Author Topic: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?  (Read 12232 times)

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Offline daqq

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #25 on: May 20, 2022, 06:26:09 am »
Microsoft Office, Excel especially. I mean... wow... I recently had to start using it again and... oh dear lord... Single undo stack when multiple sheets are opened, can't have multiple sheets with the same name opened at once, the CSV import simply does not work properly, putting any decent amount of data into a graph will explode the bloody thing*. Microsoft Word somehow manages to lag* on a document with four pages and one picture, but at least the bloody thing is synced with the cloud. Microsoft Teams does the same thing as a host of other programs, but somehow manages to have a 500 MB footprint in the RAM and when you have a call your computer tries to fly away with all the fan activity.

* - on a PC with 16 GB of RAM, i7 processor, very decent recent machine that has no problem with other intensive tasks
« Last Edit: May 20, 2022, 06:28:17 am by daqq »
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Offline david77

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #26 on: May 20, 2022, 07:14:27 am »
Lotus Notes. What a pile of garbage. I don't understand how they ever managed to sell that heap of manure to any corporate customers.

Oh, and SAP. In Germany we call it "Sanduhr Anschau Programm" - "Application for watching the hourglass".
 
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Offline tom66

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #27 on: May 20, 2022, 08:36:46 am »
Linux.

For the price of zero you get what you pay for.   ;D
 
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Offline Daixiwen

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #28 on: May 20, 2022, 09:40:09 am »
We all have a software that we like to hate. What is yours?

At my new job, we use Mentor Xpedition for PCB design...
That's funny, the first thing I thought about when I saw the thread title was Xpedition :D
 

Online wraper

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #29 on: May 20, 2022, 09:56:31 am »
Microsoft Word somehow manages to lag* on a document with four pages and one picture, but at least the bloody thing is synced with the cloud.
Microsoft office often lags when used with mouse which has high polling rate, like 333Hz+ and becomes abysmal with 1000Hz. Also IIRC also has a similar issue when monitor has a high refresh rate  :palm:.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2022, 10:00:59 am by wraper »
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #30 on: May 20, 2022, 06:02:46 pm »

For the price of zero you get what you pay for.   ;D
if i count the hours i wasted on that stuff . they owe me a couple of billion dollars.
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Offline free_electron

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #31 on: May 20, 2022, 06:04:01 pm »
We all have a software that we like to hate. What is yours?

At my new job, we use Mentor Xpedition for PCB design...
That's funny, the first thing I thought about when I saw the thread title was Xpedition :D
it's either tormentor or crapdance
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Offline bd139

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #32 on: May 20, 2022, 07:26:15 pm »

For the price of zero you get what you pay for.   ;D
if i count the hours i wasted on that stuff . they owe me a couple of billion dollars.

I was getting paid a lot of money to waste my time on that stuff  :popcorn:
 
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Offline nctnico

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #33 on: May 20, 2022, 07:36:50 pm »

For the price of zero you get what you pay for.   ;D
if i count the hours i wasted on that stuff . they owe me a couple of billion dollars.

I was getting paid a lot of money to waste my time on that stuff  :popcorn:
I paid for getting proper in-depth training on how to install & operate Linux and made money using that knowledge ever since. The money I paid for learning about Linux was well spend.  8) Just dicking around gets you nowhere.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2022, 07:38:38 pm by nctnico »
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Offline MK14

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #34 on: May 20, 2022, 07:38:39 pm »
Windows 98

Blue Screen Of Death.

Does Bill Gates agree with me?
Watch to find out.


 

Offline Refrigerator

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #35 on: May 20, 2022, 08:24:28 pm »
Windows 98

Blue Screen Of Death.

Does Bill Gates agree with me?
Watch to find out.


Win98 is terrible. I had the misfortune of experiencing it courtesy of some old program i had to run, which was built for Win95.(but it didn't work on win95  |O)
Fortunately Windows milenium edition worked out, and it was quite nice to use actually.
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Offline aduinstat

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #36 on: May 20, 2022, 08:55:59 pm »
AutoCAD. It crashes at least once a day.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #37 on: May 20, 2022, 09:02:16 pm »
What do you hate about them? I like having a text boot process.

I use it all the time and nIve found its been improving in reliability during all the 25 years or so I have been using it.

The desktop could be better for sure..
Linux.

Particularly the boot process and desktop.
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Offline AndyBeez

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #38 on: May 20, 2022, 09:20:26 pm »
I would have to include:

Windows 3.1,95,98 - Nice try, but we were wanting the XP experience.
Windows Me,2000,7,8 - Nice try, but we were wanting XP experience.
Microsoft Office's Access database - The ODBC connector was so secure. NOT
Firefox - Not the original, but after it was updated-updated-updated-updated
Premier video suite - Not one computer in the world had the RAM or CPU to run this
Photoshop - why do people have to get so moist about this bloat turd?
Internet Explorer all versions - Just go and burn in software hell with the entire Seatle developer team!
Microsoft Edge - Now go and join Internet Explorer
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #39 on: May 20, 2022, 09:31:25 pm »
What do you hate about them? I like having a text boot process.

I use it all the time and nIve found its been improving in reliability during all the 25 years or so I have been using it.

The desktop could be better for sure..

Well it's not the text boot process that's the problem. It's the chain of chaos that occurs when it's booting. This is all fine until something goes wonky. Fortunately I only deal with Linux nodes in the cloud these days where resolution involves just nuking the EC2 instance and another one magically appears, but it's a real pain in the old days when you're trying to fix a broken ass mdraid or hosed boot via an ILO or actually have to drive somewhere to unflunk it on a console while systemd (infrastructure level mr clippy levels of insanity) tries to teabag you at the same time. Boot process roughly goes:

EFI -> Grub2 -> three USB monkeys materialise holding a banana in the kernel -> one monkey inserts the banana up its ass -> other monkey looks at it in disgust -> third monkey tuts -> small fight ensues -> eventually a monkeys agree on who is who and falls on the right routine and a wizard pops up -> wizard invokes some magic happens with initrd that only three humans on the planet understand and the monkeys all disappear -> then init magically starts -> invokes satan -> satan starts invoking mini satans which fire up an army of consultants and sell the kernel an enterprise service bus -> the enterprise service bus starts sending and receiving messages instructing mere minion subordinates to do their job -> eventually this evolves into a booted linux system purely by coincidence rather than by design.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2022, 09:37:20 pm by bd139 »
 
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Offline tom66

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #40 on: May 20, 2022, 11:08:01 pm »
Embedded Linux is good fun to play with and if it's used appropriately, it's a nice OS for embedded work.  But, man, it is one hell of a pain to get working on a random platform.  I can see how so many people get stuck at those stages.

There is virtually no support / documentation available for "how to write a device tree" - so you'd better hope your processor manufacturer knows what they're doing with their autoconfig tools.  If you want to modify it then you'd better be prepared to dive into the source and tighten up your Google-Fu, maybe someone had the same issue on a different processor and you can guess what the solution is.
 
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Online NiHaoMike

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #41 on: May 20, 2022, 11:59:05 pm »
The desktop could be better for sure..
Back in the days of Vista, there was some interest in running KDE on Windows to actually get a usable GUI (one that doesn't lag like crazy) back, while still using Windows for the only reason why anyone uses Windows - to use Windows apps. There just weren't enough developers interested to make that happen.
Firefox - Not the original, but after it was updated-updated-updated-updated
Still better than Chrome, but then again there's Chromium which is Chrome without the Google bloat.

It's 2022 and none of the popular browsers has a proper option to intentionally throttle downloads and uploads in order to not slow down other uses of the network. Firefox and Chromium do have a developer menu that can be misused for that.
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Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #42 on: May 21, 2022, 02:24:01 am »
Anything and everything with "Enterprise" in its name.

Those things are not tools, they're like getting a fishing hook through your eyeball, and paying for the privilege.
 
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Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #43 on: May 21, 2022, 02:57:44 am »
I think most software will end up on someone's hate list.  I have several, and there are two generic reasons.

1.  Periodic changes to the user interface.  I'm looking at you Microsoft, Linux and Apple.  You all do it.  Apple is the least guilty, but does it too.

2.  No standardization of common user interface functions.  I use a variety of software for document preparation, image processing, CAD and various other purposes.  All need and provide zoom control.  But is it with the scroll wheel or the +/- buttons, or some combination of the above, a selection from a drop down menu or something else?  All need and provide pan functionality.  But is it dragging with the mouse, or the arrow keys?  Do the arrow keys move the window over the drawing, or move the drawing under the window?  These are just examples.  There are many functions common to most if not all software that are implemented in a a wide variety of ways.

All of the methods have minor pluses and minuses but none is so superior that it is worth the agony of changing habits each time you change task/software.  Maybe the reason so many varieties exist is to patent or copyright and look and feel.  Maybe it is because software weenies can't be bothered to see what already exists and just make up their own stuff.  It drives me crazy.

Perhaps this is something that the EU with its obsession with standards could actually do some good with.
« Last Edit: May 21, 2022, 02:59:59 am by CatalinaWOW »
 
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Offline PKTKS

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #44 on: May 21, 2022, 11:33:10 am »
Linux.

undoubtedly
 
Anything Microsoft

Paul
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #45 on: May 21, 2022, 12:07:08 pm »
Going to be honest here. Microsoft could have actually ended up with a decent platform if they didn’t jump on every bandwagon and have some decent product management. Back in the days of NT4 up to the end of windows XP it was quite a decent bit of kit. Enough to tempt me away from unixy things. I actually got a lot of real work done on time and budget with it.

Annoyingly I just nabbed some contract work to do some .net maintenance so I’m going to have to purchase a windows 10 machine to do the work on. Grr. Had a PC free house for a few months at least…
« Last Edit: May 21, 2022, 12:08:48 pm by bd139 »
 
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Offline rsjsouza

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #46 on: May 21, 2022, 12:44:28 pm »
Going to be honest here. Microsoft could have actually ended up with a decent platform if they didn’t jump on every bandwagon and have some decent product management. Back in the days of NT4 up to the end of windows XP it was quite a decent bit of kit. Enough to tempt me away from unixy things. I actually got a lot of real work done on time and budget with it.
Being a heavy user of SunOS and Solaris in the turn of the century and Linux variants throughout (Fvwm, Xfree, etc.), Windows was an oasis in the GUI department - not only on the OS itself (which I really liked Solaris but it had gobs of kinks) but also Matlab and (tor)Mentor Graphics, which were plainly terrible. Interestingly, quite a few of these GUI kinks could be seen in later OSS projects such as Eclipse.

All in all, anyone wll have a beef to pick with anything used heavily on a day-to-day basis... My current trouble child is MSProject and I dread to go back to Inkscape (which I will have to do in the next month) - trauma caused by heavy suffering a few years ago with its dreadful interface. I hope it got better.
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Offline bd139

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #47 on: May 21, 2022, 12:52:22 pm »
Going to be honest here. Microsoft could have actually ended up with a decent platform if they didn’t jump on every bandwagon and have some decent product management. Back in the days of NT4 up to the end of windows XP it was quite a decent bit of kit. Enough to tempt me away from unixy things. I actually got a lot of real work done on time and budget with it.
Being a heavy user of SunOS and Solaris in the turn of the century and Linux variants throughout (Fvwm, Xfree, etc.), Windows was an oasis in the GUI department - not only on the OS itself (which I really liked Solaris but it had gobs of kinks) but also Matlab and (tor)Mentor Graphics, which were plainly terrible. Interestingly, quite a few of these GUI kinks could be seen in later OSS projects such as Eclipse.

All in all, anyone wll have a beef to pick with anything used heavily on a day-to-day basis... My current trouble child is MSProject and I dread to go back to Inkscape (which I will have to do in the next month) - trauma caused by heavy suffering a few years ago with its dreadful interface. I hope it got better.

Ah yeah screw that. Inkscape, Gimp and Darktable are so good that I bought an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription  :-DD
 

Offline m k

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #48 on: May 21, 2022, 02:43:12 pm »
Toshinden gave blisters.
Advance-Aneng-Appa-AVO-Data Tech-Fluke-General Radio-H. W. Sullivan-Heathkit-HP-Kaise-Kyoritsu-Leeds & Northrup-Mastech-REO-Simpson-Sinclair-Tektronix-Triplett-YFE
(plus lesser brands from the work shop of the world)
 

Offline MrMobodies

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Re: [Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
« Reply #49 on: May 21, 2022, 03:57:49 pm »
Microsoft Office, Excel especially. I mean... wow... I recently had to start using it again and... oh dear lord... Single undo stack when multiple sheets are opened,

I found it was easier to do stuff with Powerpoint 2000/2003 and than Powerpoint 2007/2010 do with the auto snapping when drawing shapes. How about they give the option to leave it alone unless I am missing something. It is rare I use those. I paid for those not a great deal but left with some disappointment.

One of the worst I used was from Acronis in 2018. I was mis sold it. Old Norton Ghost not cloning EFI partitions for it to be workable so I was looking for disc imaging tools that would do it easily and found one that recommended by many reviews over the years like which was Acronis. So I emailed and phoned Acronis listing my demands and was recommended two of their software that would do the things I wanted and was provided the download links to the trial.

They were Acronis True Image and Acronis Backup 12.5

One of them was a server kind or thing where runs as a service, installs a http and sql server and requires me to "sign in" everytime just to use it which is a big nono.

When I installed the second one, it had this stupid tablet looking interface that was bloated had large "tiles" that I found confusing but to use the facilities it needed to be "unlocked" or in other word paid for.



So I paid for it to find it wouldn't 't extract disk images directly to a drive I inserted and I don't mean the one it is running off.

It required me to insert a pendrive for to install a bootable copy, install the drivers to it using some script and that was not what wanted.  A little message appeared just before cloning disk to disk something about it not being bootable defeating the whole purpose but I am not sure if that was the case. As a test I cloned an a hard drive with an EFI partition and the operating system from a laptop all working properly onto another hard disk using this Acronis and when I put it in didn't bootup that even Clonezilla managed to do successfully with a little messing about. Anyway followed from a long argument on the phone with them I got put through to Cleverbridge for a refund and got my money back promptly.

Useless, over decorated and unfit for the purpose crippled by those who think they know the user better than themselves.

Before the refund I was infuriated when I found this:
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/articles/how-to-restore-individual-files/
Quote
Although we generally think of full-image backup software (also known as disk-image backup software) in terms of restoring an entire partition or disk, many restoration jobs don't involve entire disks or partitions. Instead, users need :bullshit: to recover a single file or folder that has been accidentally deleted or corrupted.

What kind of bullshit is that?
Just because some jobs don't involve certain things prevent the user from doing it at all.
Who SAYS they NEED to do it?

Maybe it would have been better if that was communicated in the marketing materials at the time and it should have never been recommended to me.

It was £34.99 but no software like that is worth anything if it is not going to do the very things it is suppose to do especially when being lied to.

With a good look around I found Macrium Reflect Workstation which had a 60 trial unlocked trial, very simple UI and had a good go at it and had no problems copying. No over simplification and dumbing down very intuitive, I can see what I am doing, all the information is there and in the logs and not hidden behind stupid decorative tiles.

I made a mistake at the time with Acronis. I did not think of Trustpilot and I see they have not got a good reputation 167 reviews 82% one star.
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.acronis.com
 


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