I cant stand anything microsoft anymore. Teams, outlook, word, every iteration just makes me more angry.
I got a new job, fully remote, and we use Teams. Not gonna lie, I don’t get the hate. It seems as exactly adequate as WebEx or Zoom. None of them make me cum, none of them make me upset.
What is it about Teams that people hate so much? How does WebEx or Zoom do it any better?
Fully onboard with hating new Outlook though, fuck it sucks. Can’t even browse the global address list, it’s search only.
It uses a fucking inordinate amount of resources to accomplish its task, mostly.
Comparing the amount of noise my laptop’s CPU fans make between the two of them when doing moderately intensive tasks like screen sharing a 4K display, Zoom is measurably worse.
Possibly the one time that Microsoft’s inexplicable inability to make their own software run well on their own OS has somehow not manifested.
Don’t get me wrong, it is still death-by-a-thousand-cuts terrible, but the most current iteration of Teams is not the worst in its field… at this one specific thing.
It has gotten so much better over the years. Which is more testament to how unutterably awful it was at release than how good it is now.
That’s Electron baby!
Several years ago I inadvertently (because I didn’t realize who they were) got in a twitter argument with someone who I seem to recall as the creator of electron about how it was fucking embarrassing how bad electron apps are. At the time I kinda felt bad because he seemed like a decent guy and I let loose but I wonder what the carbon footprint of his little side project is…
I think what started the rant was that back at that time, if you scrolled one page back in a chat, it would display a graphic representing a chat while it loaded the chat. And the fucking software was sitting there using a GB of ram and couldn’t keep 5 min of conversation cached. Just inexcusably bad.
I don’t know who at Microsoft had such a hard-on for electron back then, but it seems to have spread and it’s still nowhere close to the good old windows GUI for resource usage.
Thankfully it has gotten better. Slightly. Still pegs my CPU but I think that’s because I have a shit CPU with integrated gfx
I could see the benefit if they wanted it to work on other systems, but I doubt that’s why they chose it. Someone up high just saw it as the cool new thing and forced it onto projects, even when it didn’t make sense.
Ahem… it’s Edge Webview 2. Which I promise is in no way exactly the same as Electron…
Teams randomly selects the wrong microphone, so either people can’t hear me or they can hear everyone around me too (laptop mic).
How hard can it be to store my microphone preference?
I’m in the same shoes about new job having to use teams and I wildly disagree. It is awful.
The best part of it is the noise cancellation on the microphone in calls seem pretty good and having a chat created for meetings is a good integration. BUT…
- voice quality significantly decreases as soon as it’s more than 2 participants… you can clearly tell the difference as soon as a 3rd member is invited.
- annotating on the screen share is extremely useful in slack (not sure if zoom has it too), not a thing I could find in teams
- the channels Vs chats separation in the UI is just weird
- the chats don’t have threads… that’s such a strong feature to contain conversations. I know the channels kinda serve this purpose but it feels weird to use them and closer to sending an email or posting on a forum than directly talking to someone (with having to write a title and bring presented in 1-2 messages per screen due to the size
Compared to zoom, I guess it’s not a big deal really. I’d prefer zoom but it’s oh well. Compared to slack (which has it’s own set of problems, but still) however it seems like a pile of shit in my opinion.
Teams has live annotations, it’s under accessibility settings.
Are you thinking of live captions?
Annotation is on the sharing toolbar (full screen share only, not a window only share).
Teams is annoying because even when you don’t use it, it prioritizes itself and opens making it take longer to get to the programs I actually need and use. This is only a few seconds on new computers but can be minutes on older ones. First world problem sure but my computer should run how I want it.
I’ve also never been able to get the web version to work there’s no error code it just doesn’t connect. IT doesn’t know and the Microsoft guy just said to use the app, which goes back to the above. If it’s going to be an app then leave it as an app if you have a web version then maybe it should fucking work.
I had to use teams with multiple accounts with multiple organisations. Sometimes my account is added to their organisation, sometimes I used their provided account. Microsoft was going for a one sign in approach and the whole thing just totally failed to account for my situation. It never successfully let me switch accounts, running multiple concurrently certainly never worked.
With one situation the work around was to follow the original organisation invite again, reset my password then proceed with my meeting. I’d do this maybe ten times a day sometimes if I had to bounce between different companies.
And all controls are basic as fuck. It’s a business tool that thinks its target market is my grandma. All controls were apple-ified. I’d get a long error code and I couldn’t select it to copy and paste it, and if I clicked off the window the notification displaying the error code would go away, so i’d have to print screen the error code, paste out somewhere, and then type it out manually into Google to try and diagnose. This was a solved problem 30 years ago. Why are we going backwards?
Anyway, rant over. It’s a pos. Slack is light years ahead.
For me, it has nothing to do with how good or bad the actual application is, it’s the terms of service that go along with it. Basically microsoft hoovers up every morsel of data you put into their system, including your voice and face. I liken it to giving all your personal data to someone (including your voice and face), they put in a pretty looking safe on the side of the street and then they sell the keys to it.
Ignoring the fact that the data could be stolen from one of the many third parties it partners with, microsoft could (will) also give the data to the government which will then be used as evidence to deport or jail you or people you know for speaking out against the American regime or acted against Gods will and had an abortion. Or maybe someone in DC makes up some bullshit law targeting some arbitrary demographic which includes you, they request data from microsoft which is promptly provided; you get arrested and sent to jail or deported.
Data privacy is important, especially when the government is corrupt and insane. It’s prudent to protect ourselves and the people we know.
Haven’t needed to use it myself, but here’s an open source alternative I’ve heard a lot about:
Not sure it’ll help with your work though.
Teams meetings aren’t really that much worse than Zoom, it’s mostly minor gripes, although there are quite a few of those. The Teams chat client on the other hand is an absolute garbage fire that’s significantly worse than Slack, Discord, or pretty much anything up to and arguably including IRC.
An organization , “team”, channel, and chat are confusing as hell, that breakdown does not in any way align with the way communication works in a large organization. Why is there so little configuration available for notification settings? Why can’t I completely silence or ignore a “team”, channel, or chat? Why do I not receive notifications half the time for the things I actually want to be notified about? Why aren’t there threads or at least a sensible and easy to follow “reply to” option? Why can’t anyone seem to agree on the correct way to organize things? Half our groups are creating gigantic “teams” that include half the company, while the other half are creating shared channels nobody knows about. Both options suck.
Our organization turned off the ability to edit or delete any posts in a Team channel.
So outdated information, typos, stupid questions, etc remain polluting the channel for all eternity.
I had to enroll users in teams. Doing so was confusing and 1 user would never get the invite. I ended up ditching it after about a month.
Teams has been successful in detecting my headphones and mics 20% of the time. So, my alternative is to go on my phone and also my laptop (but mute myself) so I can share my screen during meetings. Windows detects my headphones and mics just fine in other applications, like Zoom or Discord. It’s a pain in the ass.
Weird, I always cum while using Teams
(Dear employer - this was a joke)
YOUR FIYA’D! YA HEAR ME? FIYA’D! GET OUTTA HE’E.
I manage teams in a MacOS environment and ive seen teams fail to notify when people get a message or phone call straight up. Ive seen it fail to deliver a message, automatically select audio devices (because it has to use its own selection of audio devices) sharing screens is like watching a slideshow no matter what network you are on, controlling another users computer is even worse. Our headsets are Plantronics “certified for teams” or whatever its called and the mute button sometimes desyncs with the client and the headphones may be muted but the client not or vice verse. Theres much more but im so tired from dealing with teams all day. I also think its just a wildly unintuitive ui, settings are completely strewn across all sections
automatically select audio devices (because it has to use its own selection of audio devices)
Dude, this so fucking hard. It doesn’t even respect the system volume on my Windows 11 work laptop; despite being set at like 30%, my eardrums always get blasted at the start of the meeting. Every single time, I have to go into the volume settings and turn down the individual application (which has TWO volume controls for…reasons?), because apparently per-app volume is higher priority than system volume for reasons I have yet to find an answer to.
I want the old Volume Mixer back. At least that worked as any reasonable person would expect.
Teams is fine for video calling and screensharing. The mess begins when organisations, as MS encourages them to do, try to embed everything there is into teams. Then it can very fast become a black hole where no one finds anything anymore
Honestly thats just a user problem, not a Teams one.
Just limit it to files and forms and stuff like that, and explain to users that the teams folders, SharePoint, and the files on their computer are all the same.
Source: IT manager
Not gonna lie, I don’t get the hate.
TEAMs was terrible going into the pandemic but it’s steadily gotten better, especially over the past 18 months. Reading down the comment chain though I’m in awe at the amount of problems that people are apparently still having with it!
TEAMs via app or browser on my Windows 10 box at work? Fine. TEAMs via app or browser on my Windows 11 Surface? Fine. TEAMs via app or browser on my wheezy HP laptop with Windows 11? Fine. TEAMs via browser (Firefox even!) on all three of my Linux systems? Also completely fine!
Hell I’ve got Creative T-60 USB-C speakers, a logi webcam, and Turtle Beach headphones hooked to a USB sharing KVM for two of those linux boxes and it still just works.
I must be the luckiest dumb-ass alive when it comes to MS TEAMs because at least for the last two years it just works.
My TEAMs laptop unfortunately only has an 11th gen i5 and 16 gigs of RAM so it runs like crap. And yes I only run TEAMs, a proprietary application with <50 MB RAM and <1% CPU usage, and occasionally Firefox.
Though TEAMs in Edge runs fine. It’s only an issue with the app.
skype!
i was so glad my new job uses google products, but the one thing they are missing is a counterpart to onenote. Keep ain’t it.
Obsidian is my answer to it.
This whole comment chain makes me feel abject despair at the prospect of getting a job outside the service industry.
Shitty software still better than customers
The new M365 Outlook is just webmail. Every upgrade is actually a reduction in functionality as they align to the web version. The good news is this eliminates the need for Windows.
Yes! I’m so close to being able to switch the office PC to Linux. I only really use Outlook and Teams, everything else is in a terminal.
Now to convince Security that I don’t need their intrusive logging and scanning crap…
Outlook and Teams have PWAs that are actually more performant than the desktop apps (anecdotal). They are missing some features, but for the opportunity to use Linux at work, I make it work. Have to use Ubuntu for some unknown reason, but it’s better than using Windows
As a help desk worker, I am starting to get tired of Microsoft’s bullshit.
Try something new and it doesn’t work out? Fine. That’s reasonable.
But can we stop breaking what was already working?
This is what happens with innovation when only monopolies are left on the board.
Name an industry, it’s the same. But here’s the dog shit. You still have to give shareholders returns. When you ran out of shit to innovate like 25 years ago, ran out of companies to buy 10 years ago, and already captured the regulatory bodies. Congrats it’s game over.
Except it’s never game over. Just squeeze one side til the toothpaste runs out.
Hah, I JUST had a conversation with my boss about whether or not I was using the “new” outlook or the “old” outlook.
He’s apparently using the “old” outlook because there’s a toggle switch in the upper right of his window that says “try the new outlook!” and I don’t have that, meaning…I guess I’m using the “new” outlook?
Who knows at this point. It’s all trash.
Whichever version it is, I hope that one day I can delete a mail, change my mind, press ctrl-z and it will actually undo the last delete and not some random one from earlier in the day.
I just stopped deleting everything and now use my archive as a trash instead
Microsoft is just awful at doing basic shit. Office or M365 or copilot or whatever it is called is a mess of new tabs, signing in and duplication of services.
Christ outlook sucks but it isnt even top five of how shit they are.
I asked my magic 8 ball about this and it said “Outlook not so good”
In my last job I installed Outlook on my personal phone to access my work calendar conveniently. Found out from a colleague that if the admin for an Outlook server you’re signed into on any device fucks up badly enough you could end up having that device completely wiped so I promptly uninstalled it.
Yeah, you’re talking about MDM (Mobile Device Management) solutions/tech. I’m not an IT employee myself, but I am familiar with these things from work (similar situation as yours), and also because I’m a nerd and like researching these things.
On some phones, like Samsung’s (“Secure Folder”), you can have [essentially] a second, containerized instance of Android running. Or you can think of it like a virtual second user that ultimately you have control of. So what I did was install Outlook in that. Because the MDM permissions (e.g. wipe the phone) would only affect that container.
Otherwise, for everyone else – yeah don’t install work apps/accounts on your personal devices.
Just to expand on this. There is an Exchange specific wipe feature. I think it is quite old school and not really used. Have seen it, but never tested it myself. As per documentation it can perform device wipe, but only if native mail client using ActiveSync is used not Outlook. And it probably does not work with all native mail clients, depends if app has device admin permissions.
Current Intune MDM model always uses separate Android storage so any operation including wipe will affect only this storage not your personal space so employer can not see nor delete your personal data.
In Intune there is another option without a need of enrolling device (MDM) where you can manage supported apps. It’s called MAM. If wipe is initiated it affects only data in all apps that support MAM.
In short, companies / schools cannot really wipe your device if we are talking about Intune MDM. Other MDM solutions probably can.
Activesync
Now, that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.
I’d love to keep outlook off my personal phone but there’s no chance I’m getting a company phone considering I’m a shop employee and everything in it is an afterthought for IT. Like our computers still run windows 7.
Unfortunately I need email to do my job, on a ping system for what to test and general communications with coworkers who are often not there or traveling in the field.
That’s fair. I should have said *if you can help it.
here’s some advice from me. Outlook is completely usable from a web browser. This includes phone browsers… just use that if you need your emails on your personal phone.
I’ve been paying for Office365 home for years. Recently I started a business and signed up for 365 Business for the company email address.
Outlook stopped working, because the 365 Business account - which I specifically signed up in order to do email - doesn’t include local Outlook, and my existing home-licensed one throws a hissy fit if I try connecting it to my business account.
Microsoft sucks.
I’ve stepped away from Microsoft. Not my favourite company regarding mailing and chatting.
Microsoft sucks and so does Outlook. My dad uses Outlook personally and I just can’t imagine that. It’s like taking your torture rack home with you for personal usage.
My dad is also a huge Outlook fan. I think you need to just have been using it for 20+ years
OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD
Ask again later?
All signs point to yes
Very doubtful
Magic 8 Ball knew Outlook would be bad 50 years ago.
They have managed to fuck up something as simple as right clicking. There are no words.
Dude they fucked up Ctrl+S and Alt+F in paintbrush and it still fucks with my workflows.
You know you’re an old time user when you call it paintbrush :)
Deadnaming done right
Microsoft anything = confuses people
this entire article is about a single tweet some guy made as a joke
Welcome to journalism in 202x
Yeah no shit. Then the new ones literally have less features than the old one. Like connecting SharePoint calendars
Seems like they wanted the web and app version of outlook to work identically. Some things don’t work on the web though, so they decided to cut features on the app until they were the same as web. It’s just such a corporate move.
Windows having Settings and Control Panel. It is just an unmanageable bloat of legacy code.
I use control panel enough that i would be seriously pissed if they removed it. Why is it considered bloat?
Or having a button to refresh RSS feeds.
