Friday, June 24, 2011

Dear Windows 7...

Dear Windows 7,

It was with great reluctance that I was forced to admit the machine I had owned and cherished for eight long years was no longer sufficient for my computing needs; great reluctance, and no small measure of trepidation. I know it makes me something of an oddity these days, but when it comes to my electronics, I do not like even slight change. And when finding a replacement for an almost decade-old PC, drastic change is inevitable.

During the new computer selection process, I was able to take some comfort in the recollection of the many advertisements put together to assure me that Windows 7 is, in fact, the best thing ever. In particular, a commercial featuring a young French woman came to mind, a woman whose vision reached so far into the uncharted that she was apparently one of the first people to realize a computer that did not crash all the time would be a really really good thing. I was quite frankly awestruck that anyone would even attempt to integrate a quality like “not consistently broken” into an operating system, but clearly it was something Windows 7 had done.

And done brilliantly, if I’m any judge. I’ve had my new computer for just over a month now, and she has yet to “crash”.

We have function-free interludes, and she does enjoy a good game of “Let’s See Who Can Find the Manual Restart Button”. And these things look like “crashing” because we humans are so conditioned by society to believe that a computer stopping in the middle of doing something and refusing to do anything further until we intervene has “crashed”, but I’m sure that’s just us projecting our own feelings of inadequacy onto our machines. They are actually Interactive Windows 7 Process Adjournments, and that is very different.

Very different, and obviously so much better. I really don’t know how to thank you.

Sincerely,
A PC whose idea was not Windows 7

7 comments:

  1. I'm still using XP. I am soooooo lame.
    (I heard horror stories about Vista though)

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  2. process adjournments. haha!
    - middlerage

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  3. EB, you're talking to the woman who was running Windows 3.1 right up until the moment it became literally impossible to find software it could work with. My old machine had XP and I was absolutely fine with it. If it hadn't been so much cheaper to get a machine that had Windows 7 already loaded, I wouldn't have done it. So in my eyes, you are not and will never be lame <3

    And thank you, MR, i was kinda proud of that one ;)

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  4. And the computer always senses when I am in a hurry and need to shut the it down and get to class on time or whatever. I've learned to watch very carefully for that little orange shield on the shutdown button, lest I end up, with two minutes until I have to be somewhere else, with the message "Installing updates. Please do not power down or unplug your computer."

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  5. Yes, it always seems to know the worst possible time to not let you just walk away. Maybe there's facial recognition software linked to the webcam programmed to look for "known harried/anxious/impatient expression", and that's what triggers the updates to install...

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  6. :))

    I just bought a box with Win 7 on it. I'm having a heap of problems with apps and hardware that don't like 64 bits though. Not Windoze fault - but...

    Then - I'm so like you! I have a box in the corner that still has Win98 on it. Again an issue with software that wouldn't run correctly under XP.

    Punish them for me Harl... be a darl!

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  7. Were it within my power to punish them, you know I would. As it is, all I can do is fall back on the old adage of living well being the best revenge.

    So next time around, I'll probably be buying a Mac ;)

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