all the issues in Norton!!)
Configuration is the key. Do not select AVG to check emails if you do not wish. It is fully configurable.
As for free, only the version for home users is free. The business or corporate version is NOT free. Obviously you have no experience or knowledge of AVG becuase it does not cause any errors you describe. When the user fails to allow AVG to update or has it configured incorrectly, then a virus can attack the machine because it is not protected. The user seems to be the problem here, not AVG.
Wise up before you open your mouth!

AVG is a problem??? NOT!!!!!

In reply to You are Wrong! AVG works best…

I have used AVG for many years, we recommend it to all our customers and it has NEVER EVER let us down except for the odd occasion when mistakes were made in the configuration side. That’s the ID ten T error, not software………. in case you can’t work it write ID ten T as numbers (ID10T) and read it.

New to me

In reply to Stay away from AVG

Ran AVG for years with no problems, but saying Norton is not a resource hog is crazy. It just gets worse and worse with every release. Like Microsoft keep adding crap code on top of crap code they need to do a complete rewrite of the app.

99.99%

In reply to Stay away from AVG

Like many people here I have used AVG for many years, both free & paid, and unreservedly recommend it as the most cost-effective a/v product. BUT an upgrade to free AVG a year ago was a big problem to some WinXP users, which may be related to sschafir’s experience. I spent hours on the phone unravelling the problem. And she’s not an ID ten T, just a non-technical user. Irritating (and embarrasing, since she used it on my say-so) though this was, I STILL recommend it. I also agree with others that free or chaep software is very often the best as it is made by people who care.

Plain piffle!

In reply to Stay away from AVG

Agree with ragu completely. An AVG-inspired PC crash totally unexplained and then the grandiose statement that Norton is not resource hogging if configured correctly.
Wow! What planet have I been on for the last 5 years?

nothing but good.

In reply to AVG – paid or free best all around

Any machine that comes into my shop without an AV program leaves with it installed. No complaints as yet.

Agree re AVG

In reply to nothing but good.

Have used AVG for 18 months now on two desktops and one laptop – two machines are low spec. No problems at all, no viruses since loading, and no real performance impact, even when scanning – would recommend this product.

NOD32

In reply to I thought it was a resource hog

Only way to go.

Phew !!! NOD32

In reply to NOD32

Phew ! I thought you were saying NOD32 was the worst you have used.

Agree with you NOD32 is the best and many independent test have prooved it.

GO NOD32 !

NOD32

In reply to NOD32

you must be a Leo Laporte fan..Seems he just loves nod32.ive never used it.is it really that good as he claims on his KFI TECH GUY show?

NOD32 Comparison

In reply to NOD32

Just look at the following link of comparisons between different AV’s, yes NOD32 is at the top !

Link : http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2006_05.php

NOD32 Rocks

In reply to NOD32 Comparison

The best software I ever deployed, could have a few more bells and whistles, but it does get the job done. If you have mobile users, nod32 is the best tool you can give them.

Panda is resource hog

In reply to What was wrong with Panda?

Panda was running on the Church computer when I took it over. I was told it was the best and most secure A-V. Why hadn’t I ever heard of it?

It caused problems on-line, wouldn’t let me download from the song service we have, blocked or just glitched by just using the computer. Note that this is the one that sends video to the Projector.

Didn’t realize just how bad it was, until subscription ran out. Had to find and download the uninstaller for Panda. I just installed one of my users of Trend Micro on the machine and the other people using the computer complimented me for making the machine work smoother and faster. The replacement of Panda with TrendMicro resulted in one of the biggest improvments I’ve ever seen by just changing A-V ware. It also downloads from our song service flawlessly, Now.

The computer shop that sold the computer won’t recommend Panda anymore!

Step away from the Panda!

In reply to What was wrong with Panda?

Read the previous post, I agree with it. I see this program on a regular basis now that Staples is pushing it as their in-house brand. I have not seen a single instance of this program that ran correctly.
Trend Micro PCCillin Internet Security is what I recommend and sell, I’ve been using their products for over 4 years. Antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-adware, easy to configure firewall and spam-blocking in one package. It has a very tweakable interface, so you can set it up not to bother you with constant notices.

At least…

In reply to I thought Norton was bad till I tried Panda

At least with panda you don’t have to spend hours(and yes it took that long on one computer) in the registry to remove it.
Panda was ok…i foget why i eventually got rid of it…no, i won’t reinstall it to find out either.
Still Norton was far worse.

Panda

In reply to I thought Norton was bad till I tried Panda

Lucky you. Called to job where panda had been updated religiously since 2001. 2006 wouldn’t install coz of previous versions, but broke the uninstaller for the earlier version. Can’t go back or forward. Been waiting for a reply from Panda for a week now.

CA eTrust antivirus good

In reply to Panda

The city I work for has an enterprise license from Computer Associates for their eTrust Antivirus (used to be InnoculateIt), and we’ve never had a problem with it on my sub-network. I don’t know about the rest of the city, but we have public-access computers. I’ve never had a virus problem on them or the staff stations (knock on wood).I have other security, too, of course, but eTrust is easy to use, schedule, update, and doesn’t eat up resources.

Panda is Fine

In reply to Panda

On nearly every Antivirus you have to uninstall previous versions first. So you go the registry, hit edit, type Panda, and each entry that comes up you delete. Then you can delete all the files and install the new version.

Let’s try the other way around…

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

… as in, “what software have you used that worked right, the first time, without a major learning curve, no usability issues, and did exactly what you wanted it to do?” Here’s my list:

* ThumbsPlus (www.cerious.com)
* NoteTab (www.notetab.com)
* SecondCopy (www.centered.com)
* ReGet (www.reget.com)
* RemindMe (www.beiley.com)
* FreeBSD (www.freebsd.org) [OK, the learning curve was a bit steep, but the documentation is excellent!]
* Perl (www.perl.com)
* Google Search (www.google.com) [unfortunately, this is no longer true, their search is extremely broken at this point]

That is about all I can think of, off hand.

My computing experiences have been so bad, I have even had *fonts* break my system (one font mangled Adobe Acrobat reader; don’t ask me man, I just work here…).

J.Ja

Textpad is probably the easiest and the best I can think of

In reply to Let’s try the other way around…

Ok, the best software I’ve ever encountered that I recommend to everyone? Both tech’s and non techs.
Easy to understand, easy to install, all kinds of user addons, not a resource hog, lots of functionality that is configurable. You can save in both Unix and windows format. You can read both unix and windows documents easily. Can view things in hex.
And its not expensive, I think 99 dollars a copy.

droolin

Except for hex…

In reply to Textpad is probably the easiest and the best I can think of

… that describes Notetab, which is $20 or so. 🙂 Plus, it does regex searches, regex replaces, and will even do them across a directory tree. It is a total boon when working with large amounts of static HTML. Notetab has been my #1 productivity tool. The others I listed have saved me countless hours as well. Some of them I no longer use (SecondCopy has been replaced by Windows Backup, ReGet is no longer useful very often thanks to cable modem, ThumbsPlus is less useful to me since I stopped having to batch edit large numbers of graphics, etc.).

J.Ja

regex searches in notepad?

In reply to Except for hex…

Not the notepad delivered with the standard os right? I think I seen there was a professional one, with additional abilities. Never had the pleasure of using it though.
I have always used textpad cause of a couple main things. 2 that I didn’t list were the ability to highlight, cut, and paste columns. Sort on columns.
Shoot, I’d love to have the regex capability in a text editor though.

Note*Tab*

In reply to regex searches in notepad?

Notetab (www.notetab.com). It has totally spoiled me. If a text editor doesn’t do regex’s, I don’t want to use it. Notetab is so good, I don’t think they’ve even released an incremental version in years, because it is 100% bug free.

Oh yeah, and it also has pretty good HTML support, as well as CSS support. It ties into TopStyle. It has fantastic text processing systems (adjust indentation, for example, a real life saver!). I’ve dumped multiple GB files into it, and the only hitch was my available physical RAM (swap files are no fun!).

I cannot gush enough about this software. There is a free version as well; you get a trial of the Pro version (worth the $20) and after 30 days it degrades itself to the Lite version.

J.Ja

Thank you

In reply to Note*Tab*

This is one of those applications that people don’t realize how helpfull they are, untill they start using it. There are just so many times I need the added functionality in a plain text editor.
I will check out NoteTab, definatly.
Thanks again.

Dan

for a great editor with regex and many more features…

In reply to regex searches in notepad?

try MultiEdit.

Amazing piece of software, totally configurable.

One of the best softwares i ever used

Question for Justin James

In reply to Except for hex…

You mentioned the you use Windows Backup now in lieu of Second Copy. Are you talking about the built-in Windows Backup? Or a third party product? Thanks.

Microsoft’s built-in copy

In reply to Question for Justin James

I use Windows’ built-in backup. SecondCopy is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but I was not using any of its features that did not exist in Microsoft Windows Backup. Plus, Windows Backup uses Shadow Copy, so it has no problem with open files (good for a guy like me who leaves Outlook open 24×7).

J.Ja

To make the comparison fairer…

In reply to Textpad is probably the easiest and the best I can think of

… can I point out that TextPad isn’t 99 dollars, it’s 30 dollars.

(oops, this should have been a reply to Justin James)

I would recommend UltraEdit

In reply to Textpad is probably the easiest and the best I can think of

it does all the same things as textpad and more. You can even code in it as it recognizes most if not all programming extensions. In addition you can edit horizontal or vertical. As any programmer will tell you sometimes those columns can be a pain to edit when you need to go vertical.

UltraEdit is also only about 25 or 30 dollars a copy. That is last time I checked.

EditPad Pro is my fav

In reply to I would recommend UltraEdit

EditPad Pro is unbelievably good. It recognizes programming extensions and highlights code. Great for editing html, php, whatever. It can also be run from a thumb drive, so is portable.

now that’s something I’ve been looking for

In reply to EditPad Pro is my fav

I finally found an encryption tool that is portable so that i can carry it on my thumb drive. I’ve been wondering if there was a text editing tool to do that.
My current job, I wouldn’t ask to install something.
But, I still would like the flexibility of something like that.

dan

Textpad Rocks!

In reply to Textpad is probably the easiest and the best I can think of

Yeah, I totally agree. I use Textpad at work to open various file types and do file compares. It’s the best!

textpad cost

In reply to Textpad is probably the easiest and the best I can think of

http://www.textpad.com/

I love it too.. its approximately 30 dollars US.

I love its line number on screen, and optionally on print-outs, love that I can open 100 meg files instantly, and that its only marginally slowed when I page or jump to different sections of a document..

Alas Windoze only

In reply to Textpad is probably the easiest and the best I can think of

I loved TextPad, it did everything and did it well. It is the only Windows program I miss in Linux – nothing I have found so far is as good, even for my fairly modest needs, though Kate with a home-made wordcount comes closest.

Use GEdit!

In reply to Alas Windoze only

GEdit handles C, C++, Java, HTML and many other languages I
dont’ use.

$99 better than PsPad??

In reply to Textpad is probably the easiest and the best I can think of

PsPad is one of the best editors I have used and it keeps getting better. Oh, yeah, it’s free (tho’ the author does accept contributions.)

Notepad++

In reply to Let’s try the other way around…

I actually really like this little program, it is like Notepad but designed for writing scripts and the like. It is really simple and I find I use it all the time from editing html to writing Perl. There are probably other programs that do something similar but after using this I’ve never bothered looking.

Notepad++ is nothing special, I use it nearly every day

In reply to Notepad++

I use Notepad++ at work (crazy boss won’t kick out $20 for Notetab, and I respect that company enough to not use my personal copy that I paid for at work). It is decent. It has a habit of totally choking on large files; it also takes forever to open large files (about 100 MB or more for me). It also frequently hangs when converting text type (Windows format to UNIX format) for me. It is very feature poor. Its search/replace is about equal to Word’s primitive system. The documentation is not tied into the program, and going to SourceForge to read bloody “How Do I?” is not my idea of a good time. The “Find In Files” system is extremely clunky and diffifult to use. The regex syntax is unknown, seeing as it is totally undocumented. Perlish regexes do not seem to work in it, so who use how it works?

It is OK software, but at the end of the day, the plain text editor market is incredibly mature (Emacs can play chess…), and yet another “opens files bigger than 2 GB and will color code a few source code files for you” just does not cut the mustard.

J.Ja

ActiveFax

In reply to Let’s try the other way around…

Forget WinFax, ZetaFax and the like, the best fax software money can buy is ActiveFax(www.actfax.com). It installs trouble-free EVERY time, is ultra-intuitive, and very configurable.

My favourite Softwares

In reply to Let’s try the other way around…

Here are some of them…

AV = NOD32
DTP = Pageplus 11
GFX = Photoimapct 11
FTP = Smart FTP
WWW = Notepad 2

What do you guys think of these programs ?

Ami Pro 3.1

In reply to Let’s try the other way around…

The best-written software that I’ve ever used was Ami Pro, a late, much-lamented word processor. When I first started to use it, I did everything possible to crash the program but finally gave up.

Version 3.1, the last version, was developed back in the days of Windows 3.1 but had a lot of 32-bit code in it and ran even better under Windows 95. It even ran reasonably well on a 386 with 4 MB of RAM!

One of the best-kept secrets of those days was the fact that Ami Pro was also an excellent desktop publishing program, something which cannot be said of Microsoft Word. I used it to produce everything from one-page flyers to magazines, journals, and books.

Even though it’s long in the tooth, I still use it under Windows XP for personal stuff. I invested too much time developing macros and style sheets to be willing to give it up entirely.

Lotus replaced it with Word Pro, which I guess is still around, but in doing so, they ditched Ami Pro’s very efficient interface. To make matters worse, it was not compatible with Ami Pro macros. I’ll never forgive Lotus for giving up on Ami Pro.

How about Paperclip 64?

In reply to Let’s try the other way around…

I know this is before many people’s time, but for me the best wordprocessor was the old Paperclip 64 by Batteries Included. It was designed for the Commodore 64 and was fantastic. True many of its features are not relevant to the IBM PC world, but if you measure software by how well it leverages the hardware it was designed for, Paperclip 64 was great!

Microsoft Access VBA

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Six years after my initial use of Access I still can’t do simple things like change the backcolor of a pushbutton without trickery. The vba-access programming is still clumsy and some of the language conventions are still bewildering, like when to use
Me!Subform2.Form!ControlName.Enabled or Forms!Mainform!Subform1.Form!Subform2.
Form!ControlName.Enabled. Yes, using aliases work better, but still.

I feel that Access hasn’t changed in any significant way during these six years. Sometimes when I need to use the helpfunction I really despair. No wonder there are so many third party books written on how to use Access, since microsoft didn’t bother to do it properly.
The debugger gives as “helpful” advice as the explanations in the XP-services-folder: ZZZ-service; The ZZZ-service is needed for programs that use the ZZZ-service. If You disable the ZZZ-service then the programs that depend on the ZZZ-service may not function properly.

Luckily there are other databases and I seldom have to program Access.

Access is a Database System

In reply to Microsoft Access VBA

I think you’re confusing Access’s role as a database server and as a tool for creating front-end client applications. As a database, it works fine for low volume mid-performance jobs. The client functionality is OK, but limited, and reflects the initial low cost of the tool. I think you should use VB to develop client apps and limit your use of Access to very simple forms.

Access is good for some things

In reply to Microsoft Access VBA

I’ve created a few Access database applications that worked great for their purposes. My first one was to allow 2 receptionists to keep track of incoming calls and messages. It was a VERY simple database app that had them input the info at the time of call, and if a msg was left they typed it and it printed out. The DB then stored all this info.

The second was to keep track of clients who were registering into a Gift Registry. Again, simply storing information that was input into a customized form.

A 3rd one kept track of customers and new sales and was used by the distributors of a company I used to work for.

I designed one for sales leads for telemarketing department.

And currently use 1 I designed for inventory so that when you change one item that affects others, it notifies you and lists which ones change too.

All very simple applications, but Access works very well for them. And I trutfully I really don’t know alot of VB but learn as I go.

Agreed, but Excel VBA is worse

In reply to Microsoft Access VBA

On the plus side, VBA is a superb idea, and even with the bugs can be hugely effective.

But Excel’s VBA is far worse than Access for being unintuitive(and I agree that Access leaves a lot to be desired). It’s not that the objects and properties are not there but that they are called such bizarre and non-intuitive names. Compound this with a Help system that as gone steadily downhill since ’97, you will find that locating one of said objects may take an hour of racking your brain for synonyms…

ah well, could go on and on. Probably not the worse (MacAfee comes close) but a good candidate.

Eloquent in Microsoft Speak?

In reply to Agreed, but Excel VBA is worse

lol. Maybe I’ve adapted to Microsoft Speak. I use Excel VBA to create macros to run my most repetitive actions. Since I don’t know a whole lot ove VB I refer to Help often. Sometimes it takes a few moments before I find what I’m looking for, but I generally get the idea of where Microsoft put it within the first cpl of tries and can direct Help in the right direction.

I don’t really have [i]problems[/i] using Microsoft software and VB applications, but maybe that’s because I’m a little strange? 🙂
Tink

Access is ‘special’

In reply to Microsoft Access VBA

I work with Access a lot…

The biggest problem I’ve encountered with Access is that it’s often expected to do things well beyond it’s abilities. Non-tech people don’t understand this–afterall, Word handles 1500 page documents just as well as it does 5 pages, right? So why wouldn’t Access be able to handle a half million records?

Next inline is that Access systems tend to start out as little bitty things, designed to handle one aspect of a larger project. Then something else is tacked on, and something else, and something else…Mostly done by people with no training in building databases, so the result is a monstrosity that doesn’t follow standards, is done in ways more complex than required, with no documentation. But–that’s not the fault of the software!

As in

In reply to Access is ‘special’

Rides the Short County Bus?

Brain damaged and supposed to competed with ohter products? Special how?

Some of both

In reply to As in

VBA is a crippled version of VB. Easier to use in some ways, but without the full functionality of VB. I’m a DB desinger, so I know I’m a snot about this, but really, no matter what software you’re using, a poorly designed database is going to suck. Since Access makes it easy for just anyone to build a database, you see more crappy ones in Access than in anything else.

Access is the problem.

In reply to Some of both

There is a certain level of functionality that one expects with a database, triggers,stored procedures, roll bac, roll forward recoveries.

Access as you have stated, is “special” in the short bus manner…

This response is so true!

In reply to Access is ‘special’

I work at a company where Access databases are used extensively as departmental data resources. I inherited them and they are exactly what Mavyn is talking about. They started out to do one simple function and over time they have ballooned into hideous monstrosities. On the front end they do what they are supposed to do but if you look into the back end queries it is a nightmarish quagmire. Between keeping these beasts running and trying to incorporate more functionality…i haven’t even had time to try to break down the processes that are in place.

Hansen 7

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Here’s some of the “features” of this asset management program. Keep in mind this is a Windows application.

— The enter key brings up spell-check (ctrl-enter for line feed) The special side note to this is when you do get used to using you will find yourself sending incomplete messages in Outlook since that combination is the hotkey for send.
— + clears the selected text which is the exact opposite of what most people intend to do
— You login with your credentials, but your still required to fill the username field whenever it appears

Maybe if we dedicated someone to customization it may could be useful, but out of the box it’s garbage.

Distant 2nd… (tie) NWAdmin and Console1 from Novell. I miss syscon

CA ArcServe backup

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

When CA ArcServe backup software works it is ok. When it decides not to function correctly and CA says you need to apply the update – watch out. You will drive your self nuts getting it to work. The best you can do is uninstall it and reinstall it if you don’t have anything else to use. Veritus backup exec was easier to use and didn’t crash. I see Symantec owns them now – probably a resource hog.

TapeWare is worse!

In reply to CA ArcServe backup

Think ArcServe is bad, try Yosemite TapeWare (or TapeWorm, as it became known in my workplace!). At least ArcServe works for us, and lets us know when there is a problem – unlike TapeWare, which went on merrily logging “successful” backups for months, only to fall over the one time we needed to restore data because the tapes were all unreadable!

Needless to say, after that incident TapeWorm went straight in the bin, and we invested in ArcServe.

CA ArcServe is the worst value ever

In reply to CA ArcServe backup

CA ArcServe is – dollar for dollar – the worst software out there.

This is my most hated software. ArcServe ran fine when it was Cheyenne ArcServe. After getting the CA version, it started w/ info missing from the documentation. It went to poorly trained tech support in India. (Open “User Manager for Domains”, while working on Windows 2000 Active Directory). And language barrier? …WOW. Literally every other sentence had to be repeated 2 or 3 times – it was exhausting. After 2 weeks, I finally spoke to an American who fixed the issue in under 20 minutes.

Ahhh, but it continues. Like a previous person posted – my install also would cease to function and had to be re-installed (a couple of times a year, as I remember). A battle with Windows over drivers would occur about every 3rd re-start, too. Everything from documentation to reliability to tech support improved when moving to Veritas Backup Exec. Backup Exec works way better.

Now Backup Exec it’s a Symantec product, so I’d expect the tech support to drop way off. But I wouldn’t use ArcServe if it was free.

Nothing good to say about Arcserve

In reply to CA ArcServe backup

I finally put together what it was costing my firm to screw with this POS package. I have never hated software and the support behind it like I hated this one. IT made me not want to come in to work.

WordPerfect — any version!

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

The DOS version was a nightmare with the reveal codes and nasty commands/keycodes. Windows version took pain to a new level.

Are you kidding?

In reply to WordPerfect — any version!

WP 5.1 DOS was probably the least kludgy, most efficiently written, most effective and powerful (given DOS’s inherent limitations), and certainly the best supported piece of software ever written.

I’ll grant you that sometimes Windows versions lock up unexpectedly, but I suspect that’s Microsoft’s deliberate sabotaging of WP’s code.

I suspect you don’t do a lot of complex wordprocessing. If you did, WP would be the only wordprocessor you would ever consider using. Once one learns to use WP effectively, Word seems totally incomprehensible.

–IMHO

Hooray !!!!!!!

In reply to Are you kidding?

I could not agree more!

My employers use MS Word. When it don’t work… me do it right in WP (WOO YAY!)…

If only I could get our corporate IT bunch to switch… but lets face it… Mr Gates has a better business model (the ba**ard)!!! ;o/

I can’t agree more

In reply to Are you kidding?

WP is the best available and just works easily. I’ll admit to missing that Cardboard Strip across the top of the Keyboard in the newer versions but as a [b]Dedicated WP[/b] user I don’t think that it can be beaten by anything currently available.

When I started this place the I idea was that I would be in Semi Retirement and that just failed to happen with 10 of my previous staff approaching me with a list of clients so long that I simply couldn’t say no. But each computer that I setup had WP on it and Office and they all laughed at me being a [b]Dinosaur[/b] and still using Word Perfect 3 months latter they where complaining when they had to use [b]MS Office[/b] for anything as the Word Perfect Office did it so much better and easier and that was back in the version 8 days now we are using X3 and they insist that we use it for everything.

Col

You are kidding… aren’t you?!

In reply to WordPerfect — any version!

OK I’ve probably taken the bait here…

WP5.1 for DOS still pisses all over MS Word (any version). A document has headers and footers. If you have to use a “landscape” table then MS Word FORCES you to end up with Lefters and Righters for that page, i.e. you can’t have rotated tables. This alone makes MS Turd a load of shit. MS Outlining is utter pants. In WP Reveal Codes lets you see the actual outlining as well as formatting code… this is totally ace and still nothing even close in MS Turd…

Several years ago I produced a 100 page (or so) report in WP5.1 for DOS. This included tables, charts, graphics, links to excel spreadsheets and occupied a collosal 400KB. Our client then asked us to convert it to MS Word 6 for windows. Result… one month of nightmare conversion resulting in an 8MB file that looked utterly shite.

I must agree though that the first Windows version WPWIN 5.1/5.2 and 6.0 were poor but from 6.1 onwards are great.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeee…

R U Nutz…???

In reply to WordPerfect — any version!

Word Perfect for Windows took Word Perfect to a “new level”? Sure did! THE BASEMENT!!!

I made a small living for two years or so UNinstalling Word Perfect for Windows 5.1 from countless desktops (remember that these older Windows programs did NOT an uninstall program) and then RE-installing the DOS version.

I had previously posted that the old Compuserve Information Manager (“WinCIM”) was the worst piece of crap-ware with WinFax a close second. ANY version of WordPerfect for Windows is a close third…

No “uninstall”?

In reply to R U Nutz…???

“(remember that these older Windows programs did NOT an uninstall program) and then RE-installing the DOS version.”

Yeah. You deleted the program, since they were DOS and only had about five files they needed. Took about four minutes. Sure was difficult

I pine for those days.

DOS?

In reply to No “uninstall”?

No, they were not DOS programs…they were 16-bit Windows 3.x programs. And NO, you couldn’t “just” delete the program. Win 3.x programs installed a myriad of assorted files in heaven-alone-knows what locations. So while zapping the “WP” directory got rid of MOST of Word Perfect’s files, there were about 30-40 other files that had to be deleted in order to free up disk space.

You gotta remember that back in those days (1992-1995) the average HDD was about 40 – 80 MB in size and cost between $200-$400. An average WP for Windows install took up almost 10MB of disk space. My clients were mostly small law firms with 3 to 10 PC’s. I charged a flat $75 per PC to uninstall WP for Windows & re-install WP for DOS.

With batch files it took about 20 minutes per PC…not 4 minutes, oh clueless one…

Duplicate post

In reply to WordPerfect — any version!

REMOVED BY AUTHOR

Obviously you were not trying to perform “word processing”

In reply to WordPerfect — any version!

Microsoft Word (as well as other similar software) is not “word processing,” it is “making text look pretty.” WordPerfect, version 5.1 is the only true “Word Processing” software available for the Microsoft Universe. You could also attempt to find and boot a Wang, they were excellent word processors as well.

Reveal codes are a huge reason why WP5.1 was word processing perfection, you could actually fix and correct formatting, instead of praying that maybe on the 29th try, Word *won’t* automagically reformat something.

The legal and financial industries still mourn WP 5.1. It is nearly impossible to properly format a document that meets the precise specifications of the legal community (or any other community where document standards were established on typewriters) in Word. WP 5.1 does this. Even for high school papers, WP 5.1 could perform even the simple formatting as per the teacher’s specifications and Word could not. WP 5.1 was so loved by these communities that as recently as 1999, I was working on projects at places where certain people still needed to use WP 5.1 because no other software worked. The company hated the overhead and hassle of having all of these machines running WP 5.1, but they needed to. It was not a matter of document conversion, it was a matter of the ability to get the job done.

My father’s company has made a decent living over the years coding into Word features that existing in WP 5.1. Think about that for a moment. Do you think you could make a living installing carbueretors onto modern cars? Or coverting jet airplanes into propeller craft? Or selling battleships to the Navy that had sails? No no no! So why is it that he can sucessfully sell WP 5.1’s features to Word? Because they are more advanced!

WP 5.1 also had, bar none, the best spell checker ever. Not only was its dictionary massive, but the usability was amazing; instead of ordering the corrections alphabetically, or ordered them by relevancy, and you would hit “A”, “B”, “C”, etc. You could spell check and 95% of the time, “A” was the right choice. Just try that with Word. Word can’t even get it right if the only wrong letter is the first one; WP 5.1 got those too. And it ran faster than any word processor before or since. On my 286.

Yes, WP 5.1 was not a “point/click” piece of software, and your was significantly easier with a cutout of keyboard shortcuts over your function keys. If you just wanted to make text look pretty, WP 5.1 was not the best tool for the job. But if you needed to perform true word processing, WP 5.1 is still better than any other system out there.

J.Ja

“New” is not necessarily better

In reply to Obviously you were not trying to perform “word processing”

I agree with you. WP for DOS 5.1 was the premier word processor ever invented for normal offices. One of my points of contention has always been that Windows mucked things up alot. GUI does NOT mean better. WP 5.1 is case in point. The better software was the older technology, not the newer one. There may have been a steeper learning curve with WP, but once you learned the prerequisite skills, you were actually MORE productive than with GUI software.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened in the computing landscape if all the corporations refused to upgrade either software of computers that they didn’t need, and stuck with what worked for them. Many, many companies/organizations would still be running DOS, WP 5.1, and Lotus 1-2-3!

What you can make work is what you use.

In reply to WordPerfect — any version!

I guess the first Word Processor that I supported and used heavily was WordPerfect 5.1.

At a small college campus that I used to work for, I supported and maintained computers for faculty, staff, and computer labs loaded with …
WordPerfect 5.1 (DOS),6.0, 6.0a, 6.1
Word 2.0 for Windows, Word 6.0 for Windows

I admit WordPerfect Windows products particularly with 5.1 to 6.0a were buggy. WP tech support at the time was excellent and I learned how to fix many of the common problems.

And did have less problems with MS Word running in Windows than WordPerfect (at the application level).

When it came to formatting documents or trying to recover a damaged file, I had the most problems trying to resolve MS Word documents than WordPerfect. At times I had to loose the formatting to get the text out of a Word document, where over 90% of the time I could correct an issue with WordPerfect using reveal codes…

To this day, I think I can handle graphics easier in WordPerfect (even current versions) than MS Word.

As time progressed, I have worked mainly with MS Office products. Not because I liked it better, but because it was pretty much the main player. And it is considered the standard that most companies live by. But inwardly, I think that WordPerfect was a more usable product, that was hurt by the Office suite competition.

Personally, to this day I appreciate Reveal codes, and the ease of placing graphics into documents is more flexible with older WordPerfects 6.1, 7.0-current version) that I believe is not as flexible with MS Word (even the current Word 2003). I would have thought that MS would have improved that.

Although I use Word 99% of the time now, I still prefer WordPerfect.

Absolutely don’t agree

In reply to WordPerfect — any version!

WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was probably the most efficient wordprocessor ever seen. One of the reasons was that the develoers did grasp the idea that text is written on a keyboard with your fingers. Everytime you move the fingers away for the keyboard, productivity stops.
I once saw a demo where two good and welltrained typists typed the same teks in WP and in Word, using the technige where you simultaneusly can monitor the text, the hand movements, and the eye movements.

The typist working in WP used the spilt-panel display for all formatting, and very seldomly took the eyes away from the manuscript, and NEVER took the hands away from the keyboard.

The typist working with word also kept the eyes on the manuscript for long periods, but every time formatting had to be done, the routine was upset. First find the mouse which slipped under some papers, grab it, turn it the right way around, find the cursor hidden in the corner, move to the menu, unfold, find the menu item, then the submenu -oops missed it and eveything folds down again, find the menu again… get the picture?

The mouse is a very overrated tool, which has ruined million of wrists, and totally hopeless for anythimg tham making drawings. And for that a digitizer really is better…

Word is really a bad piece of SW, not the least because something as simple as a letter is capable of carrying badware that hits millions of PC’s in virtually seconds, due to Microsofts stupid habit of making everything executable. Unfortunately it is not the worst – but close.

Sorry Marty, you are wrong

In reply to WordPerfect — any version!

As all the previous said. Wordperfect 5.1 for dos was amazing and still can do things that Word cannot do today. The hazzle for many was the codes, but if you knew them, you really could control your document. The firsr windows versions though where sheizze and really destroyed the product.

The point about WP5.1 reveal codes …

In reply to WordPerfect — any version!

was that you could SEE where text formatting codes actually were. With Word you haven’t got a clue, so you can delete a full stop and the entire format of your document changes. You could “drive” WP5.1 to do what you wanted, while Word, with it’s hidden and auto formatting, styles, and M$ mentality can drive you … round the bend!

WP outliner is far superior to WORD’s

In reply to WordPerfect — any version!

MS WORD still does not understand the value of outlining. The ability to collapse various parts of an outline so you could focus on the higher levels or only a part of it remains extremely valuable. WORD confuses indenting and paragraph numbering with outlining. They are not the same. I use WORD, but I keep WORDPERFECT for those jobs WORD cannot handle. Is WORDPERFECT perfect? NO, but neither is WORD.

Lotus Notes

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Sorry chaps, but it just has to be Lotus Notes…
a soul-destroyingly bad piece of rubbish.

I whole heartedly agree!!!

In reply to Lotus Notes

Without a doubt, the biggest overkill in the entire software world!

I couldn’t agree more

In reply to Lotus Notes

It’s a crock of shit of the highest order.

Hmm…

In reply to Lotus Notes

I’d say after working with Domino/Notes for 6 years, and parallel with Exchange/Outlook for the past year, tha Domino/Notes is just about the most secure, stable and versatile SW I have seen in my 35 years in computing. You can make it do whatever you want, it very seldom crashes (twice in 6 years), and in those six years we lost 1 document out of 4 million. We were never hit by a worm or virus and it runs an just about any HW or OS you can think of.

Lotus Bloats

In reply to Lotus Notes

… with all the add-ins so it can be a collaboration tool.

Save [b]anything[/b] and it locks the client system until it is done … even a P4-3ghz system!

Domino was worse

In reply to Lotus Notes

Inconsistent, irrational, buggy, only the developer could have loved this silly toy. Maybe I saw a really bad implementation of it, but judging from Notes I suspect a good implementation was impossible.

Not to be rude

In reply to Domino was worse

but if you think that Notes is a successor to Domino, then you are way off course.

Last century the server product and the client product was called the same – Notes. In this century Domino is the server product, and Notes is the client.

I had a Domino 5 server, with clients upgrades as they came, running in a very advnaced set-up for 5 years with no problems at all, except a server motherboard crash, which really cna’t be blamed Domino/Notes. That crash cost us the sole document we lost out of then general 4 millions we had stored, all of being changed during a month. It is extremely versatile, you can make it do whatever you want, end everything is open. It was upgraded when IBM called stop for supporting v.5 to v.6, and at the same moment we coupled it to a RDB for instant updating of sales figures. The application is the core backbone of a worldknown company, and they recon they have saved 3-figure millions of dollars in faster work, and higher general level of knowledge sharing.

To acchive what we did with one product runnig 2 services in windows (and a very stable set-up of servers- later to be put inside a mainframe), we should have had at least 5 MS products, Exchange, Outlook, IndexServer, Certificate server, SQL server, IIS – all preferrably on the own dedicated server with multiple backups.

At present we try to do the same in a company that has chesen a ‘Micrsoft strategy’ – read “We let our supplier decide our strategy, and the cost”, and it simply can’t be done.

Don’t agree at all. Domino is bloated in the way a supercharged intercooled V-16 is bloated compared to a single cylinder two-stroke MC engine.

Notes beates Outlook!

In reply to Domino was worse

We used to use Notes for our mail (when we were a part of IBM), then switched to Outlook. I?ve gotten used to Outlook, but I still like the way Notes handles mail better, and the Outlook mailbox is horrible. We still use Notes for some databases.

Never had a problem with Notes mail unless a server was down, and it ran on pretty much anything, first thing I used it on was a P 75 running Win NT 4.0 and it worked fine.

Databases are something else, if one is well designed and maintain they are fine. We have one we use to maintain our documents that has thousands of documents and it works well. We have some other databases that were not well designed and have been kluged badly over the years and are miserable things.

My biggest fault with Notes these days is that it’s showing its age, I don?t think it?s had a major update since Clinton?s first term.

I forgot training …

In reply to Notes beates Outlook!

If we need 30 warm bodies in a hurry, you can bet your last nickle that less than 25% will have had enough notes experience to be able to open e-mail. Hence, more training that has to be added to the cost of the project.

Training

In reply to I forgot training …

That’s true, but it isn’t Notes fault or a flaw in the software.

Jeff DeWitt

Absolutely

In reply to Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes/Domino had the worst UI ever. Impossible to intuitively locate any command.

Either Arcserve or Backp Exec

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Both of these programs are workable with a little practice but the systems they use are completely illogical. For example BUEx 9.0 you have to create a selection list and a template in order to create a job, this takes longer and has very little point. In 10 they ‘fix’ this by adding a 3rd layer, ‘policies’. Why does nobody write a simple backup utility which just works?

Spot on…..

In reply to Either Arcserve or Backp Exec

I was struggling to think of something really bad but you have prompted my memory, after all this time trying to forget them 🙁

They are both terrible, as you say they have taken something that should have been quite simple and make a complete mess of it.

absolutely agree

In reply to Spot on…..

Totally bloated, and getting worse with every new release. How hard is it to dump a disk or parts of it on tape, and make a simple utility that tells you what’s on a specific tape ?

ARCSERVE – HANDS DOWN !!!

In reply to Either Arcserve or Backp Exec

Just plain stupid software – proprietary tape drive, so if s/ware crashes nothing else can read the tape, thats helpful!

Counter-intuitive interface, requires a SQL database to work properly for pitys sake!!!!
HELLO what backs up the backup softwares backup?

MS Word

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Has to be! With it’s hugely flawed template system, poor table control, it’s ability to screw up printing and it’s counter intuitive menu system. Abiword and OpenOffice are models of clarity in comparison. Indeed we use OpenOffice to repair documents that Word has screwed up so badly it can no longer open them – works every time!

Agreed…

In reply to MS Word

Good call! I’ve spent several years of real time in Word and have a love/hate relationship w it. OK, its got ton of features, but you need an advanced degree to figure them out. Take bullets (argh), and styles (argh), and try putting in a graphic image (argh). Track changes gives me nightmares. etc etc. I wish there was a button that could make it “simple” and hide all the junk that you don’t need to type a simple document. I guess that would be Notepad.

Anything by Pinnacle

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Including the Video editing suite and instant cd / dvd. Crashes out and caused pc to become unstable. Removed and never to be used again.

Amen Brother!

In reply to Anything by Pinnacle

Title says it all.

At the Top of the Heap of Crap – Pinnacle!

In reply to Amen Brother!

Pinnacle Studio is by far the worst software I have ever had the displeasure dealing with. With each version, it get’s more unstable and problematic. One version (8) forced the install of an older version of DirectX, while their latest (10) rarely runs at all and when it does, it crashes during edits. To top that all off, their technical support is worse.
I’d also like to cast a ballot for ATI driver installation software. I think anyone who has installed a lot of video cards would agree. You always seem to end up uninstalling more than installing when it comes to ATI. Great cards, lousy drivers, crappy installation software and the ultimate when it comes to terrible technical support!

aol

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Kind of embarrassing to admit having ever used it but .

It?s the bloatiest resource hog I?ve had to use (mind you I did stop using Norton at the release of Internet Security) it brings all of the delights of IE html rendering and adds to it a whole load of additional clutter bolted on in a quite frankly belief beggaring notion of trying to make things simple.

Well I suppose its ok, if you don?t want to do any thing else with your computer because it knackers most other apps that require the internet.

And to the uninstall, a happy day, but of course still painful, I do concur with the previous posts the NIS uninstall tops the lot, I?ve still got NIS parts kicking around my system that refuse to budge.

Getting rid of Norton

In reply to aol

I found that the only way to get rid of Norton is to go in the registry in Local-Machine/Software and delete Symantec.

I can’t belive I forgot AOL – it theee woorst

In reply to Getting rid of Norton

software & company. I usually fix/clean PC’s for my friends and family on weekends. I can hoestly tell you that AOL is the worst web software out there. They claim to have virus and all kinds of scams but AOL makes about 80% of all infected computers I fix weekly.

Be gone ye spawn of Norton

In reply to Getting rid of Norton

Whenever I get new machines, the first thing I do is remove all norton/symantec products with the handy removal tool I found on their site a while ago called symnrt (symantec removal tool). I tried using it again today, when I ran it, it said it was out of date and pointed at their website, so I followed. They now only have it via the site, some other stuff had to be installed first, then it happily removed ALL symantec/norton products. I wonder if what was initially installed was a way that they are registering how many machines are removing their OEM software??!!

AOL is just nasty

In reply to aol

This insidious piece of software just infests the whole PC. I?m glad a neighbour asked me to install it on their system before I ever considered using it myself. The only way I?ve ever completely removed it was a format and reinstall. I consider AOL to be a whole suite of viruses!

I completely agree

In reply to AOL is just nasty

It’s is as bad as Norton. they are both damn near impossible to get rid of. but AOL takes over the whole PC, where as Norton…well takes over half the regisrty. anything that mentions symantec in the registry should be deleted to completely remove Norton…believe me there are about 100+ entries for it. as for getting rid of AOL…i agree reformat is the best, and time effective way to do it.

the only real excuse for using AOL is if there aren’t any other ISPs available.

AOL Stands for…

In reply to I completely agree

AOL – short for “Anti-Christ Online”
They will bring your computer and life as we know it to an end.

arg, …AOL really sux

In reply to aol

I refuse to support it any more. It is just crap.

Windows 1.0

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

It rarely ran for more than a few minutes without locking up or crashing. Nuff said…

And…

In reply to Windows 1.0

that legacy somehow passed down to its decedents. 😉

Windows 1.0

In reply to Windows 1.0

It was version 1.0 of a Microsoft product, why are you surprised it sucked?

Did you actually use it? (or try to?) I’ve never met anyone who had, Windows 1.0 seems to be one of those legendary pieces of crapware that everyone knows about but no one seems to have actually used.

Jeff DeWitt

Win 1.0

In reply to Windows 1.0

I picked up a copy of Windows 1.0 in a Car Boot sale in the UK for a pound (car boot= a kind of outdoor flea market, for you Americans)

Yes, I tried it, didn’t think much of it, its GUI was very basic, and seemed to me, to be almost identical to a product that Alan Sugar had on his Amstrad PC clones, called GEM. It came as a battered, tatty looking boxed set of 5 and 1/4 inch floppies (remember them?) – I forget how many, it installed easily on a spare XT I had.

Both displays had chunky black and white boxes, simple graphics, I would scarcely call them windows at all, but I could see a progression away from the command line syntax of the DOS of those days (about 20 years ago, in the mid/late 80s I recall)

It wasn’t until Windows 3.1 came out that I felt I had something I could actually do things with….. I eventually gave Windows 1.0 away to a second hand shop (amongst other things) when I cleared out my house for a move….. I wish I had kept Win 1.0 now, it might have had some antique value, one day, I suppose that’s the best I can say about it.

Ooooo as they say…..

“Nostalgia, ain’t what it used to be…”

Business Objects

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

The worst pile of poop I have ever had the displeasure of administering.

Tech support is half way around the world. The thing just stops working for no reason. It has to be constantly nursed to keep it up and running.

‘BO’ is right!

In reply to Business Objects

I don’t use it a lot, but what I have seen of it in action does not nearly live up to the hype. My employer may not be providing as much IT dept support as the developers intended, or perhaps not the level of privileges that self-described “Power Users” want, but I don’t know anybody in my department that’s happy with Business Objects.

same as

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I posted here:

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11183-0.html?forumID=5&threadID=196310&messageID=2043003

GACK! Jacqui and I agree on something

In reply to same as

vi is evil incarnate

not as scary

In reply to GACK! Jacqui and I agree on something

as when Maxwell and I agreed on something. 😀

Wonder if we can get Maxwell to Agree

In reply to not as scary

That vi is hideous.

In house Time and Attendance software “JeTech”

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Horrid. Absolutely horrid. Some poor developers first attempt at a server/client software solution for tracking clock punches, vacations and other non-work time.

The screen would refresh non stop, redrawing every window, form, field and entry every half a second or so. Random crashes were normal, time HAD to be entered in decimal minutes (not hour:minute) because it couldn’t even do simple math. The feature to convert hh:mm into decimal minutes was there, but it couldn’t round properly.

What’s sad is that we used this software for almost 5 years in a company of over 1,000 employees. Who knows how many people got over or under paid in that time period!

How Long?

In reply to In house Time and Attendance software “JeTech”

I have experience with this application too…may I ask where you work?

Compuserve Information Manager (“CIM”)

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

OK, I’m dating myself a bit here but I knew of no better way to crash a Windows 3.x system than to fire up the old Compuserve Information Manager program to access Compuserve. This was the worst piece of crap-ware ever coded.

I notice a few comments re: WinFax..I’d have to rank that a close second.

MS Word

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Without Doubt it’s MS Word. That single program causes me more grief and extra work than any other two programs combined. It just sucks. And although I don’t use it because I can turn it off, that damned idiotic clippy app has to be a close second.

Maybe….

In reply to MS Word

Maybe you should get some training.

a beast called medicomm

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

a patient management web based thingie whose problem lies as much in the design as in the deployment
it went from ridiculous to farce when we tried to get mortality statistics : we had a zero mortality rate … to our joy confusion irritation anger problem is patients dont die they get admitted to a ward called mortuary which you might guess is a busy ward
thats the tip of the iceberg … from a distance
prescribing is a joke : to change a dose for example you need to represcribe : which is annoying when you have an infusion with a cocktail of 5 drugs

eish

andile
durban south africa

Linux + Unix

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

They are there to make life difficult…

Them are fightin’ words

In reply to Linux + Unix

I think someone’s looking to pick a fight!

Will we ever tire of the Windows v Linux debate?

not looking for a fight

In reply to Them are fightin’ words

He just gave an opinion. I strongly disagree, but alot of people don’t. He may have tried RH v5.

No Fight

In reply to not looking for a fight

Hi,
Sorry for late reply.. No fight ofcourse.. pointless to waste time on Win vs Lin ..
And thats true that I tried to use Fedora 5 but I will try Suse soon. But still after so much of change its still a pain to do simple tasks.. “Some dameon will keep crashing.. hehehe..”
And no comparison with Win.. Its just a standalone opinion for Linux or Fedora in particular.

You may be right!

In reply to Them are fightin’ words

Took the words right outta my head….I just knew there would be a big tree of responses…don’t have the nerve to look….LOL

you have that backwards

In reply to Linux + Unix

Windows is designed to make life difficult, it’s designed to create illiterate people using computers.

I agree

In reply to you have that backwards

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Linux + Unix????

In reply to Linux + Unix

Don’t lump Unix in with that crapware.

TechRepublic’s software

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Whatever software TechRepublic uses is a disgraceful mess. This site is slow, buggy, throws out Javascript errors, timesout, duplicate posts, “page not found”… it’s like using MySpace, but without the provacative ads for True.com. Many of its other issues are not the software’s fault (gotta love the fixed column widths that use a mere 50% of my available screen space for the content, and the added bonehead decision to make it a tiny font!), but the software itself is utter trash and should be thrown out like two week old meatloaf.

J.Ja

Exactly – theee slooowest professional site

In reply to TechRepublic’s software

Also, news.com is extremely slow … that is why I click a link in TR go make coffee, come back, then the page finishes loading

We are aware of the performance issues

In reply to TechRepublic’s software

There are engineers working on the current performance issues. We are tracking down one particular problem that is most likely a significant drain on the site’s performance.

Hope they get sorted out!

In reply to We are aware of the performance issues

Doug –

I hope the performance issues get sorted out soon. 🙂

J.Ja

And the horrible thread navigation

In reply to TechRepublic’s software

Especially in long threads, like this one. I click on a response that looks interesting somewhere in the middle of the list, and I’m thrown back up to the top of the list, so I have to scroll way down, and try to figure out where I left off to continue looking for the next interesting looking post.

If it wasn’t for my browser’s tabbed interface (Mozilla Seamonkey), where I can just open a bunch of interesting looking posts in separate tabs before reading them, I’d probably just pass on the whole thing.

– Eric, http://www.InvisibleRobot.com/

How is performance now?

In reply to TechRepublic’s software

A change was made yesterday to improve performance which may also alleviate the occurrences of timeouts and PNFs (page not found) as well.

Please feel free to respond to this message (or contact me via private message) to let us know whether the site’s performance has improved or these issues still occur.

Thanks,
Doug

Lotus Notes

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Need I say more!

TrackIt!

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

We’ve been through three incarnations of this software (my boss keeps buying it) and there’s always at least one time-gobbling installation error and two research-requiring functionality errors. For something as critical as the helpdesk and inventory modules, it would be nice if TrackIt! worked on the first installation just once.

Re: TrackIt!

In reply to TrackIt!

We loved it so much we renamed it F$*@It!

So many packages, so little time

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Two packages that spring to mind were the original Divorcemate, a program for creating and managing documents in divorce cases. Note I said documents, why was it using Lotus 1-2-3 as for document creation? They basically took a Word Perfect boiler plate system with merge functions and cludged it into 123.

Another one that comes to mind was a SAT testing program, which if it went down, went down hard. I spent time tinkering with it, found out more about it than the developers, and spent 18 months travelling the continent setting it up and troubleshooting it for the developers.

As for Norton and Mcafee, I love ’em. How else do I make an easy $350 a pop cleaning up a little mess?

edlin

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I shouldn’t have to say any thing else.

Yeah, but…

In reply to edlin

it was still kind of fun, anyway. 🙂

Time travel to EDLIN

In reply to edlin

EDLIN!!!
Talk about a blast from the past. I think it was designed (if you can call it ‘designed’) to scare novices off of the computer. Just awful!

Charles

edlin

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I shouldn’t have to say anything else.

What are you comparing it to?

In reply to edlin

EDLIN was not a word processor by any definition (although a geek friend of mine claims to have written a book using only EDLIN).

When it was written, there was no readily available line editor on the command line. It served a great purpose for those of us who had to quickly edit a line of code.

Worst Software – SAP

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I would like to nominate the Time Management software from SAP. Although it does work, it has to be the most “user unfriendly” item I have worked with in the last 20+ years.

NOTHING IS EASY. Some embedded functions are re-useable while other, almost identical ones, are not with no explanation about why. The “Help” functions are very poor with little or no explanation about why what you are trying to do can’t be done

SAP – Stop All Production

In reply to Worst Software – SAP

When SAP works it’s amazing what all it can do, but when it messes up what a mess.

Windows Vista Beta 2

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I think you pretty much get the picture.

Here Here

In reply to Windows Vista Beta 2

THE biggest, bloated, over-hyped, lousiest performing, piece of junk I’ve used in a long time: Windows Vista. My prediction to all my friends and co-workers:

Linux’s day has come. Windows Vista is the undoing of Microsoft’s desktop stranglehold.

Please, please, use English

In reply to Here Here

Why is it that Linux enthusiasts seem to have learned English by ear without any attempt at comrehension, understanding and derivation? The two most illiterate examples:
“could of” instead of “could’ve” or “could have”
and as in XT John’s post
“here here” instead of “hear, hear”

Considering its still beta

In reply to Windows Vista Beta 2

Its not particularly fair to include it here, and I love your explanation behind your reasoning. Very clear and concise…

LOL is that a compliment?

In reply to Considering its still beta

Thank you Bob for the English lesson. I really thought it was Here Here… learn something new everyday. As far as being a Linux fanatic, you have me all wrong. I like certain Linux installs, and they have come along way, but still have a long way to go to be mainstream. The last Mandrake install I did for my work laptop went flawlessly, even the wireless network was a breeze. And it comes bundled with everything a user can possibly need or want. All my Apple user friends will never go back to Windows. The point I was trying to make is that Microsoft needed a home run with Vista, and so far I don’t see it. The install took forever, the performance is not that good on a 3gb P4, and the new ‘features’ are more annoying then helpful. Most of the installed drivers and software had compatibility issues, surprising considering everything worked fine in XP. As far as it being in Beta, it’s true, several of these issues will be ironed out by the final release. But how it looks, acts, the bloat, and lack of features will still be there…

DxDesigner by Mentor Graphics

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

This is an electronic schematic capture package. It regularly crashes, uses oppresive licensing techniques, loses work (I now save every few minutes so I limit the amount of work lost), has virtually non existant help( you have to attend or buy a course), and it is very expensive. You cannot survive without technical support and so absolutely are tied into their maintenance system forever. I have seen bad but this is an all time worst.

Worst Software MicroSoft Word

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

The table management in MS Word stinks to the point that I just can’t get it. I try and try and end up being so frustrated that I Just use Paint and paste the picture into the bloody document. I have tried Open Office to some extenent, but my workplace is stuck on MS Office

Service Call Apps

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

The worst app I worked with was called Service Access. It had some nice features, it allowed the field techs to use laptops to get their service calls instead of calling in to a dispatch line. The laptops were using a wireless network adapter and the reception was mostly good in the cities but could be weak if inside tall buildings.

What made this the app from hell was that only one person at a time could look at a service call record. The field techs had the least right to see his calls. I would be in the middle of updating my comments when the service call I was updating would be yanked from me and a few minutes later my manager would page me with a message to update the very call that he pulled.

I worked for a nation wide 3rd party company. Everyone was interested in the calls I worked on and had to query. The service dispatch would pull calls if a customer called to ask for an update, customer reps would pull the call for the same purpose, my managers and dispatch would do so as well.

Mind, I was enthusiastic about the new system when it was given to us. The prveious system used a modem or an acoustic modem to download the service calls. If my call volume was too high the downloads would wipe out the operating system since there was no code to protect it and data had to go somewhere.

Service Access was nasty from the beginning. My company wanted the field tech to show high usage of work time. Service Access was set to block overlapping times and it would not let us see what times were in conflict. Normally, I would be onsite working on a call when I get paged with 1 to 5 new calls. I was expected to contact each customer within 30 minutes and document it in Service Access. With the overlapping time block, I had to go into Service Access, stop the clock on the call I was working on, start the clock on the new call to log phone time, stop that clock and move on to the next call and in this idiotic process I could not do the work I was hired to do.

Service Access was an expensive product, my company wanted to keep it as vanilla as possible because any change required thousands of dollars to put in.

I have gone on to other jobs and each have ways of tracking and documenting calls. Every tracking system has flaws but Service Access was the bottom of the heap and a great example of bad code design.

Lotus Symphony

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

After being so successful with Lotus 1-2-3, they decided to get cute and roll everything (spreadsheet, word processing etc) into one package. The result was the kludgiest, most bloated software ever that was impossible to use and forever to wait for. What a disaster!

Lotus Symphony

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

After being so successful with Lotus 1-2-3, they decided to get cute and roll everything (spreadsheet, word processing etc) into one package. The result was the kludgiest, most bloated software ever that was impossible to use and forever to wait for. What a disaster!

It is not true.

In reply to Lotus Symphony

Your opinion is based in your lack of knowledge of symphony. It is understable too since you had a good lotus 1,2,3 skills, therefore the use of symphony could be seen as clumsy. But… once you use it extensively, it was superb !!!

It is not true.

In reply to Lotus Symphony

Lotus Symphony was a follow-on to Lotus Development’s hugely popular spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3.

1-2-3 had originally been billed as an integrated product with spreadsheet, database and word-processor functions, thus the name 1-2-3. In reality however, the product was a simple spreadsheet that allowed you to type in as much text as possible. In the 1980s truly integrated products such as AppleWorks started to become popular, and so Lotus tried their hand.

Symphony was a DOS program that was loaded entirely into memory when started. Using ALT-F10 the user could switch between the various modes of the program, which include a spreadsheet very similar to 1-2-3, a word-processor, a communications program, a table based database, a charting program, and an outliner. The program allowed you to split the screen and view these “modules” side by side. It was at this point that the user would notice that changes made in one module were reflected in others in real-time, perhaps the package’s most interesting feature.

All the data that Symphony stored was kept in spreadsheet cells. The other modes of the program – wordprocessing, database simply changed the editing functionality and display of the data.

Symphony was designed to work completely in memory – this was the standard 640k of conventional memory supplanted by any Intel 286 extended memory configured as expanded memory. Similar and competitive packages included SmartWare, Microsoft Works, Context MBA, Ashton Tate Framework, Enable and Ability Office.

Viewed in the context of the spreadsheets of the day, the spreadsheet engine was the same as the one used in Lotus 1-2-3 – the most popular of its kind.

Viewed in the context of the wordprocessors of the day and the people who used them – Micropro Wordstar 3.3, WordPerfect 4.2, Microsoft Word 2.0, the word processing mode of Symphony was simpler but effective and unencumbered.

Viewed in the context of the database programs of the day – Ashton Tate’s dBase III, MDBS Knowledgeman, Borland Paradox (database) 2.0 and Borland Reflex 1.0, Symphony’s database was weak, lacking the analytical abilities of Reflex and the pseudo relational power of dbase III. However, it was integrated directly into the spreadsheet, simple to query, it was fast and the data could then be accessed using VLOOKUP features of the spreadsheet.

Symphony, like its predecessor Lotus 1-2-3, contained a reasonably powerful programming language referred to as Macros. One of the most significant features of Symphony was the integration of the various modules using this command language. In its day it was one of the few programs that would be able to log onto a stock market source, select data using dynamic or pre-assigned criteria, place that data into a spreadsheet, perform calculations, then chart the data and print out the results. All of this could occur unattended at prearranged days and times.

Definetly Not True

In reply to Lotus Symphony

Symphony was fabulous, in fact I still use it today. Everyone said that I would never get it running under XP but I did, it made me a superstar 20 years ago. I think it is where Gates got his idea for windows.
Having everything loaded into RAM was the only pain, I was always fighting for more memory. It is fun compring it to today’s bloatware as it used little resources and was fast.

Lotus Symphony

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

After being so successful with Lotus 1-2-3, they decided to get cute and roll everything (spreadsheet, word processing etc) into one package. The result was the kludgiest, most bloated software ever that was impossible to use and forever to wait for. What a disaster!

OS2 Warp has it hands down

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Doesn?t anybody remember the horrors of using OS2?
Common’ its nickname was Oh Shi*t 2. That?s derived from the fact simple commands and procedures could produce catastrophic systems failures. Let’s not mention network connectivity!

Not even close

In reply to OS2 Warp has it hands down

OS/2 was remarkably good system software and simple commands and procedures could not produce catastrophic system failures unless you are trying to say that OS/2 would let an idiot user delete critical system files. Well, not if they were locked or had their attributes set to read only. And why not mention network connectivity which was better on OS/2 than anything it competed with? OS/2 supported protocols long before Micrsoft and they did a better job of it as well. IBM’s TCP/IP stack for OS/2 was (and still is, compared with windows) outstanding.

OS2 was CRAP

In reply to OS2 Warp has it hands down

Trying to take it back off a computer was worse than trying to use it.

Worst software

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Lousy software is easy to correct (uninstall) but an operating system is a bit different. The worst of all time goes to: Windows Millenium

Brothers Keeper

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

A Genealogy program, the defacto standard for any sort of family tree tracking.
Any program that requires full and careful reading of any and every screen just to get to the next screen is bad. It would display a screen of text, with warnings telling you to read it carefully. One sentence would say “Press to continue”, surrounded by chaff.
Any pressing of a key different to the one mentioned would receive some pop up message warning you to carefully read the screens. It continued in this vein, never actually doing anything useful. So much information was presented that it was impossible to read, digest, remember and get onto the next screen.

How good was the app at logging my family tree? Dunno, never got to enter any details. I’d delete it an hour after starting, purely from hatred of the app. 5 times I installed it. 5 times I deleted it.

NetBIOS Name Server on NT 3.1

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

hands down. Nasty. Manual command-line database entries for name/IP resolution. In LAN Manager/NetBIOS format. Urgh.

NT 3.1 sucked pretty bad itself, but Windows 3.0 was worse.

I thought I was the only one…

In reply to NetBIOS Name Server on NT 3.1

… who had NT 3.1 inflicted upon them, or Windows 3.0! Windows got very popular with 3.1 (3.12, with Win32S still seems to have been the fastest performing Windows on what was “average” hardware for its time), but Windows 3.0 was lousy. NT 3.1… I cannot think of any saving graces, except its CPU portability. PPC, SPARC, Alpha, and x86, if I recall… 3.5/3.51 definitely supported that many platforms.

J.Ja

CA’s ArcServe/BrightStore Backup

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

This backup software fails constantly, memory leaks and all out failures. It is bad on all environments, especially backing up Novell servers.

The support is terrible. I can’t wait for the boss to let us buy something (ANYTHING) else.

ArcServe not the worst

In reply to CA’s ArcServe/BrightStore Backup

I’ve never found a backup app that I’m completely happy with, but at least ArcServe works (for me, anyway. Never encountered any failures or memory leaks), which is more than can be said for others that I’ve tried, including TapeWare and an old version of Backup Exec (see my previous post for my TapeWare rant!)
Seems like ArcServe is the best of a bad bunch.

arcserver meets the requirements of CRAP

In reply to ArcServe not the worst

As per the original request i.e., kludgiest etc etc then Arcserve is the king.

You may have had no problems, then you mustn’t be touching it. Some-one else has done the hard yards and suffered the pain to get it – installed, patched, updated, and now don’t touch it and it will work – in its fashion, until you have to touch it, then all hell breaks loose.

Of and what about restores… On a previous gig, we had to do test restores every second day, of randomly selected tapes from the prvious 3 months… what a waste of time trying to do this on arcserve, cataloging tapes, retensioning, then reading – used to take hours….
NT backup freebee is better!

SAP – Worst Big Company Software

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Not even close, anyone that has used any SAP product will know…this is by FAR the worst software from user interface and overall useability – especially when considering you have to pay for it….YIKES!!!!

AMEN! SAP is the worst!

In reply to SAP – Worst Big Company Software

How many ways can a vendor make something difficult? This monster has no consistency on any screen, any where. I’ve been acting as a Basis administrator for this POS for the last couple of months and, I have to admit, navigating this has brought me to tears a few times. to make it even worse, there are two camps of administrators for this: the command-line types who rattle off screen codes for you to look at and the menu navigators (menus not really organized in any logical groupings). I’ve been told this will be great for my career – only if I don’t shoot myself from frustration!

SAP

In reply to AMEN! SAP is the worst!

SAP is the most user rude software I’ve ever had the misfortune to use, and the only error messages I’ve seen that are more cryptic are the Windows BSOD messages.

Now I know part of that is due to the kludged together version we are using, but only part of it.

Jeff DeWitt

A few more entries…

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

* Adobe Acrobat 6. Version 7 is slightly better. It actually takes nearly as long to install Acrobat 6 as it does to install Windows XP!

* Notes/Domino email client circa 1999 or so. Totally buggy piece of junk. You had to install the mobile edition, because the desktop version stunk.

* HotJava browser. Back when Java was slower than an abacus, someone worte a whole browser in it?

* Internet Explorer for UNIX. You read that right! IE was on UNIX for at least a version… and I remember it being quite bad.

* xeyes You want *how* much memory and CPU to follow my mouse cursor around the screen?

* Text-to-speech circa 1995. We used to love prank calling with this software, plus a voice-enabled modem. Too bad we had to spell “chocolate” “choklit” to make it pronouce things right…

* Windows 95 Beta 1: I never again beta tested anything after this experience. After it “forgot” that I had a mouse 19 times in one day (earlier than week, it “lost” the modem over 30 times, and the print “disappeared” over a dozen time), I ripped it out and installed WFW 3.11 again; within a few months, WFW 3.11 had add on shells that eumated windows 95 anyways. 🙂

* Oracle Enterprise Manager: I love watching memory errors in the Java console that it leaves in the background. I enjoy trying to use a feature on the menu, and being told it isn’t actually in the software.

* Oracle SQL*Plus: here’s another loser. It forces me to split my lines after 2,499 characters, but does not put a visible margin on the screen, so I have the pleasure of guessing where to break my lines.

* MySQL Query Browser: great software, except it throws out errors whenever I select, say, 300,000 records.

I could go on and on all day… in a nutshell, there is very few pieces of high quality software out there. And odd to say, the word “enterprise” on a software label is like the word “premium” on a bottle of beer… the more you see the word “enterprise” the worse it will be (King Cobra malt liquor has the word “premium” three times on the label, by way of comparison; Sam Adams does not have the word “premium” anywhere on the label, last time I checked).

J.Ja

Adobe update prompts

In reply to A few more entries…

I agree about Adobe reader (though it is somewhat useful to read .pdf files, at least) – I don’t understand how it can take so very, very long to install this software (the FEAD optimizer or whatever it is that runs during setup notwithstanding). Also can’t stand the constant and relentless barrage of prompts in both 6 and 7 harassing me to install update after update after update after update. It’s a simple .PDF reader, guys, not a freakin’ operating system! Why does it need to be updated every 5 minutes?

In terms of my own picks for worst software ever, this will probably meet with some disagreement but I would have to choose any undelete software out there, such as Norton Unerase, FreeUndelete, and RecoverMyFiles. I have tried them all, and the number of times any of them were able to actually recover any deleted files which I needed remains solidly stuck at zero. But yet they always seem to find files deleted six years ago which you no longer even remember flushing, and can recover those just fine. It’s just useless hope to try these, since they seem to offer a football to kick ala Lucy and Charlie Brown, always pulling the ball out of reach just when you think you have a good shot.

Clientbase and LabelRight

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Clientbase was used at an old job with a travel agency. It was designed to integrate with Sabre, the main travel booking software.

It had a lot of good points, but it locked up, [b]ALOT[/b]. In order to unlock it I had to have all the users close it down and then go unlock it from one machine. I was doing this about every month. Plus there were many, many times when I had to restore data from a previously backed up file (meaning we’d lose everything from that morning or so) due to some glitch that caused it to lock up and corrupt the data. Thankfully Sabre stored all the reservations, the Clientbase was only used for keeping notes on clients.

I use LabelRight currently because one of our main clients requires bar-coded labels on their boxes to track their inventory. Again, it has all the right ideas, but it is a pain to use. It is slow and cumbersome. It could use alot of fine tuning. Designing labels on it is tedious. Imports and database integration rarely work right so we usually forego those routes and simply input data. They’ve used this software for quite some time now and never used it for anything other than the barcode labels for the 1 client.

I finally figured out another use for it just this week. But designing the label took about twice as much time as it did in Word. But it does allow me to input only the data that changes and it will plug it in to the proper places on multiple labels. But unless you HAVE to have barcodes, I wouldn’t recommend the softare.

Microsoft Bob

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I had the misfortune of trying to make this work for a few people. I’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned yet.

MS Bob Product Mgr married BillG

In reply to Microsoft Bob

It was so bad that they forced Melinda French, the product manager, to marry Bill Gates.
🙂

MS Word?

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Ok, this is the 3rd software that people have complained about that I have no huge problems with.

Personally I [b]like[/b] Word’s table capabilites. You can change individual cell sizes so that you have a completely customized table, rather than only by column or row. Yes, there are cpl of quirks like when you try cutting and pasting tables or remembering where certain table properties are located. But once you get it all in your head, you can create some beautiful documents.

I like Word over Word Perfect and Microsoft Works.

But I’m also a person who’s not firely annoyed by quirks. Once I figure a way around it, I’m fine and merrily continue my work.

two words: bullets and styles

In reply to MS Word?

my main complaints w Word…try mixing a numbered list with bullets.

Side Question on Styles

In reply to two words: bullets and styles

The common wisdom is to not used bullets and styles on a resume.

However, a lot of adverts want you to demonstrate expert level knowlege of MS-Word.

Go figure.

Bullets and Styles

In reply to two words: bullets and styles

I take it you mean use bullets within a numbered list. Attempting it the 1st obvious way I see the number changes to a bullet. Ok, that could be irksome however:

if you enter a hard return, select bullet and then just simply adjust the indent markers on the top ruler it’s done within seconds.

I don’t get it either?

In reply to MS Word?

This is a 100% MS shop with about 10,000 desktops with Office XP, 2000, and 2003, and around 125 servers with NT4 to Server 2k3 spread out in a county of about a million people. Everything from General Hospital to the Jails (my area). Never have MS related troubles, nearly all of our calls are related to the third party apps the different departments use.

Are we lucky or just that damn good?

Citrix, also known as Remedy. I used this piece of crap at work. It sucks!

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

It’s big, it’s ugly and it’s got way too much software to keep track of.

Citrix is not Remedy

In reply to Citrix, also known as Remedy. I used this piece of crap at work. It sucks!

Remedy is a Service Desk, Bug Tracking Monster, P-O-C
Citrix is a thin client software application.
It is possible they used remedy via a citrix client so they did not need to install the remedy client on every PC

PCTools 7.0

In reply to Citrix, also known as Remedy. I used this piece of crap at work. It sucks!

Total wreckage of version 6 which worked pretty darn well. Was rushed into production so quickly that the thing was so infested your first call was to Orkin.

Windows (OS) & VAI S2000 (Enterprise Software)

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Windows is without a doubt the sorriest excuse for an OS i’ve every seen. In fact, i was interrupted while writing this because another user’s PC wouldn’t let them end their apps and sign off!! …What a way to make a living!

VAI (Vormittag Associates, Inc.)’s Software 2000 is a package of core business apps that run on IBM’s iSeries under OS/400 (the best business platform you can possibly imagine). Unfortunately, a solid OS not withstanding, it (VAI) is the worst package i’ve ever worked with.

Virtually every major program in the package has had problems ending with their Warehouse Management System which came broken to the tune of useless. It took us 2 years to fix the problems and modify the code enough to get us off the ground.

If it were running on any other platform we would either still be fixing it or working somewhere else.

I’d like to personally thank Microsoft and Vormittag for reinvigorating my appreciation of the natural world in all of its gloriest, low-tech wonder!!

Ahhhh…. I feel soooooo much better now! B)

ACT! (all versions)

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

has gotten worse and worse since its inception!!
then symantec bought it and really f**@*D it up properly!
conflicting with every known symantec product after they sold it
on!
now at proffesional v8 sold by sage!
buggy resource hungry and as quirky as a bottle of crisps!
I say kill it and have done with it!
sold by salesmen to salesmen who should know better who to trust
lol!

Goldmine!!!!

In reply to ACT! (all versions)

Dude – you have obviously never had the joy of working with Goldmine. It is without a doubt the most ill conceived piece of crap I have ever seen in my life. Starting from the two database formats (DBase and SQL Server) through to the complete lack of any kind of undelete or, worse yet – ability to restore an accidentally deleted record or set of records.

I was surprised to find out that in version 7 – which I have been avoiding like the plauge, because from all reports it’s even buggier than 6.7 – they have now added an extra database format (FireBird)… I wish I’d been there on the day that decision was made –
“Hmmm…. We seem to be having some problems with our 2 databases running together smoothly – any suggestions?”
“I know – here’s a thought – why don’t we add one more server product – just to mix it up a bit…?”

Utter madness….

I think it was summed up best when, looking up reviews of it online, I found a review that stated “Pros:- It comes in a nice box” – and then proceeded to list a vitriolic stream of “Cons” that filled up the best part of a page…

I hate Goldmine

In reply to Goldmine!!!!

When I was consulting, a lot of my clients used it. Now, I always tried to explain to them that I was a PC and server support person, NOT an applications specialist, so anything beyond the basic installation of the product, they’d have to call in a Goldmine specialist, but they’d still insist that I try to make that crap work. I always was very plain with them that it would cost more in the long run to have me fiddle with it, at my hourly bill rate and complete incomprehension of that application (gawd, is that ever a HORRID product!) than it would be to bite the bullet and pay a Goldmine consultant from the get-go. But no, they’d say, no, we want you to do it, and then they’d bitch when they got the bill for four hours of futile fiddling. Ugh!

Internet Browsers

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Techrepublic, Spyware, Flaming, Viruses, Updates, Spam, identiy theft, scams, useless search engines etc…

But funny enogh it is also the best I have ever used.

free porn, access to movies, comics, Shit loads of information, wekipeida, flaming, youtube etc…

Worst mobile sw :Nokia Suites

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Maybe this is about a year old history now, but i doubt it.
Worst on mobile front: Nokia PC-suites ( formerly data-suites ), all versions and for all versions of Windows.
Really weird pieces of crap.
If you don’t do the install in certain order in certain way ( I have luckily forgotten what it is ) the suite will never find the phone, whatever way you are connecting, IR, Cable or BlueTooth.
And the uninstall…#”@?$@?$#?”#&%%&@?$!!!
that means by hand. Takes a looong time to search the registry.

thu

Easy – MS-DOS 4.0

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Remember the old rule of version 4…
Dbase 4, Lotus 123 V4… etc

Reprodesk

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

This has to be the worst software ever written. It is a proprietary program for printing to “OCE” wide format printers. It has been on version 4 since 1998. They continue to do .x.x.x upgrades but the upgrades usually create more problems than they fix, and in most cases crash when installing. The concept is a good one, but very few of the features of the program actually work as designed. One of the basic features of the software is to allow a reprographer to group and arrange tiff files for printing. Unfortunately, when attempting to arrange the files, you are only allowed to select files one at a time. So when producing a set of 300+ prints it can take hours to arrange them in the proper order. In addition, the program crashes on a regular basis, other features such as rotation and alignment do not work properly. It is just a terrible mess.

Windows 3.11,

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Now that was just a taste of MS operating systems to come, but it was the worst OP Sys since CPM

CA InoculateIT …or eTrust

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

absolutely horrendous management capability.
“We’ve got two virus scanners”
too bad they’re both terrible

WordPerfect Any Version

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I’ve been forced to use it for years because our school board has a free license (cheap little…). Of course, since everyone uses Word, no one knows how to use WordPerfect, and if we try, they just seem to get another version of it. Corel sucks, all of their softweare sucks, especially WordPerfect ><.

FORTE for Java by Sun is/was by far thee

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

worst enteprise development IDE

Apple OS X

In reply to FORTE for Java by Sun is/was by far thee

Not really, just wanted to get a few people ready with their trigger fingers before they’d even read the message.

Although it does have quirks, and 10.4 is a lot better than 10.1

A Toss Up: WordStar (Any Version) or vi

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Either is perfectly capapble of driving a good writer completely off his rocker.

I once temped at a small law office that expected every person who came in to be a pro with the version of WordStar that the attorney had used in college.

He never put WordStar in his ads because “no one sends me a resume”. Well duh!

vi is just muse-destroying evil. I ran into it after some 10 years using Word Perfect and afterwards Word 97. I found it absolutely counter-intuitive.

WordStar: not so bad

In reply to A Toss Up: WordStar (Any Version) or vi

At least the DOS versions. There was a simple keyboard interface and few bugs. It wasn’t that bad underWindows 3.1. But it got old and the Windows versions were buggy. C’est la vie.

Now MS Word, truly bad.

WordStar Ruled!

In reply to WordStar: not so bad

In it’s day WordStar was the greatest, keep in mind how old it is, WordStar was one of the first modern word processors. First time I ever used it was on a CP/M machine, and it was the first word processor available on the IBM PC when it came out.

WordStar for Windows was a poor substitute… I’d almost rather use WordPro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar

Jeff DeWitt

WordStar’s Apology

In reply to WordStar Ruled!

Wasn’t it WordStar who started out the introduction for one version by apologizing for the last one?

temper “wordstar & vi” by your name “too old for it”

In reply to A Toss Up: WordStar (Any Version) or vi

I don’t mean this as a back slap … but I wouldn’t necessarily say such things as you, when you have your name as “Too old for IT”

WordStar was one of the THE best word processing programs of its time. Not only that but its abilities in days of old also bested some publishing software ..

Imagine trying to make up a brochure, one that you would print, add a graphic to, and then send off … in Wordstar I would make up the document, and then where a graphic was to overlay text, I would cut out a small square section of text so that when the brochure would get to the printers, if the picture had detached, they would see a blank spot, where the picture would have gone..

Try cutting out columns of text, or any other of the favorite features people had IN wordstar…

it was that text column selection that caused me to buy TextPad (www.textpad.com) .. that I could surgically cut columns of text and paste them changes how one works with hundreds or thousands of similar entries, ones that need changing due to some stupid’s glitch..

As for VI .. understanding the names of the functions and how they came to being usually goes a long way.

Additionally, vi was built before microsoft did their “common” theme of CTRL C / V / X … OH wait… X stands for CUT, and C for Copy… or V for PASTE ? where the hell is the V in paste?

See.. time being what it is … is what we build on.. if you built on learning obscure things, or items that have value and meaning, you remember them for a long time, and probably get around many things easily.. but take away your mouse, will you be just as quick as before..

(and that’s not aimed directly at you TOFI .. but that there are others that are like your description)

also balance that with “running into vi 10 years after word perfect” … because they aren’t in the same reported classes (word / text processors)

lol, I like vi

In reply to temper “wordstar & vi” by your name “too old for it”

I don’t know all of the commands but when you work with different flavors of unix which different people set up. I find that vi is on all the versions.
I have my cheat sheet(which I got here) that I have to refer to. But, all my editing that I do in unix I use vi for.

dan

vi – the tool I use

In reply to A Toss Up: WordStar (Any Version) or vi

vi. I learned it because it was the only editor available when I was learning *nix. I still use it via secure telnet for remote admin. It’s fast and 100% reliable.

But nothing could induce me to teach it to anyone who was brought up on GUI!

Vi – aaarrrrrggghhhh!!!

In reply to vi – the tool I use

I use Vi once about every 4-6 months (or so) and every time I do I have to get my UNIX manuals out for a half-hour refresher before I even start!

I hate it!!!

Wordstar & VI DO the job

In reply to Vi – aaarrrrrggghhhh!!!

The universal, quick ability to edit on ANY Unix based system is very valuable. Even if you don’t invest time to learn the hidden power of VI, the basics (which are also cornerstones for other word processors; even old PC based)are a necessary skill to do YOUR job.

Wordstar was very capable and provided users features during the DOS days before Windows and WORD eventually evolved.

Agree, but…

In reply to Wordstar & VI DO the job

I totally agree, but my point was that the cursed thing is so counter-intuitive that when you only need to use it once in a blue moon, like me, even a simple line edit becomes a major job – because you have to read up on it first to refresh your memory (especially if your memory’s as bad as mine!!!)

Yes, I did not like Wordstar …

In reply to A Toss Up: WordStar (Any Version) or vi

vi was challenging, but it was a relief when screen editors came out!
:o)

This discussion will go one FOREVER!

Almost anything IBM wrote to run under Windows

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Don’t get me wrong, I love IBM. They have provided me with a decent income for 28 years now, but thier PC software, imho, has been truly awful. BookReader, Websphere, Operations Navigator. In general, their interfaces are coutner intuitive as well as buggy. Even some of their mainframe and midrange interfaces demonstrate an innate ability to make a mountain out of a mole hill.

DisplayWrite5

In reply to Almost anything IBM wrote to run under Windows

Guess I haven’t used enough of IBM’s stuff to comment on the ones you mention, but DW, esp the last version, was horrible, mostly from the UI side.

System Mechanic any current version

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Let’s just say that if you have a strong desire to rebuild your computer…install this software; then tell it to automatically check and fix everything. The odds will be pretty good that your registry will get toasted and your life will suck till you install your backup image or rebuild your machine.

I am still Rebuilding

In reply to System Mechanic any current version

My Computer was updated from 98 through XP Pro. Needless to say it was slow. decided I would try Sysyem Mechanic, Bad Move. I could not boot Repair Console could Install any older Restore Point and it did not matter. I finally Formatted and Did a clean install. I am still trying to discover the programs I used once a year for a specific project before I need them. I will go back to manually editing the registery, I feel safer that way.

Access 2.0

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

a

ever was … made by microsoft

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

The worst software ever … was made by microsoft.

and if not made by them, was something they bought to take over, and subsequently ruined.

Microsoft has come a long way from their garage bay beginnings, and have found new and “inventive” ways of making themselves not responsible for anything they’ve created, yet at the same time mandating that their “parts” are required.

Not only does microsoft live by their disclaimer, but not one of their applications isn’t something that they stole the idea from, and made it somehow a requirement to have.

Word? does anyone even remember word for dos?
Windows 3.1 … and “co-operative multi-tasking”
How about when competitors tried to come out with *windows* based software… how did microsoft squash those? oh.. that’s right, they hid api’s or claimed proprietary violations so that their competitor’s software either ran slower by default, or has injunctions against

Oh, and how do they operate in the security world? It wasn’t until 2003 Server that they acted slightly responsibly, by *not* turn on every bell and whistle for a server installation .. unix and their variants have been doing that for how long? (ok so one idea microsoft didn’t steal until it thought many would see it as “new”)

Oh, and lets look at their recommendation for RPC.. don’t allow it on the internet because people can do bad things to/with it.

its mind blowing that so many things have been bad with microsoft at the core, for so long, and people still blindly accept them and challenge with stupid “you come up with something better” type retorts…. when the truth is that there are alternatives.. but you the masses refuse to get more education on the use of the computer or to hold your attention no more than a leaflet or two long …

America I give you Microsoft… the worst example of how bad things could be, and yet still people can’t see how bad they are .. wasn’t there some quotable about “the greatest thing the devil ever did” … convincing people he didn’t exist…

O:-)

I use microsoft products every day, and curse them for not including functions or for doing things counter to intelligent thoughtful usage, or for making a decision that “they” knew what they were doing and that no individual user did … and then wavering back and forth on the two extremes without finding balance.. how could a company do that… not find balance in 20 years?

McAfee Protection Pilot

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

ePO’s red-headed stepchild.

OnTrack’s Dynamic Drive Overlay

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

This piece of software was intended to allow a larger size of hard drive than a system could otherwise handle. I used Version 9.03, then 9.18, then 9.50 on a Windows 95 system to allow an 8.4 GB drive. Crashes galore, even to the point of so damaging the installation as to require re-installation of the OS. When a crash happened, the hard drives became inaccessible until reboot. Software was provided by the computer’s maker, Gateway, who couldn’t figure out why it crashed the system or what to do to fix it. After much tribulation, I got version 9.50 from the drive’s maker, Quantum, and most of the crashes disappeared — except it would crash if I had a sound board installed, immediately upon the first sound file being accessed. OnTrack denied its software caused the problem, but when I installed an IDE board and got rid of OnTrack’s Overlay, the system became very stable.

Because of the problems caused by OnTrack’s Dynamic Drive Overlay, I re-partitioned hard drives more for that one computer than all others combined. Royal headache maker.

Norton Firewall (1st ed. 2002 (?) )

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Locked,slowed to crawl, crashed and burned my desktop (TWICE FOR GODSAKES) …. It was ME that was stupid enough to load it back in on the first total reinstall. (I usually have to be kicked twice).
The disk could not have hit the wall any faster.

Well you have to ask?

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Microsoft it self! Every time they upgrade to a new name, you need more memory, more processing speed, more video and now they check all your software/hardware.
Even if you buy your software from them, they still check out your computer and software.

ADRAM

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Back in the late 70’s/early 80’s, when ICL (remember them? The company with the deathwish?) wanted their customers to move from the old 1900 machine to the new whizz-bang 2900 it was pointed out to them that the file formats were incompatible. ADRAM was the tool ICL cooked up. It did work, I can’t deny it, but I suffered permanent psychological damage from getting into the state of mind required to fathom its weird methodology. If proof of non-human intelligence were needed, ADRAM might well be it, I suspect it was found in a crashed UFO and given to ICL when no sane use could be found for it.

Peregrine Systems Service Center

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I don’t even know where to begin! Non-standard menus and key assignments, inconsistent key assignments, worthless search, column-width settings not saved, no column sort, ….

This program (among other things) is supposed to make it easy to track problems (or incidents as it calls them) but it is so difficult to use you spend more time filling out the fields than actually fixing the problem.

Ralph

It’s really bad.. No, really. BAD.

In reply to Peregrine Systems Service Center

Green screen feel, like it was written by a 100 year old cobol NERD. Goto change a field and pick from a list… on a new screen, cancel that, but recheck all the other fields as it might have changed them too (but it will take 10-15 seconds just to go back).
No heirarchy support.. you whole organization, departments etc in one list.
Almost all upper case. You can search, but you MUST know the first few characters or you will never find it.
The most important info in different tabs of the same ticket so it’s not all in view at once. No custom views (but you can change some columns it ticket lists).
Advice on checking fields on other screens, even if they never got a value.
Eariler versions would let you fill in a ticket for 5 minutes and quick-abort with no confirmation, losing your data in 1 keystroke (ESC).
No spell check.
Print ticket looks nothing like tickets on the screen, and print screen does just that.. it prints scroll bars.
It has different ticket queues, but you can only see them one at a time (I’d like to say I want to see this queue, and that queue, and a few other tickets that I told you I want to track… but you better write those ticket numebrs down somewhere because Service Center wont help you).
You can maximize the window, but it will stil only view a ticket in a small portion of that window (with scroll bars that don’t indicate if there is more text to scroll down to).
When looking at ticket queues, or search results, it shows oldest tickets first, scroll to the bottom and .. wait for it… wait for it.. yes, there is more, and the scroll bar now shows you can scroll down even more. Older versions would let you click on column headers to sort, if it ever finished sorting the list (even if it was 5 tickets)… newer versions just don’t let you sort by columns.
The only interface is via the “green screen”, no email support. I’ve never seen web support. The MS-PC version is really slow, but looks fast compared to the java version.
I’m told there is a C API, but your company might be afraid to let you use it as all the field value restrictions are built into the gui, and not the database… I’m told any database, as it doesn’t use enough database features to really care what database it is.
It’s flawed at the design level, implemented badly, and your company will probably maintain it badly. Downtime for backups.
Pay a college student to write something for you and it will be better and cheaper.
You can’t open a second window to see more than one ticket at the same time… unless you run it a second time and login again. The fields are all independent so you can’t cut and paste more than one at a time (into or out of Service Center)… maybe you can print to a file? (printer configuration is awkward) The ticket search screen comes up with the ticket letters already in the field, (tickets like CM123456 and CM already there)… if you paste in CM123456 it has cm twice and searching will fail entirly. The inactivity logout is global for all users, so get used to re-opening it (and yes, it will close, you cant just re-login). I guess I should just stop here. You get the point?

FrontPage

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

This programme (and it’s programmers) should be burnt at the stake. It is bulky, cumbersome, non-compatible and has 80% usless code – that is 80% of it’s code can be safely removed (by anyone who actually knows html) without changing the appearance of the web page. For example, why would you want to create 30 lank td cells just to create a space. Then there is no guarantee its pages will actually work, even on IE (if there are still people actually using that one).

Some interesting history behind FrontPage you may not know

In reply to FrontPage

FrontPage was not Microsoft’s original product. They had acquired it from a company called Vermeer Software, which you can actually see if you look at some of the Meta Tags behind the HTML code that FrontPage generates. Frontpage was a good product when Vermeer had it, but then came in Microsoft’s “expert” programmers and as usual, reverse engineer it, f**k it up, and recompile it using Microsoft’s bloated codebase to make it look like an MS Office Suite product. They did the same thing with Visio, although Visio works a lot better than FrontPage, but seems like anytime an original piece of software is acquired by another software company, they completely bastardize it to the point where nobody wants to use it or buy it anymore.

“Longhorn” Beta 1

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

MS VISTA…YIKES…what a mess. That was the WORST beta version I ever installed from Microsoft. NOTHING worked except network access. You couldn’t install software for it didn’t understand any drivers, and you couldn’t get new drivers,well…no one had anything for Vista. All hardware that was previously installed on your system didn’t work. The windows interface changed drastically, everything was moved. Your profile no longer resides in Documents and settings….it sits under users in the root. (locating that was a pain). Drilling down into a folder is also a P.I.T.A….
I grateful I used VMware to install the garbage, I mean software. I sure hope it works when its available to the public. And you can’t install any software..anti virus, alternate productivity software, etc.

I have beta 2…I even gave that a chance by installing it….same thing. Any one else had issues with Vista?

Oracle 9i installer

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Well maybe not the worst softwaare I’ve ever used, but certainly the worst professional software that claimed to be beyond version 0.9, in fact the Windows installer claimed to be version 2.something.

Absurd!

It didn’t do the job (it screwed my server setup) and you couldn’t remove it. It’s the only software that I ever had to remove by reformatting and reinstalling the OS, and this was on a production server.

I thought all oracle was like that

In reply to Oracle 9i installer

Don’t get me wrong, I know Oracle is a solid enterprise database. But, everyone that I’ve talked to has had issues uninstalling oracle.
I installed it on a free 40 gig at home when I first doing pl/sql on the job. I thought it would help me get up to speed quicker, we were switching over from cobol to oracle. I tried to uninstall it, and ended up doing the same. Reformating This was after I talked to our dba on how to uninstall it.
He provided me with like a 4 page writeup on how to uninstall oracle that he had found. I looked at that, and thought. Well, lets put it this way. There was a topic started here on techrepublic about 3 weeks ago. How long do you spend before you reformat. 2 hours? I figured it would take me weeks, I just reformated.
So I understand your point about the installer/uninstaller.

droolin

Amen to that

In reply to Oracle 9i installer

When it installs two different version of the JRE, and almost half a GB of files, just for the default *client* install, you know there’s something seriously wrong with a product!

IBM Displaywriter

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Back in the 80s, IBM had a version of Displaywriter that evidently was ported down from mainframes. It only had drivers for IBM printers! (You could only get other drivers by CALLING IBM and waiting on HOLD!) How primitive that seems now….

It Was Truly Awful!!!

In reply to IBM Displaywriter

Holy frights, I forgot about that piece of s***. I was forced to use the Displaywriter back in the days when I was a secretary. It was just awful, horrible, terrible. From a user’s point of view, it was absolute torture to try to produce anything like a mailing. It could reduce me to tears. Now that I’m in the lofty world of computer support, I would NEVER subject any of my users to that kind of abuse.

Dan Bricklin’s Software Garden crica late 80’s

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I know, I know he was the creator of VisiCalc but the man didn’t have a clue regarding an interface for a graphics based demo program. Talk about counter-intuitive! Imagine a graphics interface designed by a crack addict!

Anyone remember “Edlin” ?

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I still love to use the command line, but this piece of junk required that you had to have a computer science degree from MIT just to edit the autoexec…

The worst ever…

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

The worst mistake I ever made..not checking that the backups were actually working on a server…and you just know the server crashed and OOPS..NO BACKUPS!!!!

Is this a trick question?

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Microsoft with out a question is the worst. I have use UNIX, IBM (aix), Sun and allot of others MS is the only software that keeps using the same codeing. And adding to it, it has become a monster now, there are so many lines of programming and add inn?s that it is like looking for your kids in a play ground. You need to stop every one and ask if they have seen them.
Think about this, you can not run a program so you look to MS to find out why. And then you find that there are allot of other people doing the same thing.
So you call MS and they charge you to find the problem with their software.
I think this is the worst software that I have used

Small example:

In reply to Is this a trick question?

I once found an error in Excel, where the calculations was plain wrong, and it send a error message – although not the correct one. I checked it a lot, and found that it was reproducable under certain circumstances.

Nice guy as I then was, I wrote a description of how to make it malfunction, and sent it to Microsoft. Thought was, that I’d like to help them – they had made an error in programming and I’d tell them where, so they could make the correction.

A few WEEKS later, I was called by Microsoft on the phone, and they informed that they could create the same error and also that they could correct it. They also told me that if THEY found it to be THEIR fault, I wouldn’t be billed, otherwice I would be billed 200 green. I got pxxxxx off, and told them to fix it and that they’d have a hard time proving that it was MY mistake as it was closed source and I had no acces to the code.

4 weeks later I got a diskette with a fix for the error. They had removed the error mesasage, but the calculation was still wrong.

At home we live a Micrsosft free life, and we will never go back. We can do whatever we want on ‘another OS’, ‘another office package’ and ‘another media player’.

Windows 9x

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Rarely ever a day without a blue screen or an unexpected reboot.

Windows Update is a very close second. Hate that constant nagging for a reboot. Have lost work when it rebooted while I was distracted for a few minutes or stepped away for a cup of coffee.

No Brainer

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Windows ME. I tried to deploy this to almost 50 clients (their idea-not mine) and I would say 90% of those installs had to be nuked.

Mostly due to driver issues but I remember almost any concievable issue came up on somebodies computer.

It was like a bad alpha for WinXP.

Back one step

In reply to No Brainer

Heck back to Win98 even. That crap survived 1 week before being rolled back on my PC to Win95. From there I hit NT4 workstation up. NT4 Wkstn was just dandy and never had a problem with it.

A minor correction

In reply to No Brainer

> [i]It was like a bad alpha for WinXP.[/i]

Just to clear up any confusion, WinME was the [i]last[/i] of the DOS-based Windows line (’95, ’98,
ME). WinXP was based on Win2000, which in turn was based on WinNT. And yes, ME had a horrible reputation.

Windows XP

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

After growing up with MS, Novell and many main stream *nix flavours over the last 20 odd years as programmer, administrator and you name it, XP rubbed me up the wrong way from day 1.

The last thing I wanted was this decent kernel wrapped up in the trashy ‘we know how/what you want and/or are thinking’ frontend. It’s been my wish ever since then that MS would look beyond the average user base and say “Hey, there really are users out there who DO know what they’re doing so let’s back off the intuitive crap and let these people use THEIR PC’s how best suits them”. After checking out Vista beta the other day I’m even less inclined to go down that path. It’s enough to make me want to quit I.T. altogether. I wish that XP professional actually was for professionals!

Seriously, how would you like it if your vehicle decided that 4th gear on the open highway was better than 5th because the car ‘feels’ it would be more beneficial to itself rather than what you felt like doing?

I suppose like XP I’ll have to hack the crap outa Vista so that the operating system is just that .. an OS, not some pretend digital nanny.

Windows just gets worse….

In reply to Windows XP

I agree with everything you say. I’ve worked through practically every version of Windows, and they just keep getting worse. I’m down to just one machine with XP and working towards dumping that. Vista? Not a chance! I’m sick of being dictated to by people who think they know better than I do. It’s MY computer; I know what I want to do with it!

CAS

Toss up

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

It is a tie between un-installable Yahoo! Toolbar that Adobe Reader installs by default and the Sony Music rootkit. I would have to say that Sony wins simply because they did not even tell you their malware was installed.

Norton (Anticomputerworking) Antivirus!

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Apparently I’m not the only one, lol. Especially the 2003 and 2004 versions, but they all have problems. I cannot believe Norton is still the first thing that comes to most people’s mind when they have to buy an antivirus program. I recommend Trend Micro PCCillin and sell it to my customers; they are always surprised to hear I don’t recommend Norton.

Ditto!

In reply to Norton (Anticomputerworking) Antivirus!

It is the last software I will ever suggest anyone put on a home computer. We use it in a corporate environment, that’s nothing to write home about.

On a personal use computer, kiss your lack of problems goodbye once you put NAV on.

I agree….

In reply to Norton (Anticomputerworking) Antivirus!

Seriously, the only reason Norton is so big is that they allow computer manufacturers to use the trial version on new computers. I have been recently working on computers with Norton and every time I recommend they swap immediately. But I wouldnt recommend PCCillin, I would actually suggest System Mechanic 6 Pro. But thats your call.

Simple – Yahoo! messenger

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Need I say more ??

Catia

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

I can’t even begin to describe this piece of crap. It is totally non-intuitive. It regularly requires a reboot. It is half the spped of software costing a third the price. You need an additional license for many features. This software appears to have copied a good piece of software, then added impediments to make it harder to use, and unreliable.

winamp has to rank right up there

In reply to Catia

I swear winamp comes out with new releases as often as Microsoft issue’s security patch’s. I quit upgrading, and just use an old version I had saved.
I’m so use to ctrl/alt/delete to get to the task manager so I can shut down the winamp cause it hung up, its becoming my preferred way of shutting it down. But, then again. AOL bought and distributes winamp now. Might say it all.
By the way, we sound like a bunch of AVG salesmen here. Lol, me included.

droolin

Let me guess…

In reply to Catia

> [i]This software appears to have copied a good piece of software, then added impediments…[/i]

CATIA was originally made by Dassault (the French aircraft company) and then either purchased by or codeveloped with IBM. Care to guess where they went off the tracks? 🙂

My List

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

My short list..
Most Irritating: Adobe updates and why do they all require a reboot!

Most Frustrating: AOL – just try to unsubscribe! My clients have to call me just to get out of it!

Worst Enterprise Software: SAP and if it’s “customized” forget it.

The Just Terrible Award: ACT!

The Most Disappointing: Norton – I used to love & recommend it – now looking for a better solution for my clients.

And finally all “Cleanup” software in the hands of people who don’t know what they are deleting!

My $.02 – MercaLoday

Better solution than Norton – Sophos

In reply to My List

I dropped my enterprise license with Norton a few years ago and brought in Sophos. It was a very good experience and I have not had a virus inside the firewall since.

The worst software i ever used was…

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

CPSI – healthcare Unix software….Buggier than a henhouse.

Crystal Reports

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

It takes forever to build anything, and then it’s pretty distant from WYSIWYG.

To get it to run inside other applications, you have to jump through more hoops than a hula convention, and even then it will work on some computers and not on others.

And halfway through resolving the installation issues, they decided we had used up our two free support issues and owed them money.

So I ended up building my own reporting solution, using MS Access. It’s far from beautiful, doesn’t have half the features I would like, but it at least gets the basic job done.

Especially with different versions

In reply to Crystal Reports

if you have two programs that use different versions of Crystal they are not compatible and it will change data in your reports.

RAS on NT 4.0

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

What a train wreck!

The worst software I ever used was…APC PowerChute

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

It is the most annoying app I’ve ever used. It eats up 90% to 100% of the CPU when idle and even ocassionally when working on a solution for a client’s request. I finally figured out a way of not having to use APC’s PowerChute, instead using Windows XP’s monitoring programs for backup power.

Java Certificate Expired

In reply to The worst software I ever used was…APC PowerChute

I had an amusingly poor experience with APC. I think they had somehow embedded a java certificate in the software which had expired – stopping the application from working – which is an acceptable response to an expired certificate.
What isn’t quite so impressive is that it also stopped about 10 other services working and locked up explorer. But only after a reboot…
In fact, due to the incredbily strange issues being exhibited by the first server, I probably would have rebuilt it if I hadn’t noticed that the second was doing the same after a reboot…

To be fair – an easy mistake to make – but with an incredibly disruptive impact of system performance…

It wouldn’t have been so bad – but I’m on a mailing list for them – and they didn’t send out any information on it. In fact the info that the critical update to the software needed to be installed or your server would be crippled was still in a tiny corner of the website a month later!

bitten++;

In reply to Java Certificate Expired

http://techrepublic.com.com/5254-6257-0.html?forumID=99&threadID=174732&messageID=1878062&id=1732610

GoldMine Contact Manager

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Byzantine interface, perverse database maintenance, craptastic security, and, without a doubt, hands-down the absolute WORST report building in the history of the universe.

Thank God

In reply to GoldMine Contact Manager

… I was beginning to feel like I was the only person who placed Goldmine on a pedestal as the biggest pile of steaming crap the world has ever seen…

… I suspect most people here haven’t used it or it would have been mentioned far sooner in the list!

No, I agreed earlier that Goldmine bites

In reply to Thank God

so there are at least three of us that hate it!

AOL

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Got it on as a test
Created havoc with everything
Couldnt get rid of it all
AOL Hell

The World’s largest paid for virus

In reply to AOL

You couldn’t have said it better. I’ve worked
PC End user support for the past several years
now and the one thing I dread more than anything
is when there is an AOL problem. The only
semi-decent version they ever produced was AOL
7.0. The only reason why it is better than the
rest is because it crashed a little less
frequently. The main problem is that the AOL
auto-updater won’t let you run an old version
for long. It will auto-update you to the newest
version and screw over your computer.

I’ve seen several computers where the only fix
after an install of AOL was to completely wipe
the system and begin a fresh install.

Application? OS? Both?

In reply to Fill in the blank: The WORST software I ever used was…

Apps: Powerpoint
OSes: Windows any version