Old Paint, New Windows

Well, I'm surprised. Yesterday I mentioned a missing file, assuming it was a trivial fix. As it happens, it wasn't trivial. There was disk corruption. Hubby restored it for now, though I'm still nervous about running WoW. The troubleshooting process was bad enough that starting today, we're shopping for a new computer.

I wish Old Paint had waited a year before developing symptoms. They're still selling  computers with Windows 8 on them at the stores. Microsoft seems to have an 'every-other-OS' jinx. Check out its last 6 operating systems:

• Windows 95 - good
• Windows ME - bad
• Windows XP - good
• Vista --------- bad
• Windows 7 -- good
• Windows 8 -- bad

Windows 10 has been announced and previewed. It looks like they got it right, so the pattern continues. I'm just sad that Windows 10 won't hit the shelves until 2015 is well underway.

I've whined about Windows 8 before. It's for mobile customers, designed to be used on phones and tablets. Both my phone and my desktop start out displaying > a dozen brightly-colored tiles. Each tile is big enough to touch. Touch the 'Music' tile and you can listen to music. Touch the 'Store' tile and you can shop for more apps.

Trouble is, I don't want those tiles on my desktop. (Frankly, I don't want them on my phone either, but that's another blog.) There used to be a 'Start button' that displayed every application installed on my computer. I could pick the one I wanted to run. Then I could pick another one, and another, and run several things at once. With Windows 8.1 I still can, but it takes customization and hoop-jumping before it can happen. It used to just work.

I'm currently writing a blog, reading a preview of Windows 10 (Whoo-HOOO! It has a 'Start button'), checking my email, and playing solitaire. Since you can't do that on a phone-sized screen, the 1-size-fits-all paradigm doesn't make sense to me.

A shopping trip yielded no appropriate machines to buy, so I hope Old Paint can limp along for another year. I'll try to keep him healthy, cool and clean until New Paint is in the stable and Windows 10 is saddle-ready. Then Old Paint can retire to that great Linux afterworld where traffic is lighter and there is no Warcraft.