Who wants to hear about my vendetta with Word? TOO BAD WE’RE DOING IT ANYWAY.
So I started writing in…let’s see… 2003? I was 11. I loved to read, and one day I pulled up a Word document and started to type. The rest is very dull writing history, but the important bit is that by the time I graduated high school, I had THOUSANDS of pages of Word documents saved onto my computer. I never throw anything away, especially if it’s digital.
My works went with me to college. I transferred them from laptop to laptop. But then, there came Windows 8. The creepy uncle of operating systems. I needed a new laptop, and they didn’t make PCs with any other OS, and I wasn’t footing the bill. So I made it work. I reformatted the hell out of that thing until it worked exactly how I wanted. But Windows 8 still gave me more hell than Vista ever did. (If you’re not a techy person, sorry about all this).
So when Windows 10 came out, for free, I immediately wanted to swap over. I heard everyone else had some success with it so why not? My C drive wasn’t going anywhere. So I updated.
And when I rebooted my laptop, EVERYTHING WAS GONE.
The programs and stuff were NBD. I pirated them all and could pirate them again. But Word was gone. And all my files. All my pictures. ALL MY BOOKS. If I had amassed thousands of pages up until 2010, imagine how many I had in 2015. I’d tripled my collection of written works and completed three separate novels, all of it saved on my computer.
Naturally I was devastated, and the first thing I did was call Windows Support and shriek in a high-pitched harpy voice at a customer service rep. But I was convinced that all of that was gone forever. That this would be a Jace Wayland moment of I cried all night, and then I never cried again. I was out of my damn mind with grief. I only posted a small fraction of my works online, and a lot of them had been taken down to avoid copyright/publishing issues.
I did end up getting it back. My computer rebooted with the old OS loaded and all the data intact. But I had trust issues. I was fed up with half-assed operating systems and poor customer service. Windows had lost my trust forever.
So I switched to a Mac. And let me tell you, as a lifelong PC fan, avid gamer, and skilled virus remover, I was reluctant. I’d always hated using the school Macs, and nothing ever worked right. But my boyfriend (now my husband) swore by it, so I tried it. I got a Macbook Pro, the biggest one I could find (if I want a tiny screen I can use my phone, laptops are meant to replace desktop computers and I stand by this) refurbished, from the Apple site, for about $850.
LIFECHANGING. A WHOLE NEW WOOOOORRRLLLDDDD~
But it turned out that my PC was not my biggest problem. It was Word. I’d been struggling with it for the past decade and a half and the struggles continued even after pirating Office for my new laptop. (Pirating is basically just as easy on a Mac btw, if anyone was wondering. Some games just won’t work is all). My main problem? Word introduced this feature called Autosave at some point during my high school years, and it kept insisting that this feature still existed. But every time anything happened ever, including my computer just hibernating, Word would crash and close itself and even though I told it to autosave EVERY TWO MINUTES, it wouldn’t save my work. Often it wouldn’t save my work even if I manually saved it. And when I tried to save, it would often crash completely. I lost SO MUCH WORK THAT WAY. I like to think it was for the best but damn what a waste of hours of my life.
This story ends like many others: I had a problem that I had dealt with for decades by beating my head against the wall, and then my boyfriend made a suggestion that fixed it in two seconds. This happens SO OFTEN. I like to think I do the same for him, but I honestly don’t know – he just has a brain like an encyclopedia and he remembers everything he’s ever read on the internet. This time, the suggestion was to use Google Docs. I was hesitant, but I gave it a shot – and lo and behold, Google Docs is basically exactly the same as Word. I’m about as proficient in Word as anybody can be, so I did notice some differences, and Word does do some things better. But as far as simple usability? Google Docs all the way. It saves every two seconds or so, it is easily sharable, it updates in real time, it has the same formatting tools (more or less) as Word, and it just WORKS. Much like the Mac, it might not have as many options, but it works seamlessly every time.
I can’t recommend Macs to everyone because not everyone can afford them. But I do recommend Google Docs to EVERYBODY. Seriously, don’t bother with anything Microsoft ever again. Playstation, Google Docs, and Macs FTW.
*Note: this post is not in any way sponsored by Apple, Google, or Sony. God, I wish.)
Thanks for listening to me ramble (if you got this far, which if you didn’t, I get it).
~CRRH