May 20, 2016
Dear Everyone:
Torpedoed!!!
Yesterday morning, I turned my
computer
on, just briefly as I was heading out the door at an early hour.
As has happened innumerable times in the past, up popped that
annoying “offer” to upgrade to
Windows 10,
again. And as I have done
innumerable times in the past, I clicked “close”, again, and went to
take care of something else.
When I came back, the computer screen displayed a message:
“Configuring update for Windows 10.
Please do not shut off your computer.”
That’s right.
Microsoft decided
not to take “No” for an answer and launched the update without my
permission. Instead, the
computer displayed, “Your PC will turn on and off a number of times.”
There were lots of cutesy messages, like:
“Your files are right where you left them.”
What it didn’t say was, “But you can’t get to them from here.”
At the time, I didn’t have time to anything more than quote our dear,
departed Mother: “Shoot!
And that’s not what I mean.”
So I left the computer running and went off on a day trip to
Half
Moon Bay with a friend from
Portland.
Many, many hours later, when I got home, I found that Windows 10 had
completed its installation.
Needless to say, things had changed.
For one thing, the “Start
Screen” was gone. Guess
enough people didn’t like it.
Instead, the Good Old
Desktop
was once again in place, along with the
Task Bar across the
bottom of the screen. Only
the little icons for applications that I use frequently were all shoved
over to the right to make room for something called “Cortana”.
Cortana is Microsoft’s answer to the iPhone’s “Siri”.
It’s an “intelligent
personal assistant” that, theoretically, can answer questions, set
reminders and do lots of other things which, like the
microwave oven
and heated car seats, start out looking like a luxury, then turn into an
absolute necessity. Or not.
One of the first things I asked Cortana was how to get rid of it.
No such luck. But I
did stumble across a helpful little entry on a website called
“how-to-geek” that showed how to make the icon smaller, thus making room
for all the more important apps.
One problem solved.
One down, 27,000,000 to go.
The second thing I discovered is that
Internet
Explorer has been replaced with the new Microsoft “Edge”
(spelled c-r-a-p). One of
the second things I discovered is that when I opened my email in Edge, I
couldn’t print any messages.
This can present a problem.
I used “Cortana” to search on “unable to print email from Edge” and
found that many, many people have already reported the problem.
(These people are called “Early
Adapters”, also known as “lab
rats”. They find the
problems earlier than the rest of us.)
Apparently, this problem has been around since last December.
Microsoft immediately put out a detailed, seven-page answer, with
illustrations, that had nothing to do with the problem, basically blamed
the whole thing on your printer, and ended with, “I hope that answers
your question.” This is
similar to a politician who, when asked about his Foreign Policy,
answers with, “There has to be unity!”
One of the other things I discovered was that my Favorites Bar, while
appearing in place, doesn’t work very well.
I used to be able to single-click one entry, then slide the
cursor (little arrow) to highlight the sub-entry, then the next
sub-entry and so on.
Example: RIM > ARMA > Local
Chapters > Mt Diablo Chapter.
Now everything is shoved over to the right in a really big bar
and it takes about a dozen clicks to get to what I need.
I looked that one up, too.
The answer: There is no
answer. Live with it.
This, of course, is just the beginning.
Microsoft has a business model that proclaims:
“Release it now. Fix
it later.” Or never.
When I spoke on the phone with “Jeannie” last night, she reported that
the same thing had happened to her on one of her computers.
So it now appears that, if you have been “avoiding” the “free
upgrade to Windows 10”, your days are numbered.
It might be better to “accept” the “free upgrade” at a time of
your own choosing, and “adapt” on your own time line, rather than
letting it just happen to you when you least expect it, and can least
afford to have your computer hijacked for the better part of a day.
To quote “Jeannie”: “No
sh-kidding!”
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |