There are definitely some modern toys that I truly love as an aging Boomer. I would be absolutely lost without my PVR, undoubtedly the greatest invention since indoor plumbing. I pride myself of being able to adapt to most of the mind boggling changes in technology that just keep coming. I don’t hang on to a rotary dial telephone, even for sentimental reasons, and the Betamax went to the lake a long time ago.
Having said all that, I’m seriously thinking of mounting a class action against Microsoft. The Bill Gates empire has told us in not a very public way, that the death knell has been sounded for Windows XP, their most popular operating system ever. Tuesday April 8th, a day that will live in infamy. That’s the day that Microsoft will essentially stop supporting XP. It will still work, but there will no longer be patches or security updates, which means the software will be vulnerable to attack by the gremlins of the cyberworld.
Those of us who live in the world of XP will have to buy new software, or possibly a whole new system. The company has supported XP for 12 years, which is considered something of a record. We hear bad things about the systems that have followed.
Recently the company made changes to Windows 8.1 and restored some of the stuff we all love about XP. It’s hard to believe that I have been in the cyberworld for less than 20 years. I still occasionally have longings for Netscape. Is anyone with me on that one ?
Built in obsolescence was the rap that used be laid on the auto industry years ago. The cynics said ‘Why should they make better cars? It might mean that no one would ever want to buy a new one.’
Whatever happened to that other time-honoured gem … “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”
See you soon. I’m off to a support group meeting.
I’m Roger Currie
no kidding. Really….it ain’t broke….It is like the stuff in the olden days where it was made better and lasted longer than what is made now.