My experiences obtaining and installing Office 2011 for Mac

(Found this on Facebook, written about 11 years ago. Pretty sure I was at Small Dog Electronics.)

We were invited to join a Microsoft web portal called ExpertZone, the point of which (I assume) was to help people learn how to sell Office (as well as other Microsoft products - I saw a whole section just for XBOX.) We were given a link and told to go there, create an account, and there was supposedly some way to download free copies of Office 2011. Being required to support said product when it crashes, this would definitely make it easier to do our jobs as Service Techs.

Going to the site gave the usual reaction: "Wow, flashy, ugly colors and boastful statements about the product line. It's Microsoft." I looked around the site, but could find no information at all about the "free" copy of Office. In fact, I wasn't really able to find any information about what we were supposed to do here. So I checked the Community Forums (typically a mistake but I had no where else to go.) The information posted there ranged from the wild-assed guess to the downright apocryphal. No one had any real information, but they all claimed to know the right answer. (Recall the first rule of a support forum - if you can't be correct, be believable.) There was apparently no official representation from Microsoft at all in their own official forums. Nice. There was a long thread about "Free copy of Office Mac!!!!!" so I figured that was as good a place as any to start. One message said "They are all out of free copies! Too bad for you guys, because I already got four and am selling them on eBay!" That pretty much set the tone of this thread. Another message said you had to do some sort of training exercises and then you'd get a promo code. Just for completeness, I took the three exercises. They can basically be summarized thusly:

Frame 1 - "We have this great new application suite called Office 2011 for Mac! It's great!!"

Frame 2 - "You need to sell this great new application! It's better than everything else available!"

Frame 3-6 were filled with a bunch of percentages they made up specifically for this exercise, followed by a bunch of sales numbers that were most likely inflated to show just how popular Office really is. (Have these people ever actually USED their product??)

Frames 7-15 were more fluff, trying to drill into your brain why you WANT to sell Office 2011 for Mac. You NEED to sell Office 2011 for Mac. You absolutely MUST sell Office 2011 for Mac. Your first born child, your hamster, your neighbors, and a random orphan in Equador will die of small pox unless you SELL OFFICE 2011 for MAC!!

Then there was a summary quiz to make sure the brain washing had actually held. If not, there were always two more tests.

A few days later, someone who claimed to be employed by Microsoft posted a message to the Community Forums. Because he posted it using "English (MS)" it was difficult to translate, but a rough approximation is "Yeah, our web site sucks, it's a work in progress, but bear with us, it'll be awesome once it's finally done!" He then made the mistake of giving his e-mail address, along with the invitation "If you have any problems, let me know!" He may as well have said "Bring it on!"

I e-mailed this poor deluded soul, letting him know that nothing at all on their site was working. No matter what I did, I was led into a narrow dark alley, mugged, beaten, and left for dead. He told me I had to take these training courses online, which I had already done, then click a survey link, which did not exist. Okay, now what? He couldn't figure out why it wasn't working for me, when it apparently had worked fine for 8000 people so far (maybe because they are all Microsoft employees?) but promised to look into it for me. He later sent me a link that supposedly would give me a promo code if I completed the tests. Well, I had completed the tests, but clicking the link told me I wasn't eligible because I hadn't completed the tests. Um.... then he told me to go back and try the survey link, which now did exist, but all it did was give me the ExpertZone home page. Sigh. At this point he was apparently going home for the weekend, as his most recent message said "Sent from my iPhone." (Kidding, kidding, but that would be awesome...)

After waiting four days for a response that never came, I went back to the site and tried the survey link again. It worked! They had quietly changed the link to point to the correct survey page, so I quickly filled it out before it could disappear again. It took me about 10 seconds, and was basically a rehash of the previous quizzes to make sure all the BS they crammed into my head was still bouncing around in there. I had finally reached the Cheese Whiz at the end of the maze!! Oh, and there was a promo code for a free copy of Office 2011 for Mac. Wait, whuuuuuuuuuutt?? After all this, I am not sure it was worth it, but okay, I fought my way to this point, might as well see it through. I clicked the link to the Not-for-Resale page, filled out my name, address, social security number, place of birth, name of my first goldfish, favorite color, and twelve references not related to me, then clicked the "YES! GIMME GIMME! I WANT OFFICE!" button.

Server Error

The server has encountered an error and cannot process your query. THE CAKE IS A LIE.

Error: 0xE890003-FUQ

Oh, right. Of course. I am using Safari, aka not a Microsoft© Approved Browser(TM) such as Internet Exploder. So I ran Firefox, which is smart enough to fool sites programmed to work only with the aforementioned Exploder of the Internets. This time, it worked. I got a Download Button, which I happily slammed hard with a hammer like a kid overdosed on Kellogg's Sugar Crack. Almost immediately my e-mail chirped at me with a reassuring warble, letting me know that an message with my Product Code had arrived. Yes, this was all real! Never before have I been so happy to see 25 randomly-generated and easily-crackable letters. After about two tense minutes the download started, letting me know that I am now filling my hard disk with 890MB of pure crap. Suddenly I hear the sound of a balloon deflating as the download stalls at the 20.5MB mark. Of course, how could I be so foolish... this is Microsoft! Their servers have code in place to ensure you're not trying to download anything with a browser that is not Microsoft© Approved. Five or so minutes later I am told "Sorry, but we're not actually going to make this easy for you." I then noticed that the guy next to me, upon hearing my jubilation, was doing the same thing. Their server apparently could not handle the high bandwidth demands of two simultaneous downloads and promptly puked up its Cheerios. I restarted the download, and about 3 minutes later I had the complete disk image. Wooo freakin' hoo!

The Installation Experience!

As one would do with most disk images, I double clicked the disk image. (Well, what would YOU do?) Immediately I could hear Admiral Ackbar shouting "It's a trap!" but I forged ahead. The installer came up, warned me that it was going to eat up 1.3GB of space that I would never see again, but clicking "Fuck that shit!" would have made the past week a waste. Hesitantly, I clicked "What choice do I have?" and it proceeded to do to my drive what the cast of "The Accused" did to Jodie Foster. At some point during the install, a window popped up saying "quit_app is a file downloaded from the Internet. It wants to repaint your living room in pastel colors that would make the cast of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" shout "Oh dear Christ!" It also didn't wipe its feet before walking across your new carpet. Is this okay?" Well, I kinda had to allow it, otherwise it would erase itself and every application within a 4 directory radius, so I clicked on "Yeah, I guess that would be okay, I mean what harm could it cause?" Then I was prompted with "The following applications must be closed before the installer can continue" and it listed Safari and Firefox. I'm still not sure how Office was related to my browsers... I closed out both of those, noticing that the installer was still chugging along merrily regardless of the supposed roadblock. The next dialog said "The following applications must be closed before the installer can continue" and listed "Microsoft Office Installer." Uh... I have to close the Microsoft Office Installer so the Microsoft Office Installer can continue? I hit continue just to see what would happen, but it just came back again. So, I left it alone, and the installer continued on. Odd thing, that.

The final phase (or so I thought) was the installer saying "Installation Complete." (I know, silly me for thinking that "Installation Complete" actually meant that the installation was complete.) It then launched an Automatic Updater, which began downloading a 350M update. Seriously? This product has been out exactly one week, what could have gone wrong in that short amount of time?

Remember that annoying dialog? Well, it was back (or perhaps it was an updated version?) Now it was saying I had to close Microsoft Automatic Updater so the Microsoft Automatic Updater could continue. Normally, I would be tempted to ask "was this even tested?" but having worked with Microsoft for about nine years during my tenure at NEC Computers, I already knew the answer. I didn't click the Continue button so the dialog box disappeared and came back. Over and over again. Then the Updater finished and showed me the list of applications that needed to be updated. The same one was listed, and it redownloaded the same update a second time. Meanwhile that dialog box was still flashing at me, ever more rapidly. Finally the update was complete, and I was able to click that Continue button. As expected, nothing happened.

The good news is I was finally able to eject the disk image...