Office 2010 Starter Edition: File type associations missing

After last month's Windows Updates the file type associations for Microsoft's Office 2010 Starter Edition went missing or at least changed into an orange blob that when clicked on claimed that the license key was invalid and you needed to purchase a new one. Quite a number of my customers had this problem as Office Starter was loaded by DELL on its Vostro systems. For a couple of weeks Microsoft refused to admit that there was a problem at all and it wasn't until 18th September that they released the 'fix' statement here.

Unfortunately, this fix did not work in all cases and takes a long time to apply, especially on a slow broadband connection. The simple, more effective solution was to change the file associations back using Start -> Default programs -> Associate a file type or protocol with a specific program. Just scroll through the list and change the Word and Excel file associations back to what they were.

I expected Microsoft to 'fix the fix' in October's Patch Tuesday but they didn't. Yet again Microsoft is loosing touch with its consumer roots.

Windows 8.1

I upgraded my Windows 8 support system to the latest 8.1 release. It hasn't seemed to improved much as the focus of the changes seems to be to make it more acceptable in the business and commercial environment rather than the home environment. Yet again Microsoft is losing contact with the consumers that helped it gain the predominant position in the IT market.

As I said before in my previous post using IObit's excellent free Start8 utility to boot directly into the desktop and reinstate the Start button functionality works better than Microsoft's weak effort. Plus using 'control userpasswords2' to stop requiring a password every time and disabling the password required following a screensaver or hibernation helps a lot in recovering the Windows 7 appearance and interactions.

Microsoft continues to loose the plot in the desktop and laptop market and Windows 8 (and 8.1) is major contributor to it's decline. They would have been better off to port Microsoft Office to Apple OS and Android environments starting five years ago. Probably made more money too!