PTRSafe Question? 32/64 bit office question (1 Viewer)

[CHAOSinACT]

This sounds very familiar to me. When Microsoft introduced Win95/NT most admins wanted to stay away from the new 32-bit apps and chanted homilies to the old 16-bit versions (which were often UAE-infested crap). That included the 4.x versions of the Office (For a while it looked like the 16-bit WPO was going to make a comeback). Any little glitch in the news of a 32-bit issue was deemed a doomsday portent. As soon as the tests were run for the legacy software under the new 32-bit platform and they turned positive, the word was out that the 32-bit versions were dangerous and "evil" and convoluted arguments were offered why they should not be touched. In truth, both the 32-bit Office in 1995 and 64-bit Office in 2010 were ahead of their time, and not quite ready for prime time, mostly because of issues of backward compatibility. But the resistance to the new technology is not explained by that. It's human nature to resist change, especially if systems seem to be working relatively well and the occasional kinks are well understood and under control. The admins feel the new techology was developped to mess up their neat, safe little sandboxes.

From what I hear from my friends, the real problems with the 64-bit Office have mostly to do with hardware. Drivers are either not available or don't work reliably. The third-party Wintel hangons do not particularly feel motivated to support the new office when 99% of their business is in the support of the 32-bit platform. Also, the relatively slow spread of the new technologies is partly Micosoft's own doing because of its insistence that everything must be backward compatible to the times when Bill Gates was crashing in the office and taking shower once a week. Sometimes that policy leads to near-disasters (like Vista). But mostly it maintains the climate of too little incentive to move up. The old stuff still works. Hell, even on this Board a lot of people still stick to Access 2003. It works - the new versions are just hyped-up, overblown, cranky, futile attempts to improve on the perfect small database.

Best,
Jiri

True but the difference between saying I'll stay on 2003 to keep things the same, and say "bloody hell, none of the major software companies are supporting this!!!"

I'm happy to go to 64 bit when basic things work. I tried to ignore it, but the people at MYOB have no plans, ever, to make the email linkage work with 64 bit office.

They literally told us to go to 32 bit office or go back to manual mail for pay slips.

As long as that's the experience on 64 bit office, it really is more trouble than it's worth. We actually had it installed on all machines and I had to remove it. That's not a hassle I would have undertaken lightly. It was plain that using meant a loss of services, and serious ones. When thats fixed we can look at it again....but none of the problems are even scheduled to be fixed, ever.