New Help Files for Microsoft Products… Still Suck?

Image: Screen capture of Microsoft Update website

I’m working through my weekly updates and scans on my system today and I came across a list of optional software updates that were available for a few of my Microsoft Office 2007 applications.

This is normally good news, but here’s my question. The Help information available in just about every Microsoft product is fairly close to useless. I think they’d be better served to just put an automatic Internet search for the keyword you clicked on in their Help system in the first place. I’m not sure if I’ve ever really gotten the answer I needed for a more than average computer use or software application question. I almost always now just do a Google search for the problem or error message I’m receiving.

That brings me back to the question at hand. Are all these Help file updates, which are just shy of 100MB in total file size, a drastic improvement on anything? Would it make it worth it to download and install the updates? Or, is it just a waste of space for something I’ll not use. I can almost guarantee that I could never really delete them off again if I decided they were still useless.

If someone at Microsoft is working in the Help department, I’d love to get your thoughts about why Microsoft Help files are so bad.