Why the Need to Keep Changing Windows?

By now, everyone has heard the bad news: Windows 11 is coming. Later this year on new computers and next year for upgrades. We can only hope some kind of virus delays the rollout.

It’s been five years (I waited nearly a year after its release) since Windows 10 forced itself onto my old HP laptop. Unable to figure out how to stop it, I watched helplessly as it completed the upgrade from Windows 7.

Although I solicited advice from a guy who works in a university’s computer department about reverting to 7, ultimately I decided everything was headed in the update’s direction. So I might as well get used to it.

Joy of Windows 7

Oh, how I loved Windows 7, particularly the Ultimate operating package one of our grandsons had installed on the HP before I bought it from him.
A friend had installed the Home Premium edition on my desktop, but I discovered that I liked the laptop much better.

My friend insisted there was no difference between Ultimate and Home Premium, but that didn’t prove true for me.

In the brief time I used Home Premium before making the laptop my preferred mode of operation, I was bombarded with pop-up ads, solicitations to update my drivers, and other nuisance material.

No such problems with Ultimate. It was an ad-free, fairly hassle-free method of computing. For about four years, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Resisting Change

That I delayed going to Windows 10 as long as possible shows how much I didn’t want to change. Once I did, I shifted from Groove back to Media Player and from the new photo viewer to the old version, wondering why Microsoft tried to fix something that wasn’t broken.

While that may make me sound like a dinosaur, just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s better. My old XP remains my favorite place to play Spider Solitaire, which has been replaced by inferior knock-offs in Windows 10.

You might ask: so why don’t I change systems? Several people, including my brother, have told me about the superior performance of Macs. Each time I tell them the same thing: “I don’t the money nor the time for the learning curve.”

I also am hesitant to make the switch because of a story I heard from the founder of my freelance editors group. When some family members asked what she wanted for her birthday, she asked for a new Mac. On her next birthday, she asked for a PC to replace the Mac.

Lack of Expertise

The only saving grace of this never-ending change in operating systems is that since I’m not an expert in any of them, I don’t have a lot of old things to unlearn. Nor do I understand many of the new wrinkles.

I’ve been good at missing updates too. I hung with Windows 3.1 and skipped 95, until problems with some old drivers convinced me to upgrade to Windows 98. Then I skipped Millennium Edition until XP came along.

When Microsoft announced it would end support for XP, I grudgingly went to Windows 7. However, I gladly missed Windows 8 and 8.1, since I heard several tales of woe from others who had made the change.

For now, I will wait for 11, resigned to one day having to adopt it. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.