I come from the time, where PCs used to have at most 640 kB (yes: kilobytes) of internal memory. Files and programs were stored on 5.25" floppy disks and screens displayed nothing more than a limited character set.

Now, I know that old folks whine about how everything was so much better back in the old days and I consider myself to be not that kind of person. Yet. But I'll make an exception when it comes to office software.

You see, WordPerfect 4.2 wasn't exactly fancy, but it did the job. And it did this job the way I wanted it to. Sure, there was a learning curve. Sure, I had to refer to the manual and look into the Help-function at times. Especially if I want to accomplish things that I didn't use very often.

With version 3.1 Windows the graphical interface established a foothold in the work place. It also laid the ground work for Microsoft's dominating position in office software. Mastodons like WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase IV lost ground and wiz kid Bill took over.

The impact of this didn't become apparent right away. I learned to work with the wysiwyg-principle and said goodbye to the underwater screen which I had become so familiar with. I was (after a little practice) still able to get the job done. I was still in control, or so it felt.

I don't exactly recall with which version, but this all changed as soon as Microsoft had ceased absolute power (ok, ok, I like to exaggerate once in a while). In order to increase sales and pay tribute to the new God (aka Shareholder) they released new versions, which without an exception would contain many more features to make life so much easier for us. Not.

First, the number of features was so overwhelming that I had a hard time working my way through all these menus, sub menus and sub sub menus. Apparently I was not the only one with this complaint, so Microsoft decided to do something about this.

However, in stead of removing or hiding features that most people don't use anyway, they packed Office with fuzzy logic. The idea to automatically hide not frequently used options from the menus wasn't completely bad. It required some extra searching on the few occasions where this functionality was required, but I could live with that.

People are creatures of habit. When I want to collect information I have gathered into a document that is easy to read for me, I copy and paste this information from the various sources into one document and then format it. In practice this means, that I open a new document (containing the formatting styles that I prefer), I select the text (e.g. from a web page), press Ctrl-C, switch to Word, press Alt-E,S (Edit, Paste special) and select Unformatted Text. You try that in Word 2007. I did. It doesn't work that way anymore. So now I am forced to switch to my mouse, click the Start-symbol and then work my way through the menu. Of course, maybe there are other shortcut keys that can be used, or maybe I can tell Word to use the keystrokes I'm so familiar with, but I don't want that! I want to get things done; I don't want to have to search for help (which has not improved either in my opinion). I want things to work.

Not to mentions Word's annoying feature to change capitals into small characters and vice versa without me asking for it. I know what I am typing and I know why I am typing it the way I am! Don't f*cking correct me, I'm a grown up person.

And graphics. Inserting and formatting graphics is plain hell. Figures will be relocated, become unfindable and it will prove to be absolutely impossible to place them where you want them.

If you ask me, things were a lot better in the old days...