Thursday, May 10, 2018

"Windows Update"

     You got it, too, unless you're within the Apple/Mac ecosystem or are some kinda *nixer.  Twenty minutes of "Windows is updating.  Do not turn off your computer" and a count that reached "48% done" twice.

     Twenty minutes of my life that I'm not going to get back.  At least I was running hot water into the bathtub and eating breakfast while I watched the spinning dots.

     And once it is all over, after I have found out the battery in my hand-me-down iPad is dead and my Surface RT has decided it doesn't want to play nice with the Bluetooth keyboard (a Lofree, excellent keyboard but they keep tweaking the colors and raising the price), then the machine boots and I learn it has All!  New!!  FE4TURZ!!! none of which I wanted.

     Where's the "patch the problems but leave the rest of it alone" option?  I'm getting along with Windows 10 pretty well, almost as well as with its predecessors, though never as well as with MS-DOS and certainly not as comfortably as I did with CP/M.  (Oh, how I miss CP/M and the tiny computers it ran on, which forced programmers to write tight code if they wanted the stuff to run at all; but I digress and besides, it didn't do color or pictures, which makes it about the same as landline telegraphy to the modern mind).

     It's 2018 and my computer's into self-improvement.  Physical Jerks on the telescreen are next, I suppose, and participation is mandatory.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, CP/M. Back in the day, I knew what every file was, and what every component in my computer was. I also bet that I could do 80% of my current word processing using Wordstar (or WRITE). Still have a couple of the old beasts.

Eck! said...

I don't miss CP/M, I can still reach over and boot a AMPROLB+ or Kaypro 4/84.
However networking is a bit beyond it without a Rpi bridge.

But due to M$ over the years I had to (sanities sake) abandon Mickyspooge
for Linux and one lone MacBook. The basic reason is I want the thing to do
work not spend time doing updates and recovery. Its very annoying when a
"update" kills something I require, need or use. My favorite windows negative
exclamation is where did they move it to now or what its newest name for that
thing that does mumble. I did that from Win-1.0 though 10. At NT4s' end I
declared enough, and went Ubuntu. It was a a fortuitous choice. I have
machines from '07 still running it (remember the Eeepc net book?) without
the OS saying sorry your not allowed for that.

My sympathies. It takes a bit to make the jump and time to recover from the
effort. I used Win10 at work, I hope that winders keep the model of extension
and improvement as then maybe they will not abandon it when it starting to
mature.

Eck!


dave in indiana said...

LOL, LOL, LOL....I've been away for a while Robby, it's great to see you're still here! Sorry that the first thing I read was a b**** fest about technology changes that I too have to deal with, but I feel your pain. If you think about it in a perverse way you'll come to the conclusion that we have career politicians for almost the exact same reasons, the bastards....

Paul said...

Well, you get old programmers/operators/tech gathered you will get the benefits of every old OS there ever was. I know I remember those days fondly, but mostly because most users did not know how anything worked.

Now that we have computers in every thing and the current generation has grown up in them they are all now experts in all things computing.

They still do not understand how long it takes to develop stuff or how hard it is to decode what another programmer stood up. Makes for timelines that won't be met.

Now the asylum is run by the inmates. Can't see where this will work long term.

Jerry said...

What was the line; "If the software works, keep improving it until it doesn't."

I was running three Win 7 computers when 10 came along M$ updated 1, said they would update the second but never did and refused to update the third because it had onboard video. Go figure. I liked 7. My one computer running 10 may develop a case of Linux any day now.

Will said...

What I've heard about Win10 is that not only is it on the cloud, but it is a keylogger system. Not confirmed, so far.

So, my new laptop is still sitting in the box, and I'm looking into whether I can dual-boot it with Linux, or if I should just wipe it and go Linux only.