10 Jan
2012
10 Jan
'12
1:13 p.m.
The OS decides when I will install patches - never
mind that I need to
pick up my daughter at school, and my (former, replaced by a Mac) laptop
insists that *now* is the time it wants to take fifteen minutes to install
a patch (or, more likely, twenty or thirty of them) I didn't know about
when I booted up that day (i.e. I'm not blowing off patching requests).
Then when I restart the machine, it's another fifteen minutes while
meaningless messages scroll across my screen. (And if I don't restart
within some undefined period of time, the install seems to 'time out' and
must start all over again. None of this is explained.)
I don't know what windows are you using, but my Windows XP downloads the
patches (because I configured it to do so) and tells me they are avaiable,
to be installed whenever I want. And when I shutdown the system, it asks if
I want to shutdown installing patches or just shutdown.
To do the same things I did ten years ago (or five
years, or less), I must
purchase a new computer. I could understand if I was restricted in using
new and "exciting" things because of insufficient or absent hardware
resources, but Windows keeps sucking up more and more and MORE CPU cycles,
RAM and persistent store to do the same things I wanted to do ten years
ago - and often, more slowly. (See: Vista.) (Of course, Ubuntu seems
hellbent on the same path to perdition, but it's behind the MS curve.)
Well, I still uses Win2000 in a very old P3, and many friends do that.
My XP ran into a p4 machine (now an IBM T-60 dual core), and I still do
things I was able to do ten years ago without the NEED to upgrade the
machine. BTW, I know friends with P233 (yep!) notebooks running Win2000,
reading e-mail on outlook, using firefox and office. And they work with
that. It is a bit slow, but works.
Of course, none of my 5 PCs run anything beyond XP.
And don't get me started on MS-Office?. -- Ian
I used office 97 with the 2010 (or whatever) compatibility pack for
ages. Now I use Office XP because I got a copy for free...And it always
worked :o)