Closed Windows

Trey Smith

Back while Della was still in White Salmon, her clunky old computer started going on the fritz. So, we bought her a refurbished IBM. This machine came preloaded with Windows 7. Since both of us have been using Linux Mint for some time, Della quickly discovered WHY she readily had agreed to allow me to dump this Microsoft product to install Linux in the first place.

Now that she's home, I too have come to understand why I detest Windows so much. For one thing, the operating system constantly downloads and uploads who knows what and you can't seem to turn it off without leaving your computer completely vulnerable. There are a myriad of annoying pop ups that, when you close them, they simply pop up again a few seconds later. Even when you tell the computer to shut off the pop ups, the system ignores the instruction.

But the part that takes the cake is that Windows 7 makes it next too impossible to uninstall it! In previous versions of Windows, there was a tool you could use to reformat the hard disk. This tool has been removed in Windows 7. It took me several hours to get Linux Mint loaded and we still have a problem with the wireless adapter because, it seems, it is formatted to work with Windows and nothing else.

It would appear that Microsoft is scared of Linux, even though Linux enjoys a very small market share. Why else would a company make it so damn difficult to jettison its crappy proprietary operating system?