Citing corruption issues with Outlook 2011 database, Microsoft last week pulled Office 2011 SP2. Redmond has published details of a work around, but for many users the damage has already been done — days, months and perhaps even years of work lost.

The take away here is that Microsoft with its thousands of employees and billions in the bank can’t keep Office under control — it’s just a mess.

That said, reading about Office’s stumbles called to mind a recent Slate editorial by by Tom Scocca in which he laments MS Word and what it has become:

Nowadays, I get [a] feeling of dread when I open an email to see a Microsoft Word document attached. Time and effort are about to be wasted cleaning up someone’s archaic habits. A Word file is the story-fax of the early 21st century: cumbersome, inefficient, and a relic of obsolete assumptions about technology. It’s time to give up on Word … [I]t’s become an overbearing boss, one who specializes in make-work.

Like a lot of us, Socca finds little if any use for Word. Moreover, he makes the case that stripped down word processors, such as Apple’s gloriously simple TextEdit, are much better because they’re designed to perform only a few tasks. And, this line of thinking easily applies to the whole Office package.

Whereas there are still reasons to use pieces of Office, notably Excel by bean counters, Office as a whole has been supplanted by smaller, nimbler and cheaper alternatives, like iWork, LibreOffice and Google Docs.

Whatever the app, MS Office’s huge, bloated, every feature approach to work just doesn’t work anymore…

What’s your take?

via Minimal Mac