Dodgy advertising

My wife’s Toshiba laptop is nearly two decades old and getting very slow. She is a technophobe, and not keen on trying anything new. She has got used to using Microsoft Office Word & Excel. I looked round on Amazon and thought I would get her a Jumper EZbook X3, as this seemed to have a reasonable spec at a reasonable price, and furthermore came with Microsoft 365. However, when I came to set it up, I discovered that came with only meant that it was partially installed, and that it required a further payment of over £50 per year for an unlocking key. I returned it immediately, of course. I presume that this is a scam intended to catch a certain class of complaisant person. I am ignorant of advertising law, but I would have thought that this was sailing very close to the shore of what is illegal; almost like describing two blocks of wood as a flycatcher.
What I would like to do is wean her off Microsoft. My experiences with Raspbian and Manjaro suggest that if she is not told that the OS is not Microsoft she probably would not notice the difference. It is no good me just recommending something, because she knows from our fifty years together that I am a hopeless nerd, occasionally useful, but too enthusiastic about things that she does not want to know. All advice gratefully received.

Microsoft 365. However, when I came to set it up, I discovered that came with only meant that it was partially installed, and that it required a further payment of over £50 per year for an unlocking key. I returned it immediately, of course. I presume that this is a scam intended to catch a certain class of complaisant person.

“Software as a Service” is the usual phrase.

Taking money for the same thing, again and again and again… is the reality.

I don’t know what experience people round here have, but I do recall (not so Grumpy) Dave Symes speaking of providing various Windows and RO based offerings for his other half. I think he’s also visited the shores of Linux land.

As I recall he’s more frequently in the comp.sys.acorn environs. Of course in these times he could be permanently unavailable. I do hope not.

I presume that this is a scam intended to catch a certain class of complaisant person.

Sigh. It’s fashionable to knock MS, but this is just lazy.

Office 365 isn’t really about the software on the PC. Well, it is, to some extent¹, but your £59/year covers access to the web-based versions of the apps² and to at least 1TB of OneDrive storage in the Cloud. For a lot of people, that OneDrive access alone will sort the off-site backup requirement in a way that should meet the basic security questions³ and is cheaper than the base offerings from rivals like DropBox with more integrated functionality.

The reality in this new world of remote working is that many people are using Office 365 in one form or another, and it works very well.

¹ Inasmuch as you’re paying for ongoing support and updates to Office, which isn’t so far removed from paying annually for Impression X when you think about it.

² Which are surprisingly usable in a decent browser.

³ The service is marketed squarely at businesses who will be looking at this kind of thing with interest.

and that it required a further payment of over £50 per year for an unlocking key […] I presume that this is a scam

It’s not a scam, it’s an evolution. As Steve says, it is called “Software as a Service”, but what it essentially boils down to is that selling you a product that you use and job done does not make the company money. After all, look how long people held on to XP, and look at the slimy tactics they employed to push people to Windows 10 even though it was ‘free’.

So the new way is to produce a product where the initial outlay is less, the £50 as you mention, but the overall outlay is likely to be far higher as it is not £50, but £50 per year.
This keeps the corporate types wined and dined, the shareholders happy, and your wallet a little lighter.

The insidious thing is that these days you don’t own your hardware, and now you don’t own your software either; and yet if anything goes wrong with either, oh well, it’s your problem…

if she is not told that the OS is not Microsoft she probably would not notice the difference.

Trust me, she’ll notice. She might not be able to tell you why exactly, but certain things long ago relegated to muscle memory will simply behave in a different way.

It’s things like this that drive people spackoid when the UI gets messed with for the sake of messing with it (as is all too common these days).

All advice gratefully received.

I think the first question is to analyse what she actually does with the software. Is it just for writing the occasional letter? Does it need to be compatible with files received by email? Are there any character set peculiarities (does she write in Lithuanian or Hebrew, for example)? Is she using Excel as a spreadsheet (yes!) or a database (oh god no!)? Is it for home accounts or something more involved?

Think about how she uses the software, that will help narrow it down.
But most important of all, given that she’s a technophobe, whatever you suggest will have to be something that you understand, because congratulations, you’ve just been promoted to primary tech support. ;-)

The service is marketed squarely at businesses who will be looking at this kind of thing with interest.

Ours has. They’re suprisingly unaware when I mention that Microsoft is an American company so there are automatically GDPR issues.

Yes, I’m aware that Microsoft refused to hand over data stored in Ireland on the behest of a minor ranking American district judge who clearly doesn’t give a crap about the legal systems of other sovereign countries… but you can’t help but wonder if what happens in public and what happens in private are the same thing. It would take some serious balls to annoy Uncle Sam.
But, that aside, the fact that the American government thinks it has the right to ask American companies for information stored anywhere in the world does make a mockery of GDPR. That’s probably why the most recent farcical attempt at providing “privacy” (in scare quotes) for Europeans has just recently been torn down as the farce that it clearly was.

Oh well, it won’t be your problem in two months and two weeks. You’ll just have to bend over when told to. :-/

They’re suprisingly unaware when I mention that Microsoft is an American company so there are automatically GDPR issues.

Possibly because they wouldn’t be dealing with the American branch of Microsoft. There’s a reason why Cloud service companies tend to have EU businesses using an arms-length (in this context) EU version of the service with EU datacentres. Without that, such offerings wouldn’t be viable for any EU-based organisation who had read the rules.

Oh well, it won’t be your problem in two months and two weeks.

Indeed. That’s why Google are updating UK customers with details of their new Ts & Cs… Those of you with a GMail account might wish to consider the implications… :-)

It’s worth noting that Office 2019 is still a non-cloud thing, and currently retails at £120.

The thing here is that many people want the Cloud offering. Accessing your documents when away from home is useful. Having your files backed up on the Cloud is useful. With a family package, having your relatives get access to the things that you want to share is useful.

The “RISC OS World” really is vastly different from the rest of the world out there. Outside of our closed box, I rarely encounter anyone who isn’t using Cloud email¹, or isn’t storing their office² documents in a Cloud service so that they’re backed up and easy to share.

Email is also dying for list-type discussions, in favour of Cloud messaging services.

These services offer useful functionality, and work. That’s why they’re becoming normal.

¹ Outside of family, I can think of one person off-hand.

² Uncapitalised, deliberately.

After all, look how long people held on to XP

Why past tense? It just works.

I rarely encounter anyone who isn’t using Cloud email.

Add my name to your encounters.
Cloud email is yet another example of companies collecting our data. As with Google, etc we are the product, not the customer.

I rarely encounter anyone who isn’t using Cloud email.

Add my name to your encounters.

Shall we do that once more, without selective, context-changing snippage?

Outside of our closed box, I rarely encounter anyone who isn’t using Cloud email.

The RISC OS world seems to be an archaic bubble. We soldier on with technology from the 1990s while the rest of the world moves on, then complain that we’re being left behind… :-)

PS. I should probably note that I don’t use Cloud email (mostly). My email address is unusual enough (through not ending in “hotmail”, “gmail”, “yahoo”, “office” or whatever) that people comment on it.

Thanks to all for your explanations. But we are not a business, and we don’t want the Cloud as our broadband often goes down. My wife uses Windows XL to print out tennis rosters and to keep a database of her silversmithing work, but £50 a year seems a bit steep for that. Even without the lockdown, we do not exactly move around. I am afraid we are just a very minor backwater, anxious not to be drawn into the current that disappears over that frightful precipice downstream. That says it all, maybe.

Possibly because they wouldn’t be dealing with the American branch of Microsoft.

Debatable. The US Govt approach currently seems to be “if you have a presence in our country, it’s fair game”. That’s why the EU court keeps tossing cookies in the direction of Max Schrems and not the likes of Facebook. https://noyb.eu/en/cjeu

Without that, such offerings wouldn’t be viable for any EU-based organisation who had read the rules.

I do wonder why we’re so beholden to American megacorps. People want to communicate with each other. That’s been obvious since the advent of the telephone. So why isn’t there a pan-EU Facebook-like service that does exactly that without the corruption and bollocks?

Accessing your documents when away from home is useful. Having your files backed up on the Cloud is useful.

Uhh……. why are you paying £50/year or £120 up front for something you can do with Google? I use Google Docs for writing stuff these days, as I can access it on any phone/tablet/(decent)browser. The files are stored in Google Drive, and back when I used to use the iPad Mini it was ironically the fastest way to get stuff to the iPad (thanks to Apple not supporting the Bluetooth file transfer like everybody else). There’s also a spreadsheet and some other stuff, but I don’t have a need for those.

Outside of our closed box, I rarely encounter anyone who isn’t using Cloud email

Define cloud email. One could say that the heyrick.eu email is “cloud” because I use IMAP rather than POP3 so the mail remains on the server.

The thing is, back in the old days when people had one computer, downloading mail to it wasn’t a problem.
Last year, when mom was alive, I had three devices regularly checking my email (iPad, tablet, phone). Any one of them downloading would mess up anything else, so they all use IMAP so they can all co-exist.
For a while mom would look at emails sent to me that were not of a personal nature to let me know if something happened that she thought I’d be interested in (like a parcel being sent). I had to tell her to stop, not because of privacy, but simply because her reading it on the iPad marked the message as read on everything else, so I’d not see it on my phone as it wouldn’t be highlighted as an unread message.

Or do you mean cloud more specifically as the likes of GMail?

I could fire up a POP3 and retrieve all of my messages and remove them from the server. I just choose not to, as it makes some things work better (like searching back through message history; my phone can pull old messages from the server and search them too).
Does RISC OS support IMAP/TLS? Genuine question, as the last I ever did email on RISC OS it was using Pluto and POPstar.

Email is also dying for list-type discussions, in favour of Cloud messaging services.

Yes. Sadly more and more of the world is going to walled gardens. Don’t bother inviting me to Telegraph (Telegram? I forget), or Facebook Messenger. I’m not particularly interested in something that can’t be used in “any old browser”.

These services offer useful functionality, and work.

Of course. You can’t collect and collate, fold, and staple people’s “private” communications using a service that doesn’t work.

Though, one of the risks of using and depending entirely on “the cloud” is that it implicitly depends upon two things. That the service is always available, and that you have active and working communications.

that people comment on it.

Mine too. It seems loads of people didn’t know that “.eu” is a thing.

Why past tense? It just works.

I use it too. On a box that rarely runs a browser these days as pretty much any useful support for it ended ages ago so one can’t rely on modern browsers or antivirus or what-have-you.

Yes, it “just works” in the same way that RISC OS 3.70 “just works”…

My wife uses Windows XL to print out tennis rosters and to keep a database of her silversmithing work,

So something to print out charts and some sort of database… uh… can’t RISC OS do that?

but £50 a year seems a bit steep for that.

You do realise that you can still buy good-ol’-fashioned uncloudy Office 2019 for £120, as I noted here?

we don’t want the Cloud as our broadband often goes down.

It’s quite possible to use Office 365 without continuous access to the server. It includes a copy of the disc-based applications as well, which need to confirm their licencing occasionally (it’s happy to run for weeks with just a warning that it can’t verify your credentials).

Off-site backup doesn’t need 24/7 access.

My wife uses Windows XL to print out tennis rosters and to keep a database of her silversmithing work,

If that’s tennis rosters for a club and contains people’s names, maybe keep the XP machine off the internet? Or at least read up on the data-security aspects of holding other people’s data on XP.

Or do you mean cloud more specifically as the likes of GMail?

I mean precisely that. For the vast majority of people these days, “email” is GMail, Office.com in its various guises, or Yahoo!.

One could say that the heyrick.eu email is “cloud” because I use IMAP rather than POP3 so the mail remains on the server.

Server? You what? Again, outside of the “RISC OS box” (before Bryan comments), very few people use mail client software these days, unless you count the GMail app that’s pre-configured on your phone to access the account that you registered Android to. Email is something that you access in a browser, isn’t it?

Does RISC OS support IMAP/TLS?

In theory, yes. POP3/TLS is supported by Hermes.

M-Pro online allegedly does IMAP, but I’ve never been able to get it to so much as ask my IMAP server here for a list of folders — despite every other client I’ve tried (including M-Pro for Linux) having no problems. It will read messages in the inbox, but when I ask for a list of folders to subscribe to, the server just watches the tumbleweed blow past.

unless you count the GMail app

Yuck. That mail paradigm is so weird I configured my regular email client to access GMail so I can ignore the GMail app.

Email is something that you access in a browser, isn’t it?

Oh for the love of God NO.

Both iOS and Android have email clients that are far better than anything I’ve seen on a browser. I use those. They periodically check my mailboxes and alert me to new messages. Something else a browser cannot do.

[iOS – built in; Android phone – built in; Android tablet – K9Mail]

Really, a browser isn’t a one-size spanner that fits all bolts.

But most important of all, given that she’s a technophobe, whatever you suggest will have to be something that you understand, because congratulations, you’ve just been promoted to primary tech support. ;-)

I feel I should point out that in the home environment the technogeek is always primary tech support.
When the significant other is running a business the “home” environment stretches its boundaries.
I do get a certain amount of entertainment/stress relief from dealing with a provider support desk that wants to talk down to you and spout total…

Anyway, to push people back on topic – how many people have arranged a technical solution for their family member that matches Gavin’s requirements?

That question in conjunction with the limited stuff in use that Gavin described does have me wondering whether the software content in the RISC OS Direct setup might actually fit the bill.

He can do a quick test at zero cost by downloading and running the bundle that Peter Howkins put on the RPCEmu site: ‘RISC OS Direct (5.27)’ on RPCEmu on a handy PC. If she likes that then the choice of emulated or real hardware becomes the question.

Security for the package? Run the home network through a Pi-hole setup, better DHCP, better DNS, firewall and advert/tracker filtering.

Could LibreOffice help you? It’s completely free and very compatible with MS Office. I’ve used it occasionally for simple Word and Excel tasks, until I got Office365 installed on my computer, because I’m my wife’s husband, and she got it from her school. LibreOffice is huge, but so is MS Office.

Apart from the fact it’s free, LibreOffice is imho actually better than MS Office – at least in the word processing department, I can’t really speak for the other areas. Compatibility with MS Office isn’t total, but it’s pretty good. (I tend to view it more the other way round: MS Office isn’t totally compatible with LibreOffice…)

Apart from the fact it’s free, LibreOffice is imho actually better than MS Office

The last I knew it didn’t handle Powerpoint presentations. This is something I always regarded as a major positive for LibreOffice. If there was a virus that raged planet-wide and destroyed all Powerpoint code and presentation files I would smile – no more death by Powerpoint.

I might be a heretic (!) but I use gmail from RISC OS with mpro.. actually poping it, keeping mail on server.
I want the luxury to be able to use a real client and at the same time access the emails from every other device.

The last I knew it didn’t handle Powerpoint presentations.

No idea whether it does or not. I also have an intense loathing for powerpoint. I use LO a lot for word processing, and quite a bit for spreadsheets. Nowt else. I can export the WP files as .doc or .docx, which import into MS Office okay, but page breaks can go awry, and occasionally a few other things. But generally I only want to export to .pdf when I’ve finished something, and pdfs are fine.

which import into MS Office okay, but page breaks can go awry,

MSWord does that to its own documents too – it automatically reformats to fit the margins declared by the current printer. Publisher on the other hand doesn’t.

I also have an intense loathing for powerpoint.

It’s certainly mis-used a lot. One of my activities is running DofE expeditions. at the end the participants have to do a presentation in any format they like. Most choose Powerpoint. No problem so far. However most show a series of pictures, with accompanying text on screen, then stand up and read the text to us. At least we can then ask questions and get them to actually talk about the expedition, instead of talking about the pictures.

it automatically reformats to fit the margins declared by the current printer.

Oh, so much this.

It’s why I’ve never considered Word to be a serious program for use. If the printer margins don’t fit the declared document, it should highlight this on screen (like maybe a big red overlay?). It should not take it upon itself to helpfully rejig everything to fit the given margins.

Guy I knew, long ago, had a large ISO9001 quality manual. Written in Word (95? 97?). As he went to print it, he selected the wrong printer by mistake. The older Laser set up for DL envelopes.
Word obliged, leaving him with a travesty of a document.
So he picked the correct printer.
Word obliged again.
Did it fix things? In as much as scaling an image to thumbnail and back would leave you with the original image.
It messed the document horribly (destroyed several tables) to fit the envelope. And then it tried to reformat that mess to fit the bigger paper.

Mom was at work and it was my day off but curiously and suddenly I had to be in Aldershot for an appointment with the DHSS. ;-)

I know Word was pretty bad back then (it had a habit of failing to read its own files). I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a quarter century later it’s still the same old s…….

It’s certainly mis-used a lot.

My boss was not amused when she was giving a presentation using PowerPoint of the handling of chemicals and stuff and I started making sound effects for all the little arrows that would whooeee up the screen and bing snap into place.

then stand up and read the text to us.

Yes, oh, yes.
But it was useful. My hearing of French isn’t as good as my reading of it (I taught myself what I know mostly through 2002 to 2006ish by reading the local paper; so my reading is good and my pronunciation is awful (I see the words in my head)) so I could mostly tune her out and just read the screen.
To then be shocked because I’d read it all and she was still on the second or third bing point halfway down the screen…

It’s a thing we have to do periodically, where we learn such things as “beer makes things wetter than water”. Actually true – water has quite a high surface tension so it doesn’t penetrate well (on a microscopic level). It’s part of why we use detergents, to lower the surface tension for better penetration (the hydrophilic/hydrophobic aspect is the other big reason).
I used to enjoy pointing out the obvious fallacy in the “things with red on the label or red lids are acids, things with blue on the label are base” point, because what Diversey says and what Diversey does aren’t necessarily the same. We used to use a caustic alkaline cleaner (yet another mutation of sodium hydroxide) that had a red lid and label. We don’t use that any more.

That reminds me, it’s been a while since my last “twenty minutes of boredom” so I guess we’ll be due another soon. Yeah, yeah, no drinking the floor cleaner, no mixing acids and alkalines to see what happens, and no sticking your bare hands into industrial strength nitric acid. Got it.

Of course, the things that actually happen (no putting undiluted chemical into an unmarked bucket on a shelf, without a lid, filled nearly to the brim) aren’t part of the presentation. Maybe they figured the employees would have more sense than to do something so utterly stupid? Yeah, about that……

[the girl upon whose head it spilled was lucky to come away with minor chemical burns and her sight intact; I understand the first aider in the next room was the volunteer fireman, so he’d be more clued up on things and better under stress to get her sorted out as quickly as possible]