Microsoft's WORST product?

[MartyCR]

It would be interesting to take a vote on the worst product which Microsoft currently produce.

Everyone gets a maximum of 3 votes ... I'll regularly add up the cumulative results and post them here

My clear leader for worst is JIGSAW for just about everything you could think of. It's slow, it crashes, it often takes two or three close-and-restarts to get it running, it just disappears frequently, it's VERY heavy on the touchpad.

A close second is OUTLOOK EXPRESS, which has a worthless search facility, appallingly poor documentation, non-intuitive processes (such as two separate address books and a weird folder structure), and lack of some important user functions.

 

[Tim Locke]

Powerpoint had caused more boredom and unhappiness that any other MS product I can think of. But of course people who have never been in an office environment wouldn't see that.

 

[StevenG]

For me "Edge" yes and before everybody blah blah and knocks me down, Edge is a temperamental and definitely not the be all and end all that MS make it out to be! Ok, its not a hopeless case but and by gee it crashes allot and it annoys the hell out of me, when it freezes and just becomes completely useless! Has anyone had these experiences?

 

[davehc]

"Has anyone had these experiences? " No

 

[Wolfie]

Never had a problem with Edge or Powerpoint myself, the snipping tool could use an upgrade though!.

 

[BigFeet]

Games for Windows Live was a nightmare.

 

[davehc]

Never had a problem with Edge or Powerpoint myself, the snipping tool could use an upgrade though!.

The snipping tool is planned redundancy. It has been replaced by Snip and sketch. If you set it up, it can be used by simply clicking the prtscr key which can be activated through the windows settings

 

[Wolfie]

Snip and sketch

Thanks Dave, I had not heard of it before!.

 

[clifford_cooley]

I've found better third party software for nearly everything Microsoft outside MS Office. That basically makes practically all Microsoft's software equally deserving of a bad vote. Word and Excel are polished. Powerpoint could use some polishing. I've no experience with the rest of Office's bundled applications. Access seems to be polished, but I could never make heads or tails out of it.

Software I personally found need in replacing:
MS Paint --> Paint.NET (what a joke anything is literally better than MS Paint)
File Explorer --> Total Commander / Double Commander (I've hated Explorer since Win95)
Disk Cleanup --> CCleaner (I can however understand why Disk cleanup doesn't clean anything non-MS)
Disk Management --> MiniTools Partition Wizard (Disk Management lacks needed features)
Windows Media Player --> older version Media Player Classic (As feature rich as WMP, it also seems to lack features found in MPC)
IE and Edge --> Opera --> Firefox (not gonna use chromium ever, if I have a choice)
Windows Live Mail --> Thunderbird (WLM lost support after an update to Outlook.com)
Start Menu --> Open Shell [AKA: Classic Shell] (Don't get me started on Windows 8 nightmare)

MS Office --> Keeping my trigger finger on LibreOffice. I currently feel as if it is inevitable.

I'd replace Windows Update in a heartbeat, if I had the chance. All else in my opinion is bloat that I would likely never use. That includes networking which doesn't work for me. I have no desire to use login credentials on my own personal machine. Logins are not necessary to link machines together, but yet for some BS reason they are now required.

Microsoft is no longer trying to make software I want to use. That even includes MS Office. I'm not migrating to cloud based software or monthly services.

TLDR: I can't pick just three!

 

[davehc]

A close second is OUTLOOK EXPRESS, which has a worthless search facility, appallingly poor documentation, non-intuitive processes (such as two separate address books and a weird folder structure), and lack of some important user functions.

Maybe not fair to include a long redundant program?
I am not a great fan of MS, so don’t misjudge me, but I would imagine that the intention was to produce a desktop OS, with all the basicsvto get on with very basic office work, without the need, in the initial stages, to install third party softwae. Perhaps the replies woul be filtered into built in spps and downloaded ( Microsoft) software

I am not a great letter writer these days. Worpad has sufficient facilities for me. I use Paint for basic editting, but do have something a little more sophisticated. Ditto writing. I do have Office 2016. I cannot imagine anything I would wish to do that is not in there. It does, of course, come with the dedktop Outook. I confess that it may be personal choice, but, I have tried just about all of the desktop proggies, Outlook, with its very essential (for me!) fly out calendar, beats them all - no real contest!

Together with the new “storage” option in the settings, I manually clean my OS, so have no argument there
Edge is my (trouble free) dEfault

 

[Bighorn]

Every program I regularly use has something different or a bit better than other similar program, i.e. WordPerfect is better for me with labels and envelopes than Word. I have LibreOffice installed along with Lotus SmartSuite 9.8 [with WordPro formerly AmiPro]. I've used OpenOffice but not yet the Apache version.

As for Windows, I've been with it since Win3.1/3.11/WFW3.11 on MS-DOS 5 through 6.22, always something different. Win95 was the start of merging Disk Operating System with the GUI/Graphical User Interface [also known as WYSIWYG/What You See Is What You Get]. The only versions since Win95 I've never actually owned were WinME/Millenium Edition and Win Vista. I have had WinNT 3.51 to WinNT 4 to Win2000. Windows ME was kind of rushed to production after Win2000 to give consumers a program similar to Win2000. WinME and WinVista seemed to be best on OEM computers rather than Custom or Upgrades.

Win3.x had it's File Manager which became Win95's Windows Explorer which later became File Explorer.

 

[Trouble]

Can't think of a single MS product that I use that I would classify as "worst".
As a simple consumer / end user, I'm comfortable with the job that they do.

Admittedly it's been a very long time since I've dabbled in any of their more sophisticated Enterprise type products (Exchange, SQL, Endpoint Security, Azure Active Directory, etc.,).

I would agree will Cliff....
I'm personally reluctant to adopted or endorse their emphasis on cloud based products, but....
That's just my age related tendency to want to keep "my stuff" on hand and at hand and my reluctance to trust any third party to keep it safe, secure and backed up.

 

[AdrianG001]

It would be interesting to take a vote on the worst product which Microsoft currently produce.

Everyone gets a maximum of 3 votes ... I'll regularly add up the cumulative results and post them here

My clear leader for worst is JIGSAW for just about everything you could think of. It's slow, it crashes, it often takes two or three close-and-restarts to get it running, it just disappears frequently, it's VERY heavy on the touchpad.

A close second is OUTLOOK EXPRESS, which has a worthless search facility, appallingly poor documentation, non-intuitive processes (such as two separate address books and a weird folder structure), and lack of some important user functions.

I wasn’t so much released as thrown at you as it was bundled with Windows. Netmeeting! The early version or MSN Messenger/Skype, it had remote desktop with no security which meant you could change someone’s registry and files with no password once you were connected, so dangerous!

 

[Tim Locke]

I can't think of a 'worst' MS product but in terms of general grief then Powerpoint must be close to the nastiest product ever
invented in terms of the number of hours of boredom watching people read their slides! People who have never been cubicle warriors won't understand.

 

[Bighorn]

Yep, it can be boring but still a pretty good product for providing information to the "masses" such as training seminars and church services. Other office-type suites have a similar program such as WordPerfect, LibreOffice, Lotus SmartSuite [still works on Win10], etc.

 

[MrEd]

The Office suite of application programs are incredibly powerful if you’ve had the proper training and ongoing exposure. I used to use Access and it was amazing. Excel in the hands of an expert can “sing” too. Death by PowerPoint had its uses.... The OS systems from early days all did their job too (even the Model T was loved once).
So, no complaints from me as the average down-the-middle user, providing someone else is paying for the software!

 

[davehc]

So, no complaints from me as the average down-the-middle user, providing someone else is paying for the software!

LOl. Absolutely

 

[bassfisher6522]

For me "Edge" yes and before everybody blah blah and knocks me down, Edge is a temperamental and definitely not the be all and end all

I couldn't agree more....BUT.....The New Edge Chromium is pretty freaking good. I can customize it at will just like I do with Chrome. There's still a few tweaks it needed. I use it daily. My default browser is still Chrome.

New Edge Chromium