Windozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

One of the few times I've ever consciously succumbed to advertising was when Microsoft emerged from the dark ages and started to make computers act a bit more like my Mac. I really wanted a slice of the action and so I tried to run Windows on the Mac using a PC emulator. Several hours later I dropped the idea, aghast at the leaden progress of the loading process, but, considerably angered by the poor value of Macs compared with PCs, I made the great transition. Which is where I am now, typing on a PC laptop. I still think Macs are poor value in many ways, though they've improved a lot, and they do have some nice things going on in their operating system. After all this time I would expect Windows to be better than it is. After all, most of the world uses it; it's an immense operation; it's worth billions; and yet Windoze and Microsoft’s applications are really not much better, on the surface, than a Big Mac. They really do lack flair. One example struck me lately -- and I'm no computer nerd. When I want to search for a word in Internet Explorer I have to bring up a separate window, hunt for the word, and then close the window. Two windows. Boring! In Firefox the search window is part of the main window, and it starts searching as soon as you type; there’s no window to close. Exhilarating.

Then there are the little things. I bought an ancient Vaio recently to use in libraries. It’s light and portable, and it’s fine for a bit of Internet and typing. Sometimes I connect a USB device and every single time I get a little box that opens at the bottom of the screen saying something like, ‘I notice that this is a 1.1 USB port. Would you like me to look for a 2.0 port, which would be so much faster and altogether a better computing experience for you. Have a nice day.’ So I click on the box and the computer splutters and wheezes for a short while and it comes back with the message, ‘I’m so sorry. There simply isn’t a faster port on this computer. So you’re stuck with a really crappy transfer speed until you get rid of this rotting heap. Have a nice day.’ And I don’t see these messages again until next time I plug in a USB device. Well really, you think it would learn, don’t you.

And then there’s the trash. Every time I go to empty the bin I get an irritating message that asks me if I’m absolutely, 100% certain that I really want to empty the trash. Imagine what this would be like in real life. You go downstairs with your black bags and Bill Gates is standing beside the bins asking you if you’ve really thought the matter through. Are you sure? You’d strangle him. Whether you check or uncheck the box that’s supposed to switch this warning option on or off, you still get the box. Most annoying.

And why does Word keep reverting to US spelling? I’m not going to write ‘color’, not now, not ever. Is this a little piece of cultural imperialism? Why doesn’t the spelling occasionally skip from UK to French or Croatian? It would be a nice change. Ideally though, the Word document would stay with the default setting you think you’ve chosen in the first place. After all, it makes enough of a fuss at the time you make this life-changing decision.

I really do think it’s time somebody else designed our operating system and software. Too much of one company is never a good thing.