Microsoft Needs Brakes

Rant cut from the link log, since it doesn't contain a link...

I noticed something interesting about this computer. Sponsors are paying for full connectivity, 24/7 if I could work 24/7, but the connection is usually feeble these days. The company has noticed this all over its service area; people have come out in trucks, pruned trees, tinkered with lines. The faltering connections continue. Sometimes the computer blames the router, sometimes the server. Sometimes rain really is affecting wireless connections. Then again, sometimes, like today, there's not a cloud in the sky and  not a leaf on a tree to affect wireless connections. So I checked my hardware in the "settings" window. Seems the computer is currently within range of four connections. The one the company still owns is Ethernet, the cord that plugs into the router box inside the house. I don't use that. The two that are supposed to maintain connectivity belong to Microsoft. Microsoft gives no reason why they've been consistently "non-operational" at least since January, when I started checking this. The connection has worked sporadically because it's a Realtek emergency connection that is "built" to last 24 hours at a time. Seriously.

I think Microsoft has a very bad case of hubris. Just as a guess, the Microsoft connections for which everyone who's put in a private connection has been paying are "older software," maybe three or four whole months old, that Microsoft wants the local company to replace with "updated" ones that cost more. I think we need a federal law about this. Microsoft needs to accept that the Waste Age is over, even if it has to be forced by law to stop trying to push "change" (meaning waste) and just maintain and repair existing devices for the next hundred years. I did not see computer centers with eight or ten computers for a neighborhood actually being crowded--the Gates Foundation had told people to limit visitors' access to computers so that more people would see unused computers, want to fiddle with them, and get sucked into Internet "games" and "chat"--but, if a felt need for privately owned computers really has been created, then ONE DEVICE PER PERSON PER LIFETIME needs to be the standard. Ten computers could easily meet the needs of a thousand people. One per person is more toxic waste than we should, ethically, tolerate.

Actually I bought two computers in my lifetime. The Amstrad didn't count; it was a piece of garbage that was on sale at a notoriously untrustworthy store in notoriously untrustworthy Rockville, Maryland. It was returned to the store within the week, and was their problem. Then I bought a decent little box from Radio Shack and enjoyed it for seven or eight years. That was the computer I intend to buy in this lifetime. The company went out of business, and the kind of floppy disks it relied on weren't being made any more, but it was still functional when a grateful client gave me the Brother "smart typewriter." Again the company went out of business and the floppy disks went off the market while the device was still functional. I still have both of those devices; don't know how corroded they are, but when last used they still worked. 

Anyway I worked for other grateful clients who gave me other last-year's-model computers that belonged to the current "generation" of computers--they could be connected to the Internet and used some form of Windows. The one I sold. The Perfect Toshiba Satellite, which I regretfully turned in for recycling, last summer, because its plastic case kept cracking and exposing working parts, making it unsafe to use. The Dell laptop named "The Sickly Snail" from its very best operating speed...I used it mostly offline, but now I wonder whether Microsoft had something to do with its feebleness. The two lovely desktop computers with Windows ME, both currently in the repair shop. The shiny new HP laptop, top of the line in 2010, still good for offline use today. The Piece Of Garbage. The mini-desktop with Windows 7 that's good for transferring information from disks and cards, and that's about all. The Unsatisfactory Toshiba Satellite I'm using now. If we charitably call what the POG did working, all but the Perfect Toshiba (and I don't know about the one I sold) are still capable of working today. Now Microsoft is sending me push-to-buy messages saying it won't "support" this one after some time next summer, ooga-booga, buy a new laptop today...

Seriously? My town's shown no signs of recovering from the COVID panic's effect on the local economy. Most of the "jobs" listed at the hack writing sites are scams. So are most of the "jobs" listed in the local newspaper. One store claims to have hired dozens of teenagers--because it's adopted policies that amount to hiring them on a probationary basis and firing them in a week or two! Why the bleeping blip should I, or my town, make Microsoft any richer? I buy no more laptops. I have three laptops, two of them excellent name-brand machines. Microsoft needs to be required to keep those laptops working better than ever. On this round world we can't afford any more toxic waste. No more "buy a whole new device." It can be "buy a new chip every five or ten years," or it can be "no more computers, no more Internet, back to the real world where there were entry-level jobs that paid students' way through college." I think we need a federal law, this year, forcing Microsoft to choose one or the other. 

Sooner or later someone will, undoubtedly, give me another last-year's-model laptop. I rescue computers the way I do cats, just because I like to hear them purr. They have a home here until they find another one. But I think Microsoft needs to be required to upgrade itself, or get out of the way of some rising-star company that will, to the point where the only computer I ever really need will be my Radio Shack model from 1988. About all it was ever built to do is integrate the functions of a clock, a typewriter, and a calculator, and guess what? Apart from taking a floppy disk into town and uploading content now and then, that's all I need, or want, a computer to do in my home. Microsoft can roll their shiny new apps into a very small ball and stuff them in their ears.

Microsoft can pay, too, for all the garbage they're running on computers they did not buy, in buildings they did not buy or lease, on electricity and phone lines for which they're not paying. Look at your "Task Manager." How many programs are running, and how many of them did you open? As many as half of them are probably spyware, and more than you're using are the ones Microsoft is using to slow down your computer with endless "updates" to things you didn't even ask to have taking up space on your computer. Microsoft needs to be forced to pay individuals and local companies for any of those little "push to install" thingies that cause wait time. What they should "install" is a button that automatically, even if you choose not to click on it, notifies the FCC of WAIT TIME and sends you a message, "MICROSOFT OWES YOU (AMOUNT OF MONEY) FOR STEALING TIME ON YOUR COMPUTER." That will teach them to run the "security updates" only one hour after the last keystroke on any computer, ever. Spyware, likewise, can wait until the end of our work days. And if Microsoft sabotages entire local companies, Microsoft should pay everyone's bills for the months during which the sabotage affected customer satisfaction, too. 

And somebody Out There ought to be building new cases for the Perfect Toshiba Satellite laptops, most of which are probably still functional if the companies were forced to allow them to connect to the Internet--or for people who don't actually want them to connect to the Internet. It is possible for computers to last long enough to be more than toxic waste. It just hasn't been the predominant practice in the industry.