Sunday, December 29, 2019

ONE FOR TEN

So, yippee. I happened to have had a most wonderful Christmas. It was quiet compared to other years, but lots of fun with family and friends, nevertheless. The fun time was when I was out and busy, enjoying the company of everyone. The quiet time was when I had down time at home. Well… wait. It WAS quiet during those moments. 

Uh... except for the plenty of times I spent swearing at my desktop computer. THOSE times were far from quiet. Sort of like: a crazy old woman losing control of her patience and in its place cursing up a storm over and over again. Basically, the story goes like this…

The first computer I ever had was a Hewlitt Packard, I think, and it was running on Windows 3.1. I am also thinking that it was pretty user friendly, considering the times… way more so than DOS was... which was what I used when working on computers at work. Mind you... this was before AOL was even born and I had to pay $.25 for each email I sent, using the Prodigy online service. There was certainly no chat room or instant messaging. I used web browsers called Netscape and Web Crawler, which was pretty much Mickey Mouse until Internet Explorer came out.

Anyway… the point is, I was the very first of all my friends to actually use a home computer and I took to it like a fish takes to water. I bought loads of software to do all sorts of things that intrigued me; I was aMAZed as to what these programs could do. In fact, most of my original software I still use, given I bought the updated versions as they became available. It was totally terrific and I was in hog heaven. 

I eventually went from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows XP to Windows 7 and just recently, I upgraded to Windows 10. Bingo. The focus of today's blog.

Don’t even ask. IT’S CRAZY. To be frank, mastering the first few versions were tricky for me at first, but soon enough I had it all down pat. And so it went for all the versions thereafter. Until THIS new version. A version that wants to play with your head and screw up every easy option there ever was.

Windows 10 is totally playing with my educated, brilliant mind. I COULD have gone with any of the Apple operating systems, which btw, my son has begged me to do since he was about 14 years old. He’s now 37. To which I said thanks, but no thanks. I am a total fan of Windows and will remain so til the day I die.

On the other hand… this upgrade to Windows 10 is NUTS. Yes, it is a lot like the previous version but man oh man. It nevertheless has taken away so many features that were just soooo easy to navigate, and replaced them with a horde of such unnecessary complications. Key word: unnecessary. Hence the not so quiet swearing. Case in point:

File Manager in all previous versions… totally easy. Go to File Manager and scroll through c:/ and yippee. All files for anything you need to find on your harddrive pops up lickety split. NOW however?? Talk about making it a mystery that needs to be sought and searched and THEN finally found. Maybe. Granted, there may well be an easy way to figure all this out, but for someone as computer literate as I am… it’s nevertheless been kinda like a journey from hell to figure it out. Man. I am this far from wanting to scorch all those programmers over in Silicon Valley for fucking with our sensibilities. There was just no need to take perfectly working software from good to bad but for their desire to look busy for the boss. Anyway...  

My other big beef is with the Display options. Windows 10 DEFinitely doesn’t offer me the same choices. And… in trying to even implement some of the PRETTY display choices I want, you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to make it happen. It’s crazy! I have  ALWAYS customized my desktop display, including colors of toolbars, menus, scrollbars, etc. because frankly… Microsoft’s designs and colors totally suck compared to MY way which give me way better looking themes and perfectly lovely graphics. Here… take a look:


Microsoft: 




Me:  


What?? They want me to choose that ugly black and blue theme instead of something that has much prettier appeal like this one that I set up myself? Geez. Big difference, is all I can say. And... btw: I should totally be on the desktop design committee to give the user actual atTRACtive options for their computer screens. Let alone… give the user an EASY way for them to actually accomplish this. Suffice it to say there are a zillion other ways in which W10 is not what I consider a happy upgrade at all. Not to mention how the upgrade affected so many of my other programs.

For instance… I now have to get may ass in gear to pick up new stationary and/or publishing software, given my previous version won’t even work on 10. Boom. All my hordes of personal designs and creations are now gone forever. Everything from greeting cards to table place setting cards. And everything in between. Total bummer. Most important of all however….

Is the fact that the original FREE CELL and HEARTS are gone!! I can’t even believe that after 26 years of adoring these games, I now have to play these same games but created by companies other than Microsoft. AND, BELIEVE ME, THEY SUCK. Why the hell would this new Windows version do away with them?? They’re like almost more important than Word! Seriously.  Granted, I did download what is supposedly the original game but still… it’s different and I basically hate it. And, oh yeah… who or what the hell is Contana??? I have NO clue about that, for sure. Same thing for Edge. I’m not even going to try to learn about those features. As for Bing… get the hell out altogether.

Now, with all that said, I do have to admit that I tweaked this new version pretty well, so that I must say, my desktop is now, finally, pretty much to my liking. Not nearly as much as I liked Windows 7, of course, but okay…close enough.

And by the way… after all these years of staying true to Microsoft and never having even once considered iMac products… I totally deserve some sort of present from Mr. Gates and/or his associates. The entire world feasts on all of Mr. Jobs’ products. But not me. I’m totally faithful to Microsoft and Android.

Well, except for my Apple iPad, that is.. EEKS. I’m a traitor in disguise, afterall. And oh yeah… wanna guess how many times I’ve had my personal Computer Geek here to actually set up Windows 10 for me?? Let alone coming back to tweak all that I couldn’t do myself? Don’t ask. He sits down and works magic on my harddrive in no time at all. Me? I sit down and say to myself: what the fuck are they talking about? It kills me how he knows every OS know to man, inside and out. Which basically means:

To really grasp this new operating system, you kinda have to have plenty of discretionary income so you can PAY the Geek. Which I did happily, btw. Because finally… YAY. I’M NOW GOOD TO GO. Hence, I now pretty much know what I’m doing. Well, kinda.