Can't get Office to install (solved)

Sac Arrow

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Snorting his way across the USA
Just a heads up. I had to buy a laptop at the last minute on Wednesday and set it up and equip it with MS Office. These days, you don't install Office from a software package. You type in a product key and install it from an online Microsoft download/setup site.

It took the product key, but hung up with an error code on the install. Couldn't get it to work. After about an hour of tech support help, the solution was to install from the Chrome browser. Edge has known problems for software installs.

Also, setting up a new machine with the latest Windows 10? If you don't already have a Microsoft account, e.g. Hotmail or Outlook, or the like, save yourself some trouble and create one first before setting up. You are forced to log in with one and if you try to create one through the installer's widget, it won't take and you will end up with a huge headache.
 
Just a heads up. I had to buy a laptop at the last minute on Wednesday and set it up and equip it with MS Office. These days, you don't install Office from a software package. You type in a product key and install it from an online Microsoft download/setup site.

It took the product key, but hung up with an error code on the install. Couldn't get it to work. After about an hour of tech support help, the solution was to install from the Chrome browser. Edge has known problems for software installs.

Also, setting up a new machine with the latest Windows 10? If you don't already have a Microsoft account, e.g. Hotmail or Outlook, or the like, save yourself some trouble and create one first before setting up. You are forced to log in with one and if you try to create one through the installer's widget, it won't take and you will end up with a huge headache.

On Professional, at least, you can use a local account. They hide it pretty well, but it's there.

The other workaround is to not have the machine on the Internet when you install / first-boot Win10. That forces the local login.

Rich
 
What Rich said. You don’t need to play their account game.

Additionally if you’re unaware, there’s also the new Edge, called “Edge Chromium” which replaces Google’s spying in the open source Chromium browser... with Microsoft’s!

Additionally if you’re going to manage users with Active Directory in a business environment you can and should bypass the Microsoft login. It’ll hang around if you delete it and cause problems later.

Plus, your IT Dept may have chosen to sync the *entire* AD up to Azure instead of reading up on how to limit that — if it’s needed, and it is for O365 licensing — to only what needs to be stored in Microsoft’s “cloud”/poorly managed server farm.

LOL. It’s a wonderful time in IT these days. :)
 
This is why I run Linux Ubuntu and LibreOffice. Bill has enough money he doesn't need any of mine.
 
So, it seems there's a couple linux fans here.

Got a question. Do either of you guys have any experience using v4l2? I've been working on getting an old Samsung tablet to work as an ipcam using adb bridge over USB to stream raw video to a port on my desktop running Ubuntu 16.10 32 bit. The .sh script is a nifty little deal I got from Github. I can access the cam fine using Firefox browser on localport:8080, but I want to use it for videochat apps, so I need a dummy loopback videocam device. Gstreamer writes a valid dummy /dev/video0 file in the proper format, but every time I open a viewer I get one frame (Cheese, ffmeg VUC) and the viewer crashes. A DEBUG points to a bad v4l2 driver. Chit.

Of course, 16.10 is no longer supported, so if there's a good driver in v4l2 in a later version ( I'm using v4l2-dkms 9.* the latest for my distro) I can't use it without trying to rebuild the kernel, and I don't really want to do this as this isn't a development machine, and I don't have time to fix everything that's sure to break if I give it a try. Pretty sure 32 bit anything is dead, but other than a webcam this old machine suits my needs just fine.
Chit again.

Before I shell out for 64 bit hardware, has anybody gotten something similar to work in a later distro? What are you using for a Linux webcam? I don't care if it's not plug 'n play, but at least the modules have to work.
 
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I don't do IT for a living (obviously,) literally all I wanted to do was: 1) set up a new laptop, and 2) install Office. Guess I wish I knew the tricks and traps before hand.

Re. Libre Office. It's fine if you have sparse formatting requirements, and it's free, but if you write technical reports or use complex spreadsheets, you get what you pay for in terms of ease of use. Also the documents that Libre Office produces may be file compatible with .doc/.docx files, but advanced formatting isn't compatible so it doesn't play well if the rest of your organization uses MS Office.
 
I don't do IT for a living (obviously,) literally all I wanted to do was: 1) set up a new laptop, and 2) install Office. Guess I wish I knew the tricks and traps before hand.

Not your fault. MSFT wants everyone to have an ID, similar to Apple requiring everyone to have an Apple ID.

It’s pretty annoying for the corporate world. We end up having to manage a whole new set of company-owned IDs for users (Apple) or bypassing MSFT’s silliness.

They’re all more and more pushy about getting users locked into their cloud services. The continual slide away from buying software to renting it.
 
What are you using for a Linux webcam?.

Honestly I’m not. Sorry.

Webcam is hooked to the Mac or built into the company Winderz laptop... and lately I’ve just been doing calls on the phone with video muted since the phone always has better audio quality both directions.

Nobody needs to see my ugly mug. LOL.
 
the phone always has better audio quality both directions
Because VoLTE? I've observed mostly the opposite (except for the one person that didn't know WiFi/Bluetooth antennas are buried in the display bezel and horizontally stowed the closed-but-active laptop under the desk).
 
Because VoLTE? I've observed mostly the opposite (except for the one person that didn't know WiFi/Bluetooth antennas are buried in the display bezel and horizontally stowed the closed-but-active laptop under the desk).

Nah. The video apps don’t use the cellular protocols. Just better mic and speaker and the mic isn’t sitting two feet or more away.

Even with VoLTE on a traditional audio conference, most conference bridges aren’t doing any better than G.711 anyway at the bridge itself. Some exceptions on corporate bridges set up with SIP feeds from carriers who’ll do higher quality CODECs but not common and rarely survives jumping between carriers in the PSTN.

About the only time a conference would benefit from VoLTE is a three party conference initiated by adding a party to a two party call directly on the cellular handset when everyone is on the same carrier. That’ll sound like everyone’s sitting in the same room.

We run an “HD” codec phone to phone in our PBX but none of our SIP carriers will do any better than G711 from the PSTN. Pretty easy to tell who has their desk phone forwarded or twinned to their cell phone during conference calls. :)

But that old conference bridge pretty much sits idle with us being a GSuite shop. Everyone is on Google Meet these days.

Plus I pace when I’m on the phone. So sitting in front of a camera for an hour when nobody needs to see me, is just uncomfortable. I’ll mute the video before I even join and wander around with the phone even in Meet calls, unless I need to see or do a presentation with screen sharing.

Even then, if you’re just reading bullets to me from a PowerPoint I’m probably logged in with both the desktop and the mobile and wandering around not looking at your awful PowerPoint that conveys no other information than what you’re saying. Hahaha.

It’s weird. I have worked in video conferencing for pushing three decades and all it taught me is video is mostly useless for business meetings. Ha.

Screen sharing is great. Cameras aimed at people at computers? Not very useful.
 
Nah. The video apps don’t use the cellular protocols. Just better mic and speaker and the mic isn’t sitting two feet or more away.

Even with VoLTE on a traditional audio conference, most conference bridges aren’t doing any better than G.711 anyway at the bridge itself. Some exceptions on corporate bridges set up with SIP feeds from carriers who’ll do higher quality CODECs but not common and rarely survives jumping between carriers in the PSTN.

About the only time a conference would benefit from VoLTE is a three party conference initiated by adding a party to a two party call directly on the cellular handset when everyone is on the same carrier. That’ll sound like everyone’s sitting in the same room.

We run an “HD” codec phone to phone in our PBX but none of our SIP carriers will do any better than G711 from the PSTN. Pretty easy to tell who has their desk phone forwarded or twinned to their cell phone during conference calls. :)

But that old conference bridge pretty much sits idle with us being a GSuite shop. Everyone is on Google Meet these days.

Plus I pace when I’m on the phone. So sitting in front of a camera for an hour when nobody needs to see me, is just uncomfortable. I’ll mute the video before I even join and wander around with the phone even in Meet calls, unless I need to see or do a presentation with screen sharing.

Even then, if you’re just reading bullets to me from a PowerPoint I’m probably logged in with both the desktop and the mobile and wandering around not looking at your awful PowerPoint that conveys no other information than what you’re saying. Hahaha.

It’s weird. I have worked in video conferencing for pushing three decades and all it taught me is video is mostly useless for business meetings. Ha.

Screen sharing is great. Cameras aimed at people at computers? Not very useful.
We are using the Cisco Jabber client for phone calls. It works alright. Skype is intermittent and we only use it for in-workgroup video presentations along a jabber call. Or Cisco Webex for both. Its all ok but I would prefer a physical VOIP phone over Jabber.
 
We are using the Cisco Jabber client for phone calls. It works alright. Skype is intermittent and we only use it for in-workgroup video presentations along a jabber call. Or Cisco Webex for both. Its all ok but I would prefer a physical VOIP phone over Jabber.

Yeah we sent our Avaya handsets home. Built in VPN, they just work. Pretty cool.

Mine got used for someone who needed one worse than me, though. So, I just use my cell.
 
Yeah we sent our Avaya handsets home. Built in VPN, they just work. Pretty cool.

Mine got used for someone who needed one worse than me, though. So, I just use my cell.
We were issued the Voyager Focus UC. Sound quality both in and out are great, but the supra-aural (on-ear) design is enough to make me want to yank it off and switch to the laptop speakers/mic after an hour or two. It's enough to make me think I'd prefer a DC One-X over a DC Pro-X.
 
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