I want to make it clear straight off the bat – I am not an Apple fan girl. Personally I don’t give a monkey’s what OS my computer uses, and I use MS office simply because it’s there. Although I do prefer Firefox to IE – but that’s mostly a legacy of IE 6 being so pants, and it’s no longer a conscious choice. However there are many things about Microsoft that get right under my skin – things that detract from a user perspective and things that surely can’t be that hard to fix.

1. MSN – I have so many gripes with this poor excuse for a website I don’t even know where to begin.
a. It’s so slooooow to load. Seriously what’s the hold up? It’s a basic news page. The BBC doesn’t take that long, neither does the Times or any of the countless multimedia sites. What’s the hold up?
b. When you log out of Hotmail you are automatically redirected to MSN. Not wanting to p*ss around waiting for the page to load I begin to type the URL of the next site I’m heading to. However, Microsoft in all its wisdom is convinced I don’t want to go there and where I really want to go is to Bing. So it automatically moves the cursor to the Bing search box. I am sick to death of seeing Bing search results for “acebook”.
c. Buttons. Shouldn’t. Move. Anyone else get irritated by the next button in the picture gallery being ever so slightly out of place on each subsequent page? I am lazy. I don’t wanna move my mouse.

2. Now personally I’m not a MSN chat user, but according to a colleague who does, it drops out constantly even though you’re internet hasn’t. That would be annoying. Casting my mind back to the dark ages before Facebook, I think my last username was “bruisehag” on account of my first year uni antics.

3. Auto formatting. If I want to type the date, I will type the date. Sometimes I want to type numbers that happen to look like a date – doesn’t mean they are. Ditto bullet points moving all over the damn place. Microsoft, you are not smarter than the average user. Take your damn picnic basket elsewhere.

4. By the same token, we don’t need to be told of every little thing you do behind the scenes. I’m like a theatre audience – all I care about is the show runs smoothly and no-one fluffs their lines. I’m not interested in hearing about props going missing backstage only to reappear minutes before the curtain goes up. So what’s with the constant notifications when I start up the computer? I don’t need to be told about being connected to a certain network every single time… just do it!

5. Another colleague with a VERY weird Word gripe – running spell check results Microsoft informing her it cannot find proofing tools for Welsh. Her dictionary is set to English! I was convinced it was user error as well but I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes!

6. I’m a PC ads… and so are 80 percent of computer users in world. That’s billions of people. No need to be so smug.

7. Our esteemed designer Sarah HATES Outlook 2007 onwards – a lack of support for CSS means HTML emails have to be built using toothpicks, kindergarten scissors and crayons!

8. Bill Gates dropped out of uni and is now a billionaire. Meanwhile my student loan is more than my yearly income. Nuff said.