Windows

By Robert Sanborn

The year is half over as we get ready to celebrate the 4th of July; and while I have some mixed feelings about the directions of our country, there is never a mixed feeling about Windows. My main computer runs Windows 7 and I begin to understand the push from Microsoft to get people to Windows 8.  Seems like every time I turn around, something in Windows 7 is not working right.  Just this minute, Outlook has decided that it wants to hang as does Internet Explorer.

I keep Windows up to date and am running the latest version of Office. But still, things seem to hang more and more frequently.  What is also interesting to note is that nearly every computer in the stores carries Windows 8 and people must be buying them but I hardly hear a peep of complaints about Windows 8. What is that? Is it so good that people don’t mind the radically different Metro interface or are they so frustrated that they just put it in the closet and hope it goes away?

Nearly every online publication you care to look at has nothing good to say about Windows 8 but it seems it is only the writers that are complaining. The first thing I noticed was that Windows 8 really buries itself in the background to the point that the ones that complain the loudest are the old DOS hands that really want to know where their files are. If you can get over that little hangup, you find that Windows actually manages things quite well. I think the key is that if you upgrade to a Windows 8 computer, don’t try to bring all the old baggage with you.  Start fresh.  Having said that, will the new Windows 8.1 look more like Windows 7 than 8? Doesn’t sound like it. I think Microsoft would rather you first purchase their mobile phone offering to get used to the new operating system and then buy a Windows 8 computer to go with it.

Ok, I had six different Internet Explorer tabs open and it was locked so tight I couldn’t even close any windows or the group.  So I brought up Task Manager and could see six entries for iexplore32.exe and so I deleted one of them. Boom, one went away and the rest are now behaving normally as is Outlook.  Maybe time to shut down the computer and restart, isn’t that the normal thing to do?