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He made “Don’t Tase me, Bro!” a national meme. But computer updates are way more terrifying.
The other morning when I turned on my computer it was not my computer, it was a complete stranger. It demanded a password, which I had never used. My desktop icons were gone, my preferences obliterated, many of my links disabled. My lock screen no longer displayed my favorite family picture. My default browser was now Microsoft’s Edge instead of Google’s Chrome, my default email was now Outlook instead of Gmail, on and on. More importantly all my file folders, including one containing a fairly complex tax return in progress, were gone. When I clicked on the shortcut to the tax return it locked up the computer.
It was, of course, a Microsoft 10 update, done without notice or permission in the middle of the night. (In every place I know about, I have disabled automatic updates and “required” notice and permission.) After two days of hard work and research, I located my files — they had been moved to a subdirectory called Users — and put them back in the regular folders so the links and shortcuts would work again. I reset my preferences, got back to what I was doing and was pretty much back to normal.
Somebody will ask why I did not make backups. Two reasons. One, I have never lost a file in three decades of heavy computer use. And two, virtually everything I work on now is in the cloud on Google Docs, mirrored on my computer. Except for things like a tax return that the tax software stuck in my personal files (without asking me if that’s there I wanted it).
Thursday morning I booted my computer and it was my old friend, back again — as it had been before the update, all preferences and links in place as before. Except all my personal files were missing, again, and this time not to be found in any subdirectory. They are gone.
After an hour on hold, I am told by Microsoft’s Department of Customer Contempt that they have no responsibility for the consequences of their twice rearranging and obliterating the contents of my personal, wholly-owned computer, and that I should go hire someone who might care.
And then they did it again, surreptitiously, and a few days after that announced with joy that the April Windows update was available and what time would I like to surrender my computer to them for another renovation?
These intrusions into my personal and professional life, these hijackings of my personal, wholly-owned (or so I thought) property, have motivated me to do whatever it takes to get a total and irrevocable divorce from Microsoft, and all its works, as soon as I am able, so that I can henceforth affirm that “I don’t do Windows.”
Microsoft is hardly alone in this. I loved my Android smartphone when I first got it, but it has been updated to within an inch of its life. It is now so stuffed with great new apps that I do not use, do not want, and do not even know about, that it takes up to a half hour to boot, half that time with a flag up that says something like, “So sorry, Moto seems to have stopped.” When Moto is not stopped, it is counting down 82 apps that must be “optimized” before I can make a phone call. I actually use maybe 10 apps.
At the moment I am being urgently reminded that I need to approve an update for my Korean language input device. I never, on principal, approve any update, for anything, so I am not responding about my Korean input thingie. After a day or two of nagging, they just do it anyway.
I can’t bring myself to hate the code writers who are wreaking this havoc on me. Bless their hearts, they are so far removed from human company and mores that they think I want to have heart-to-heart conversations with Stella, or whatever the hell my computer’s name is. They think I’m grateful for new and complicated and graphically hysterical ways to do ordinary tasks. They don’t realize, I’m sure, the degree to which they are being intrusive.
If I had the chance to do a little remedial outreach, I would don my jack-boots, kick down their door in the middle of the night, duct-taped them to their bed and change out all their furniture and favorite brands of coffee and booze to brands that I prefer. “There,” I would say on departing, “Fixed it for ya.”
Your attitude regarding these techno goings-on can only be described as ‘quaint'(I was tempted to write ‘Neanderthal’ but demurred, as I’ve been banned from certain blogsites for making such caustic observations).
The Millennials were born and raised in the computer age, and are thus capable of putting up a worthy struggle with the new technosphere*…in much the same way our primal ancestors carried on a love-hate relationship with the fickle forces of nature. But old farts like us wither before the onslaught of the new plastic-metal electro gods.
Oh, the machines started out innocently enough; the spear, plow, fishhook, wheel and the like gave us some control over the natural environment. But their power and diversity metastasized, and, in short order, they came to dominate and weaken us, in much the same way that we had bungaholed Mother Nature over the centuries.
The newly-arrived thinking machines helped us ‘interface’ with other humans, but now the AI generation computers are using humans to interface with other computers. The biological format is all but obsolete.
‘personal, wholly-owned computer’…oxymoron of the year!
*Dmitry Orlov, I believe
Ubuntu is an open source software operating system that runs from the desktop, to the cloud, to all your internet connected things
https://www.ubuntu.com/
Short learning curve and unobtrusive, Tom. Less time than one phone call to windows customer no service.
I recognise the symptoms there Tom, that’s Windows 10, I can read page after page on other forums of the diabolical outcomes for the ‘customers’ (Basically everybody who uses it) of this malevolent and intrusive so called operating system. I note that like a bad joke it was originally offered free to users of older systems, um thought about what free usually means and ignored it and then got rid of the presence.
I do think your being unreasonably charitable to the designers and software engineers, this was deliberately and carefully planned, it is no accident. I call it a form of ransomware, one day Win 10 users are going to find it is locked or fails to operate and be advised that it now requires a ‘small’ annual fee to continue to be yours for the period of the fee. Thats what they want and that is what they will get.
Go to an O/S or Linux system as soon as you can, all the stuff you do will happen there just the same.
My, how Microsoft has quite visually come to be and represent everything reprehensible about the state of the corporate business model, their mindset, their contempt for customers and their absolute refusal to take responsibility for the damage and distress they cause. I think it used to be what was quaintly called a monopoly.
Seems your system now filters out criticism of the bastards at MS as well. Last post vanished. Windows 10 gotta love it, not.
Knobs, switches, and honest to God real dials! Digital nightmares are the mark of the beast. Don’t want a “smart” phone? No food for you!
It took me four paragraphs to say what you have said in four sentences!
No need to mirror my Win 10 experience. I finally paid $90.00 extra to get a 17 inch Dell laptop w Windows 7 Pro installed. OK ever since. Install win 10 and it is MS’s property forever! Where are the class action lawyers?
P.S. Windows and Kaspersky updates seem to challenge each other.
Arnie A.
when I got my new android phone, I arranged for my photos to be backed up in google’s cloud for “free” and synched with my laptop. How nice, I thought. No more worries about lost photos.
Then I got messages from google that they had created photo albums for me of stuff I had taken photos of a year ago and so on.
And they labeled the albums with the name of the place where they were taken. How did they know this? I did a little searching and found out that when you upload photos to their cloud, they go trough them with one of their programs that compares the photos with their street view photos to figure out where they were taken. This works for where ever their little streetview cars have driven around. Apparently not in China or Russia. So now they have a complete dossier on all the places that I have taken photos on my laptop.
This explains why the automatic backup service is “free”. Google and facebook and apple are doing the legwork for the spooks. In effect, I am paying taxes so that the government can outsource surveillance to the nice folks that give us all the “free” apps.
I’m thinking I should get royalties from these people for selling my data to the government and whoever else wants to know where I have been at all times.
There’s a reason why I never go online with my cell phone or even enable it to go online. Glad I have zero addiction to it — and glad that up to now it has always had exactly only the apps I want (which I download from online using my PC and then install into the cell phone), no more.
As for Windows 10, remind me never even to think of installing it. I’m sticking to good old Windows 7!
Four obvious solutions to take back your life:
1. The cheapest flip phone that you can find.
2. iMac with OS X.
3. Never store anything on the cloud. Get one of these or similar: https://smile.amazon.com/Elements-Portable-External-Drive-WDBU6Y0020BBK-WESN/dp/B06W55K9N6/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1527266077&sr=1-3&keywords=external+hard+drive
Turn it on, copy everything you want to save to it, turn it off – frequently.
4. Get this software (or similar): https://ghostery.zendesk.com/hc/en-us
Use that software to block everything they throw at you.
I hate it when others post their entire CV, but:
Built my first computer in 1978.
Certified Oracle DBA
Certified microsoft admin
Wrote C, C++, PLSQL, etc for 20 years.
Im writing this on an iMac purchased in early 2008. I have never had an issue of any type with the OS.
Tried to post some help … can’t. Guess you’re on your own, bro.
Thanks very much for the advice. Posts with multiple links go automatically into moderation until I get a chance to review them, thus the lag time.
I am still on windows 7, and I plan to use it till my computer dies. For my next computer, I think I’m going to have to try something like Ubuntu. I don’t want to deal with Windows 10.
Tom, perhaps they don’t realize the degree to which they are being intrusive, but that’s because they don’t care what you think – you’re last century, old, a Luddite, and don’t understand what’s good for you or society.
Their arrogance and righteousness is unmatched – pure dogma. Same for their greed and lust for power/control. Like the oil industry (all big industry really) they are essential to the empire, security-surveillance state & MIC and thus operate with near impunity – criminals.
Ignore the hype over big tech. Its products are mostly useless
“…the revolution they represented is old now, and nothing comparable has come along for more than a decade.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/21/big-tech-products-silicon-valley
Hi Tom,
You can downgrade to Windows 7 using your Windows 10 license. There are websites on how to do this. I avoid Windows 10 like the plague.
Chris
Microsoft kept urging me to upgrade to Windows 10 — but I suspected that it would wipe out the drivers for peripherals, like my ten-year-old scanner/printer, which works fine. Shenanigans like this have made media and communications become a major money pit. I didn’t want to deal with another unnecessary headache.
I´ve gone back to reading and seldom use the PC if it weren’t for some mails and the use of Wikipedia and the papers, which by the way are full of shit, so being honest I´m going back to my 20 ties, while being 78, and don’t miss anything.To end it I never bought a cell phone either
This article is spot on!!!
It took me awhile to (begrudgingly) give up Windows XP and go to Windows 7 because one of my favorite games was no longer getting updated on XP. Now once I finally got used to 7, they bring Windows 10 along and it is by far the most patronizing, yet at the same time totalitarian computing experience I’ve ever had.
Now, you will have to pry Windows 7 from my cold, dead hands before I go to Windows 10 for my every day personal computer. I have Windows 10 on my work computer, and it sucks! Hangs up and lags at every inopportune time.