Technology Bites
No, I don’t mean “bytes” – I mean that sometimes those programs that are designed to make life easier do nothing more than irritate, annoy, and make life living hell.

I’m talking Microsoft. As you may recall, last week’s episode had me trying in vain to take a Word document full of addresses (seven pages worth) and attempting to merge them all into labels. Let me just say from the outset – don’t try this at home. You can’t do it. I remember doing it one time in my life, but damn if I can remember how. It was one of those “a ha!” moments that I thought I’d never forget. I forgot. The handy Wizard gave me no help. Instead, I got stuck in the Step 1 through Step 6 loop, with no explanation anywhere that I needed to create delimiters, separate documents in separate applications, etc.

Here’s why I think Microsoft fails its customer base – those who do the programming do not use the end products. Oh sure, they do their best to consider every possible situation, but they come up short on a number of functions. While I give Microsoft credit for fixing these glitches in the upgrades, there always seems to be something not quite right. If I’m trying 30 minutes later, my time has been wasted. My husband, who has more trouble taking no for an answer, tried for 2 1/2 hours only to come back to the same conclusion.

What are your technology horror stories? If you were to have the ear of the software manufacturers, what suggestions would you have for them? What are your requirements and needs that aren’t being met?