How is everyone coping in the software world of today?
I am beyond frustrated.

The buzz for a few years has been SaaS which is (Software as a service)
Where instead of buying software we now pay for it monthly and it works out more expensive.

I actually miss the days where I could buy a license of MS Office and use it for 6 years.
This has all been compounded with the rise of AI.

SaaS with business has become like Netflix I think.
When Netflix started it had all the content and it made perfect sense, now Disney took their content and is doing it themselves and other companies are doing the same.
So instead of one package with everything you are fractured into so many different platforms to get the content you want that it makes it hard to justify.


Software has become the same where there are so many platforms to use and they only do one thing well.
This is something that I am sure Gyro LC gets in his line of work.
Sidenote: I do want to ask you mate... What is going on at these compaines.
There are platforms I pay a lot of money for and their updates on releases is so painfully slow and always not what people are 
Makes me get Elon gutting Twitter for almost no change in functionality.


Of all my software packages and as much as they shit me, my Microsoft 365 is the rock solid base of my company, I love the Onedrive and Sharepoint though again every update is fractured and pointless.
Todoist  - I cannot speak highly enough of this as a Todo task managing app, if anyone was interested I could explain in my productivity thread how it helps me.

Monday.com this one is a huge disappointment at the moment, one of the laziest things I have seen software developers do lately is open up their API and instead of creating features they allow other people to sell services on their marketplace that they collect revenue for.
It means that whatever the subscription price is, that you end up paying three times that for functionality that should come in the box.
I am very close to dumping it and creating my own system from scratch even though I don't have the time.

Copilot costs me $500 a year and as it is at the moment is almost a total waste.

Also on the integration front, I don't know how many of you are power users of software, but again I am tired of companies who rather than integrating things properly are just letting people pay Zapier or Make for the same fuctionality.

I also have the full Adobe suite which costs me a lot of money, but is annoying because I don't need to use it a lot, but I need to use most of the programs a little.

Finally our accounting package is antiquated and doesn't have a proper API.


What software are you using in the workplace and home and what do you love/hate.

A special shout out to open source, there are three packages I use like crazy and are completely free, the first one is Node-Red.
The other two are AMAZING and I think every person in this thread would get some benefit out of them, those being Espanse and ShareX. I don't know where you are these days c but I am sure you would like these.

I am still using the ancient Macromedia Fireworks 8, which I never bought the one-time license for anyway (used a keygen), since I was only fourteen when it came out. Yep ... trusty ol' Fireworks. 😂

Was using the similarly anachronistic Open Office until recently, when my antivirus freaked out on it. So I switched to LibreOffice.

Next thing I have to worry about is buying a new PC, because my desktop cannot run Windows 11, and 10 reaches its end of life cycle in less than two weeks. 😎

I probably count as an above average Office user - I run training sessions for my team and always find that people think they know what they are doing but really haven't got the slightest clue. There are so many features in Teams/Sharepoint hidden away that you wouldn't know about unless you specifically go looking.

I do completely agree with you that the rate of updates Microsoft push (I guess to justify the subscription price? not really on my radar as I don't pay) is very annoying. They are constantly renaming and moving things around so any sort of documentation/training video goes out of date very quickly.

Oct 4, 2024 0:15:18 GMT iNCY said:

Software has become the same where there are so many platforms to use and they only do one thing well.
This is something that I am sure Gyro LC gets in his line of work.
Sidenote: I do want to ask you mate... What is going on at these compaines.
There are platforms I pay a lot of money for and their updates on releases is so painfully slow and always not what people are 
Makes me get Elon gutting Twitter for almost no change in functionality.

Software, especially large and complex products, are rarely elegantly constructed. They're conglomerations of parts put together by dozens or hundreds of developers over time. The longer the product has existed the more likely there are hidden dependencies and changing one part could unexpectedly affect something that seems completely unrelated. Like if you got a tattoo and then suddenly an eye stopped working. It sometimes takes a long time to make the code changes and not affect the other parts. Not to mention devs who are experts in certain parts of the software leave the company and the next dev needs time to learn the area.

I've used Copilot at work some, it's ok. Some people at work really like Cursor with Claude. I've been using it at home and it's pretty impressive.

I run my personal life through TickTick. I’ve had it for about 5-6 years now, and got my wife hooked.

A lowkey major tool I used is my password manager, Last Pass.

I use Microsoft Office through work, but I’ve yet to find a good project management tool. Evernote is too expensive, Notion is too complicated, Loop never took off, Monday and Asana are wastes of money.

It’s the most frustrating thing ever.

Oct 4, 2024 1:52:52 GMT KJ said:

I run my personal life through TickTick. I’ve had it for about 5-6 years now, and got my wife hooked.

A lowkey major tool I used is my password manager, Last Pass.

I use Microsoft Office through work, but I’ve yet to find a good project management tool. Evernote is too expensive, Notion is too complicated, Loop never took off, Monday and Asana are wastes of money.

It’s the most frustrating thing ever.

You can try Linear. We use it at work. I don't really care for Notion.

Oct 4, 2024 0:57:01 GMT sting said:

I am still using the ancient Macromedia Fireworks 8, which I never bought the one-time license for anyway (used a keygen), since I was only fourteen when it came out. Yep ... trusty ol' Fireworks. 😂

Was using the similarly anachronistic Open Office until recently, when my antivirus freaked out on it. So I switched to LibreOffice.

Next thing I have to worry about is buying a new PC, because my desktop cannot run Windows 11, and 10 reaches its end of life cycle in less than two weeks. 😎

You might want to use something called VirtualBox.
I do have some software of questionable validity and I run it in a Virtual machine.
I used to use VirtualBox (which is free) but switched to VMWare whcih costs money, but gives me a few extra features I use.
Some of my even legal software is really invasive and conflicts with other software, so I run it in a Virtual Machine.
Which is basically is copy of Windows running separate inside of Windows.

Oct 4, 2024 1:01:26 GMT @admin said:

I probably count as an above average Office user - I run training sessions for my team and always find that people think they know what they are doing but really haven't got the slightest clue. There are so many features in Teams/Sharepoint hidden away that you wouldn't know about unless you specifically go looking.

I do completely agree with you that the rate of updates Microsoft push (I guess to justify the subscription price? not really on my radar as I don't pay) is very annoying. They are constantly renaming and moving things around so any sort of documentation/training video goes out of date very quickly.

This must make admin people crazy, I was trying to do some "basic" things with Copilot and the help docs took me from Sharepoint, to admin, to Azure settings, to Power Automate.

Even though they try to make it look like one platform it really isn't.
Like Sharepoint and Onedrive they talk to each other, but not properly.

Oct 4, 2024 1:52:20 GMT Gyro LC said:

Oct 4, 2024 0:15:18 GMT iNCY said:

Software has become the same where there are so many platforms to use and they only do one thing well.
This is something that I am sure Gyro LC gets in his line of work.
Sidenote: I do want to ask you mate... What is going on at these compaines.
There are platforms I pay a lot of money for and their updates on releases is so painfully slow and always not what people are 
Makes me get Elon gutting Twitter for almost no change in functionality.

Software, especially large and complex products, are rarely elegantly constructed. They're conglomerations of parts put together by dozens or hundreds of developers over time. The longer the product has existed the more likely there are hidden dependencies and changing one part could unexpectedly affect something that seems completely unrelated. Like if you got a tattoo and then suddenly an eye stopped working. It sometimes takes a long time to make the code changes and not affect the other parts. Not to mention devs who are experts in certain parts of the software leave the company and the next dev needs time to learn the area.

I've used Copilot at work some, it's ok. Some people at work really like Cursor with Claude. I've been using it at home and it's pretty impressive.

I have tried Claude, I think it is more tailored to programmers and it works okay.
Copilot is so hit and miss, when it works like this I will be happy.

Folder X contains all my spare part quotations, Folder Y contains all my invoices please tell me for the last three months the total value of our Quotations and Invoices.
It also doesn't remember enough, you should be able to teach it your quote formats and how to find the totals etc.
Promises so much and delivers so little.

Oct 4, 2024 1:52:52 GMT KJ said:

I run my personal life through TickTick. I’ve had it for about 5-6 years now, and got my wife hooked.

A lowkey major tool I used is my password manager, Last Pass.

I use Microsoft Office through work, but I’ve yet to find a good project management tool. Evernote is too expensive, Notion is too complicated, Loop never took off, Monday and Asana are wastes of money.

It’s the most frustrating thing ever.

Oct 4, 2024 1:54:00 GMT Gyro LC said:

Oct 4, 2024 1:52:52 GMT KJ said:

I run my personal life through TickTick. I’ve had it for about 5-6 years now, and got my wife hooked.

A lowkey major tool I used is my password manager, Last Pass.

I use Microsoft Office through work, but I’ve yet to find a good project management tool. Evernote is too expensive, Notion is too complicated, Loop never took off, Monday and Asana are wastes of money.

It’s the most frustrating thing ever.

You can try Linear. We use it at work. I don't really care for Notion.

@admin, & Gyro LC, This is what I am using Monday.com for, I have tried EVERY single application in the space.
The one that promises the most is ClickUp but it is buggy as hell and everytime they push an update something breaks.
It has inbuilt Gantt charts.

My suppliers and customers seem to be 50/50 between Monday and Smartsheets (The latter might work for you @admin,)
I haven't tried Linear though.

I do see that if Microsoft gets their shit together that Loop will be the application that eventually kills everyone in this space.
Microsoft have MS Project and Excel and Outlook, it is crazy that platforms like Asana, Monday, ClickUp etc haven't had one of themselves purchased and integrated into the Microsoft suite.

I don’t think they’ll ever get Loop in order. It was initially a me too Notion product, but with the PMS space declining the last few years, I’m not sure the opportunity is still there.