Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Tone it down a bit


The Coast of Malabar, the Chieftains with Ry Cooder.








It`s not all bad, relax, be happy, pay attention to the real good things of life, family, friends and love.



Monday, May 13, 2013

Start Windows 8

Windows 8 is not selling.
I was considering buying a new computer myself until I read about the Start button in Windows 8.
It doesn't exist.

This kind of confirms my suspicions that Microsoft Windows just has too many employees! They are all sequestered in the basements somewhere in Redmond growing long beards playing Angry Birds and hoping Bill Gates never ventures underground to bomb them. All these guys are trying desperately to rationalize their jobs. One guy is probably working on the Inside the Eyelid Windows 23! They think they NEED to come up with innovations.


So that's what do they do. They conspire together to invent something new and fresh every couple of years, and then tell senile old Bill that Windows needs it. Windows 98 over 95 for example; Vista over XP; 8 over 7. Gates of course goes for it because it will sell everyone something they didn't want all over again. But hundreds of thousands of businesses and offices are still using old reliable Windows XP and if it ain't broke ...

So we go from simply one click on a Start button, to seeing pretty colored tiles on screen and touching them to get somewhere. Of course all the MS Undergrounders have smart phones and tablets with touch screens in the hairy palms of their hands! Wow, it works wonderfully. But I think I hear metallic squeals and steam pipes rattling. So I told a sales guy about this, and he said it was easy in Windows 8, you just had to know things, then he went to a huge touch screen PC, clicked something, moused something, and went to the side of the screen and swept his finger along to reveal a purple sidebar that looked something like the old one except it was purple, and there on a purple background was a sort of a start button! I didn't know.

What they sort of forgot is that in the PC market, people are using desktop computers and laptops, but those screens are NOT touch enabled, and it is simply too far away to pause whatever I am doing and reach out and touch something even if they were! Many people have their keyboards on their laps, are leaning way back in their chairs and the Windows screen is eight feet away! Gorillas maybe, but not humans.

Mouses slowed down computering when they first came out. Stopped people from using keyboard clicks which had to be 75% faster than moving one hand away from the keys to center a mouse cursor on your subject word and maybe miss the click and delete the whole line instead of highlighting.

So now, Microsoft is promising to fix Windows 8 with an 8.1 update (that they may CHARGE for) which will bring back the start button. There are several third party alternatives available right now if you are finding it impossible to use 8. Or haven't even been able to START it yet!

And those uncombed MS Undergrounders have escaped detection for too long. It is the computer media who are to blame too for having only done what Microsoft TOLD them to do: herald the new Windows 8 and overlook its faults. As they do with EVERY new thing Microsoft comes out with. Instead of actually objectively using the new product. Of course this all could have been avoided by simply having an OS for tablets and smart phones, and a slightly different one for computers.

So the result is that desktop and laptop computers are gathering dust on the shelves of retailers because the rumor is proving true - too confusing and who wants a learning curve just because the nether-world brains need to keep their jobs?

So I guess Microsoft will fix the problem, just as the new touchscreen computers arrive on the shelves, we won't need them by then but some will probably even come with a long pointer stick with a felt top to reach the Start button.


Good grief.



The Indy 500 race is this month, will we hear  - "Gentlemen, TOUCH your engines." ?


Third party start buttons  -  startisback.2.0
                                          pokki.com