Computer Doctor of Hampden

Where is my start button!

The year is 1995, no wait that was 17 years ago… It seems a lifetime since the quantum shift from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95. What is my litmus test for quantum change? Stick a teenager on a Windows 95 machine and they will be able to get around, albiet begrudgingly. Put that same teen on a Windows 3.11 machine and depending on the crowd and their upbringing  a WTF will soon be issued.

This was exactly how I felt when I downloaded a pre release of Windows 8.  WTF? Where is my start button, what are these widgety things, how do I find my “real desktop” and come on Redmond this looks cool, but my desktop is not an iPad.

I get it, no I really do. Change is in the wind, the PC is a complex device capable of so many things and relied upon more and more everyday, by more people to do more things. So what is the problem? Market penetration is my guess. Call it simplification, or dumbing down or spoon feeding the masses, computing is not easy for everyone, so everyone doesn’t own one or two or three. Believe it or not there are people that don’t have a smart phone, tablet, laptop and desktop. But just imagine if a company could make a simple interface, sort of like an iPad that would work and look the same regardless of the device. Welcome to Windows 8.

It is a brave new world of technology and Microsoft is jumping into the future with both feet. The legacy desktop that greets us every morning is not the first thing you will see when you fire up your PC. You will however see smart tiles that portray basic information pulled from “apps” yes, I said apps not programs. The software model is too lucrative for MS to ignore. Selling small, purpose built applications available instantly from their store, MS wants to cash in on the short money sales. Easier to part with $2.99 than worry about plunking down$299 for office, especially when all you need is word and excel. I’ll take my software ala carte please…

So welcome to 1995 all over again. We will all beta test Windows 8 for MS, just like we bought Vista, you remember that buggy short lived platform that bought MS some time to get Win7 stable. I am sure Win9 will be out in Q1 of 2014 and be the polished, tweaked and stable version of Win8 we should be getting now.

Personally, I will get one of the new MS surface devices which will drag me into Win8, probably learn to love it and if it suits my fancy, it may lead to a Windows phone purchase. I am not planning to install Win 8 on my desktop anytime soon, I have little hair left to pull out these days and frankly just want things to work right so I can get right to work.

Want more info or a personal recommendation for new hardware? Feel free to contact me !

(written on my iMac)

Microsoft seems to hit the mark with operating systems about 50% of the time. Going back to when I first installed windows, Windows 3.1 worked remarkably well and having just repaired an old 486/dx33 computer running 3.11 last week , it was amazingly fast. I was lucky enough to attend one of the Microsoft launch conferences for Windows 95, while it was the biggest GUI leap to date, it was not without it’s bugs and performance issues. By the time the Windows 98 Second Edition came along the operating system was a stable and well supported platform.

The next release for consumers was Windows Millennium, this version was also very short lived and plagued by driver issues and continual freeze ups. Microsoft hit it out of the park with Windows XP, by utilizing the core file system of Windows NT the NTFS file system the OS was more stable and user friendly. XP is like an old friend, still deployed in millions of computers world wide the OS will no longer be supported in 2014, once that happens it is pretty much useless. Keep that in the back of your mind if you are still clinging to XP.

Microsoft’s next faux paus was Windows Vista, responding to the increasing market share of Apple OSX, Microsoft tried to incorporate the “eye candy” of OSX and a layer of security by adding the user access control layer, all those wondefull little pop ups that ask you if you want a program to do something. What Vista brought along with it was a huge jump in system requirments, both processor and ram. If you are running a Vista system with anything less that 2 GB of ram you are really dragging your heals. Along with the elegant Aero interface  Vista brought along extened start up times, unforeseen freeze ups, failed critical system updates which can render the system useless, the “black screen of death” is much more lethal than the XP “BSOD”.

So my theory is that everyone who purchased a computer with Windows Vista was no more than a beta tester for Windows 7. As we ponied up the cash to buy new laptops with Vista, we logged complaint after complaint about it’s short comings and Microsoft had all the feedback it could ever want to put together the next version, which really could have been Vista SP4,

the one that actually works. Instead of fixing it’s Vista mess Microsoft sold us Windows 7 and we seem to finally be back to a stable operating system for the moment.

Good news is that if you purchased a laptop with Vista, it should run better with Windows 7. Hardware wise the operating system manages resources better so it can breathe life into your relatively new Vista machine.

To maximize the upgrade, I recommend doing a clean installation, this means backing up your data, formatting the drive, installing the operating system, applying updates, reinstall your programs and transfer your data back. If you would like to rid yourself of the Vistas nightmare, Computer Doctor offers an upgrade service, the process can usually be completed within 24 hours. We can also evaluate your current hardware and make recommendations if you are ready to upgrade.