10 Technology 'Advances' That Actually Made Life More Annoying

7. Office Assistants

Microsoft Office 1997 to 2003 was famous for one thing; Clippy and his animated friends. For a 10 year old, these were the greatest things ever put into the flagship text creator. Clippy (or one of the other pixelated characters) would jump onto the screen and if you right-clicked and selected 'Animate' they would dance and do various moves - it kept many of us satisfied for long periods of time. However when you use them as an adult they are an eyesore, and the most annoying thing ever. Pretentious and intrusive, the Office Assistants were just plain annoying. The 'tips' they gave were often useless and because of Microsoft being an American company many of the hints were for American formatting, forcing the user to track down the hard-to-find option to convert your region to the correct one. Thankfully Microsoft removed these little critters from Office soon after they were added. The new versions of the program continue to look clean and well designed and don't have an annoying paper clip asking about if you are writing a letter.