Technorants

I’ve been fascinated by computers since my first one, a humble Texas Instruments TI-99/4A given to me as a gift ages ago. My work machines were usually more capable, but had all the excitement of… work machines, designed for function and little else. And with the “help” of my office’s IT Department, it’s been more little else than even function.

I try to keep up on the latest in hardware and software, but often times have to wonder if some of the latest “advances” are more the result of bored engineers and developers trying to justify their existence. I find it pretty irritating to get a new version of software I’ve become quite comfortable with, only to find the bright and shiny new product is slower, more cumbersome, and more error prone than what it replaced. Worse, inevitably a feature I liked has been otherwise omitted or hidden.

Case in point, Vista. I started my computer career with dumb terminals, (and no comments about the operators of said terminals please), hooked into a mysterious IBM mainframe across the country. Said mainframe was very fast, crunched an amazing amount of data, and had all the excitement of an abacus. So it was very disappointing when IBM produced their first personal computer. It was relatively fast, crunched numbers well, but in effect was just a shrunken head version of their mainframes. Even the operating system was almost the same.

Fast forward to Microsoft’s attempts to make the computer more usable and interesting by mimicking Apple with Windows. In each version the computer became easier to use, and blatant copying of Apple’s innovations was purely intentional. Unfortunately this came without the stability of Apples. I was convinced a feature of Windows 95, was the wonders of the BSOD, (Blue Screen Of Death).

But with Windows XP, Microsoft pretty much got it right. It was on the whole more stable than previous versions and even pretty much forgiving of the torture my machines endure. So naturally they decided to replace it with a new version, Vista. Fortunately I knew enough to tweak it so it could do more or less what I want. But it’s still slower than XP. At least I found out how to turn off the very annoying User Access Control,(UAC), that constantly pops up with “allow or deny” every time you attempt to install or remove software. UAC is also the initials of the bioengineering company in the DOOM games whose creations run amok creating havoc everywhere.

I find this strangely disturbing.