Why I dislike Microsoft

The last two weeks have left me without substantial free time beneath my work and household duties, and there is one culprit for this:

Microsoft’s unilateral decision to discontinue support for Windows XP.

Now if only my free time were affected, I wouldn’t bother to write a blog post about it. If it were only the numerous relatives and friends that frantically needed to switch their OS, well, even if they needed to buy new hardware and then copy all their data: Thanks to that company whose name I don’t want to mention any more for their excellent documentation, their PITA upgrade mechanisms, their bloody new user interface that offers less than zero advantages to private desktop users…

But the core of the problem is this: an estimated half billion of computers world wide still run XP (and I don’t want to write any more in this context the name of that light inlet that was so misappropriated by that ineffable company), which will be in a true matanza for the dark side of the net. Almost all of these computers are used by people for which their current hardware and OS is usable to an extent that they would not consider switching, as they are aware that the added value of such a considerable investment most probably is next to zero: People need to write documents, calculate figures, and they do it making use of maybe 10% of their OS and programs’ capabilities (bigger companies excluded, they calculate profit, they benchmark new computer systems, they train their staff and take their decisions knowingly). Most people don’t want to switch as they get ZERO support from the OS vendor, and they will spend countless hours re-learning until they are as productive with the new system as they were before. (Ribbons anybody? I was swearing like mad when I had to use them for the first time. Did I profit anything from them?).

But this is the private part of the problem, and has anybody ever heard of a company that would consider such petitesses?

The core issue is that mountain of hardware that now goes to the garbage heaps because of incompatibilities and missing drivers and lack of computing powers (nobody I guess believes in the recycling fairy tales. If so, just search for pictures of African landfills devouring first world computers). And this maybe 0.25 cubic kilometre of high tech scrap contains rare metals as well as highly poisonous plastics, to be discarded at the whim of a narcistic and purely shareholder value oriented company. A waste of ressources that has not many peers.