January 24, 2020
Dear Everyone:
Last week I decided to buy myself a new laptop computer.
Not that there is anything wrong with my current laptop, Sebastian,
except that he’s now two years old and counting.
That’s well past middle age in Computer Years.
The average computer is designed to last just about two years.
By that time, the manufacturer figures, all the upgrades and newer
operating systems will designate it as “approaching obsolescence”.
So I’ll “be on the lookout” (BOLO) for a newer laptop to replace
Sebastian.
However, this newest laptop, is to replace the Microsoft Surface Tablet,
Perdita, which I acquired a year ago last summer.
I used Perdita mostly in the bedroom, keeping track of my morning
Blood Pressure ritual, and for looking things up when I didn’t want to
have to go all the way out to the living room.
The problem with that, of course, was that by the time I reached
Sebastian in the living room, I would have forgotten what it was I
wanted to look up.
I also took Perdita with me to the Senior Community Center on Tuesday
afternoons, and roughly every other Saturday, when “Jeannie” and I would
join others in the Needle Arts meetings at the public library.
Perdita was always willing to look up movie details and knitting
patterns on the Internet.
However, Perdita had at least two major flaws as far as I was concerned.
The first was the touchpad.
Call me “old-fashioned”, but I still prefer a mouse over the
touchpad. Of course, the
tablet, like all the newer products, has a touch screen.
But, apart from the overall “ick” factor, I just prefer using a
mouse.
Perdita didn’t come with a mouse, or even a standard Type-A Universal
Serial Bus (USB) port to plug a mouse into.
Instead, Perdita has a Type-C USB port.
A mouse for that port would cost over $100, instead of less than
$20.
The other thing is that, lacking a Type-A USB port, Perdita couldn’t use
a “flash drive” to facilitate copying information from one laptop to
another. There have been
several times when it would have been so simple to copy something from
Sebastian and have it ready to use on Perdita, except for that missing
piece.
Of course, I could use Microsoft’s “One Drive” to copy data, except that
it hasn’t worked for me. The
idea is that I have a location “in the cloud” to store data, then I can
access it from any device.
There are two basic flaws in this approach.
First, it assumes that I always have access to the Internet.
This is not always the case.
The second is the assumption that all of my various devices,
including three laptops, a cell phone, and a tablet, can all connect to
the same location “in the cloud”.
I have tested this assumption at various times and found it to
not be the case. Apparently,
my “One Drive” only applies to each device and none of the others.
As Winnie the Pooh would say, “Oh, bother!”
So I went ahead and got a new laptop which has not one, but two Type-A
USB ports, so I can use a $17 wireless mouse and a flash drive both at
the same time. It’s a
“Win-Win”.
Also, in the course of recent events, I have learned to avoid the
Microsoft “S-Mode” trap, which comes pre-loaded with Windows 10 on all
new computers. This is what
Microsoft calls its “Safe Mode”.
It’s intended to save the user from the aggravation of having
various applications (“apps”) tangling with each other, thus causing
conflicts.
Interestingly, Microsoft may actually have got this idea from my former
Company. Over 20 years ago,
the Company initiated something it called the Global Information Link.
The idea was that everyone in the Company would use the same make
and model of computer, along with what they called the “Core Bundle” of
software products.
If a department wanted to use another software application, it had to be
“integrated”, which meant testing to prove it would not “break” the Core
Bundle. Fast-forward a
couple of decades and the Company was working on the third generation of
Global Information Link, this time in “partnership” with Microsoft.
And now, Microsoft is using the same approach.
If you want to buy another application, you have to go through
Microsoft’s Store to make the purchase.
I found out about this a few years ago, when I tried to download
my usual antivirus software from the manufacturer.
Instead, I was gently pushed into the Microsoft Store, where the
“exact” same thing was available, at a price.
I already had a multiple-device license for the software, but the Store
hoodwinked me into subscribing to another license through Microsoft.
In time, I figured out what had happened and made sure to cancel
the wholly unnecessary subscription.
I also discovered how to avoid that mess again.
The first time I tried to download the antivirus software on the newest
computer, the system took me to a page “explaining” why I didn’t want to
buy anything that wasn’t “blessed” by Microsoft.
It was a very simple thing to “Get” out of S-Mode at that point.
And with that, “Ganymede” is up and running very well, thank you.
Tally-ho!
Love, as always,
Pete
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