On The Other Side of a Reformat

Testing. Testing. One. Two. Three. [Blows into microphone]

I’m back. Or I think I’m back. I have a word-processor installed and I can access the internet with sound. I know… With sound! Send the lad to the butcher’s shop with thruppence. We’re eating best snout tonight! By that time, I might even have some graphics software installed so I can starting working again. I quiver with excitement at the possibilities...

Long story abbreviated: I had to reformat my PC and buy a new hard drive, which I did via my new favourite online store, www.aria.co.uk (thanks Zebra!). Wish I’d been paid for that ad but I snagged a huge hard drive for not much more than price I'd been quoted locally for one much much smaller. I now have a vast desert of empty disc space ahead of me, more than a man could ever imagine filling. Though I’m sure I said that back when I bought my first 100Mb hard drive.

This experience has taught me a few things but my main realisation was that I don’t like the direction that computing is heading. I’ve spent so many wasted hours trying to remember passwords for online accounts that Windows 8 frightened me by the extent to which we’re all meant to be connected 24/7. Frankly, I find social networking boring, can live without the trivial rubbish that’s sold in the various App stores, and can really do without knowing the latest celebrity news. Being connected isn’t something that I aspire towards and, in fact, as I’ve grown older, I find myself increasingly disconnecting myself from the media.

That said: one movie recommendation. ‘Get the Gringo’ is Mel Gibson’s best film in years and possibly – just possibly – the best of his career, if you don’t go in for the anti-English rhetoric of ‘Braveheart’. He's old, craggy, and simply brilliant in a film set inside a Mexican prison.

Dear Microsoft

If I had any shares in Microsoft, I think I'd sell them now. One hour into trying the preview build of Windows 8 and it's a nightmare *JUST DOING THE SIMPLE THINGS*. Such as finding out how to restart the machine. Such as trying to get things to work that worked so well under Windows 7. And it's very annoying having to pretend that my monitors are sitting on my lap because I have to physically swipe at/throw windows with the mouse to close them. I'm on a PC not a bloody tablet so stop making me get trendy with my mouse, swiping things hither and sodding thither.

I like the colours, though but not sure if I can live in this new environment.

[UPDATE: I'm back on Windows 7. Is that a record for a person taking an instant dislike to an operating system? I once tried to work under Linux and lasted about a month before frustration kicked in. It's actually quite sad to see what Microsoft have done. They have no reason to feel ashamed of Windows 7. I've found it, bar the odd quirk, just about the perfect operating system. I'm ran my PC off an install of it for longer than any other. Yet here they come, feeling somehow that they need to follow Apple and make the foolish decision to make a version of Windows that operates across all devices. Perhaps I'm a dinosaur in wanting to use a desktop PC but, for me, I don't want, need, or appreciate the touch screen refinements, the 'I'm not a PC' makeover. Windows 8 is set up for people who don't want to use PCs. It's for people who probably shouldn't be let anywhere near a PC. Windows 8 is to operating systems what 'Fifty Shades of Grey' is to well written books. Windows 8 is definitely not for me in its current state, and. judging from what I'm reading, I doubt if I'll ever make the migration. It's a flashy, ever-so-trendy colour-coordinated monstrosity.]