On a Windows Weekly Show…Long Ago

A professional Microsoft journalist admitted that a laptop she owned “kind of didn’t work after she started upgrading it to later versions of Windows 10”. And meanwhile, my dear mother repeatedly asked me why her “beloved” version of Outlook (2007) randomly crashed on startup and thereafter, point blank refused to launch until it had been reinstalled.

The answer? Again, Windows 10 updates. I ultimately had to write a batch file that automatically disabled all background processes relating to Windows update every time her system started up. It’s rather ironic that the very feature purported to make our computers more secure and easier to use frequently behaves exactly like the viruses it is supposed to protect us against – the countdown to reboot being a classic example.

Moreover, I would argue that Windows 10, like its successor had next to nothing to offer 90+ percent of users irrespective of their personal or professional needs. It was just a concerted effort by Microsoft to resell the Windows platform and its core applications as a “subscription service” over which they have full control at ALL times.

Add to that a browser that never worked properly and was subsequently rebuilt as Chrome 2, an app store that anyone in the know considers a joke, Trojan like telemetry and updates that frequently rendered your applications unusable, deleted your data or at worst, corrupted your entire OS. Still, there was always Direct X 12!