A couple of Rants

Warning – Technology Rant

I Skype with my son in Melbourne every other Thursday at 9:30am my time, 8:30pm his time.  This morning I switched on my windows 10 laptop (an old HP Elitebook 2540p) at 08:40.  I always go this process early so that it gives Windows and Skype time to sort them selves out.

The computer was obviously running very slowly but gave no indication as to why. After 25 minutes I decided to restart.  It took around 5 minutes to shut down and on restarting informed me it was reconfiguring my computer.  10 minutes later and it told me it was finished.  Except that the Task manager shows the hard drive still running at 100%.

So finally on hour after initial switch on the hard drive activity went down and my computer was ready to do some work for me instead of Bill Gates.

I am typing this on my Lenovo X200s running Windows 7 with the updates disabled and no anti-virus.  I have run it like this for years with no problems.  I finally updated to the latest version and installed all the updates just before the end on Windows 7 support, then switched off the updates again.  Every month or so I run msert to check, but it has never detected any problems.

I only bought the HP because the banks decided that Windows 7 wasn’t safe for on-line banking and I was worried they’d use this as an excuse if they lose my money. I use the Lenovo for everything except banking and Skyping (it doesn’t have a camera)

If guess if Microsoft ever came out with a bug free operating system, immune from attacks, everyone would buy it, and then never buy another system, and Microsoft engineers would be out of a job.  I’ve “sort of” done this with Windows 7 but quite a few newer programs are incompatible with older versions of Windows.  SO this keeps the whole software industry powering along.

End of Technology Rant

Update - I moved to a MacBook

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Warning Political Rant

The above reminds me of the SNP leadership!!  If Scotland were to ever get independence then the SNP would no longer be required as an independence party as they would have to fight elections on an equal footing.  This is why Nicola Sturgeon will stall any moves toward independence and ruthlessly put down anyone who may be a threat to her and her husband’s dominance.

End of Political Rant

Update 9/4/2024 - Four years on, Sturgeon gone, but still the SNP will not move to independence - different leader, same reason.