I have an age old problem with computers.
Or rather with the operating system itself. I admit my experience is limited to Windows and I know there are alternatives out there but nevertheless I am driven to persist with the devil I know.
It's the updates.
The constant updates that make my machine lag just when I need it to be super quick; the peremptory order to restart so that the new updates it has shoehorned into its electronic gizzard without my knowledge can be installed properly; the interminable wait so that Windows can "configure" itself (and then stalls at 37% for hours) before my own machine is released to me once more.
I sometimes wonder who my machine belongs to. I distinctly recall paying a whopping great bill for the actual physical components. I still have the receipt. But it seems that as soon as Windows was installed Microsoft then took ownership.
Kind of like a sitting tenant. Yes, you own the property but Mr MS is living here now and possession is 9 tenths of the law so sod off; if he wants to set fire to the wallpaper he jolly well will and there is nothing you can do about it.
Now I know you can turn off Automatic Updates and make it all manual but, really, we humans are all on the paranoid OCD spectrum so we leave it all Automatic in case we miss the update that plugs the huge security breach that Microsoft didn't realize was there when they first sold the software to us (as being the next best thing to sliced bread) for £100+.
And that is my problem. A new version of Windows is in the offing or at least on the brink of being offered. It will undoubtedly be huge, i.e. you are suddenly going to need a dozen terabytes of memory just to run it and a processor large enough to handle the data from the Hadron Collider. Inevitably we are all going to be forced to go back to the computer shop of our choice and pay out another large sum of cash to buy more machinery that Mr MS will then move into and take possession of.
But I don't want this new version of Windows to be bulked out with new services, new apps and new lights and flashing bells (or whatever). I just want it to be like the one I have now but finished.
Finished. Perfect. Not broken. Not with bits missing. Not with any security issues. In short, without any need whatsoever to have to continually update itself.
I mean, if I buy a car I don't expect to wake up one morning 2 months later to find a team of mechanics on my drive changing the tyres.
"Sorry, gov, you can't use the car for the next 3 hours until we swap the tyres over. Yeah, they suddenly decided that the original square tyres that were fitted when you first bought the model aren't conducive to high speed travel so now we're upgrading them all with these round ones."
"But I need to get my wife to hospital this morning - it's an emergency!"
"Sorry. But you chose to have automatic updates and once the process has started we can't stop until it's finished - otherwise the car won't be configured properly."
Ridiculous!
Surely there is an operating system out there somewhere that gets it right first time?
Otherwise, the simple fact is, in thousands of years of human history we haven't actually improved upon the abacus...