New Toy
Some seven or eight years ago, I bought my first ever brand-new-to-me laptop, after years of second hand and hand-me-downs. Raedbert the cherrywood red topped laptop has done stirling service over the years, but I fear laptops are like very big dogs - they have a short life span. Raedbert's mouse pad stopped working about 10 months ago; I bought a wireless mouse. This last week Raedbert stopped being able to connect to the internet. This, I fear, is the start of the end. So today I bought a new laptop, a rather nice Dell Inspiron 15 I have named Todbert. All my laptops have been berts of one sort or another: Frogbert, Blackbert, Bluebert, Frogbert the Second, Blackbert the Second, Raedbert, and Whebert who is still tiny and still going strong, but who runs Ubuntu which is fine except for the programs I need to use that will only run on Windows. I had thought this would be Frogbert the Third, except it has a lovely, tactile diapering pattern, which makes me think of toad skin for some reason, so Todbert it is.
Windows 8...hmm. I don't have the same ARGH! reaction I had the first time I had to use Vista, but I'm not wild about it. I really don't like the way MacroEvil keeps radically redesigning things with each update. They aren't improvements, they're just very different, so yoy have to relearn everything. Vista was Windows pretending to be a gaming platform; Windows 8 seems to be a platform so you can pretend your laptop is a tablet. I deliberately did NOT get a touchscreen laptop - another thing to stop working that I don't need. Windows 8 is obviously designed for touchscreens.
Here's the thing - I don't own a tablet because I actually do a lot of typing, and touchscreen technology doesn't work for what I do. That's why I have Whebert - a little laptop that I can carry easily and take anywhere, with a keyboard and the ability to handle high typing usage. A tablet would be about the same size, but far less robust for what I do. If I wanted a tablet, I'd buy a tablet; I don't use a laptop computer as if it were a tablet, and this move to try to combine the two is a mistake. This is a grr-thing; technology trying to give you all the things, whether you need them or not.
The bottom line is, I like Todbert; I am not sure about Windows 8, but I'll get used to it (bring back 98 we say!) Office 2013 - different again, buggerit, more to learn. And oh yes - moving things over. Sigh. Here we go... see you sometime in the next week ;)
Windows 8...hmm. I don't have the same ARGH! reaction I had the first time I had to use Vista, but I'm not wild about it. I really don't like the way MacroEvil keeps radically redesigning things with each update. They aren't improvements, they're just very different, so yoy have to relearn everything. Vista was Windows pretending to be a gaming platform; Windows 8 seems to be a platform so you can pretend your laptop is a tablet. I deliberately did NOT get a touchscreen laptop - another thing to stop working that I don't need. Windows 8 is obviously designed for touchscreens.
Here's the thing - I don't own a tablet because I actually do a lot of typing, and touchscreen technology doesn't work for what I do. That's why I have Whebert - a little laptop that I can carry easily and take anywhere, with a keyboard and the ability to handle high typing usage. A tablet would be about the same size, but far less robust for what I do. If I wanted a tablet, I'd buy a tablet; I don't use a laptop computer as if it were a tablet, and this move to try to combine the two is a mistake. This is a grr-thing; technology trying to give you all the things, whether you need them or not.
The bottom line is, I like Todbert; I am not sure about Windows 8, but I'll get used to it (bring back 98 we say!) Office 2013 - different again, buggerit, more to learn. And oh yes - moving things over. Sigh. Here we go... see you sometime in the next week ;)