Not Awaiting Windows 11, Thanks

Today is just going to be a rambling piece, based on not one solitary piece of factual information.  Sorry about that, but more often than I'd like, I'm just sitting down to write without knowing what it will be about.

The laptop I work on, previous to my current one, was not "born" with Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system.  It had the next earlier version, and at some point I upgraded to Windows 10 and worked with that for a couple years.

Then it sadly died, and I replaced it with the HP that I work on now, which already had Windows 10, the current version at the time -- and, nearly two years later, still the current operating system.

That occurred to me recently, and you can imagine where my mind wandered.  Maybe you can't, so I'll tell you.  Windows 10 has been out there too long for Microsoft's purposes, and they're going to have to foist a new operating system on us.

I hate that.

I'm not a particular fan of Windows 10, mind you, but neither do I dislike it.  I have learned to live with it, and it is a means to an end that I am now quite comfortable with.

Hint to Microsoft -- I'm quite comfortable with it, and I don't really care to see you messing with it, unless your next iteration is going to look and operate the same, only work better somehow invisibly, or just more reliably or something.  Or just keep it completely the same.

I don't know what they're thinking up there in Seattle about Windows 11, or whatever they're going to call the next version that they'll inevitably come up with.  But it has been far too long since they forced a next-generation upgrade on us, so I'm anticipating any day now that I will get an email from Olympus, telling me that for only $129.99 I'll be able to download and install the whiz-bang new operating system on my old, decrepit laptop.

And I won't want it.

The problem is that my professional interactions are with my clients, who are Federal contractors.  They need to be fairly current to maintain internal conformity (since they buy a lot of new laptops each year as people are hired, they have to upgrade their older inventory) and live on the most recent versions of Microsoft thingies.  So I have to stay fairly current as well.

I don't know what Windows 11 is going to have, or what it will be called, or when I'll be forced to install it.  But I predict that it will be all about easy access to, and enhanced performance of, things like Facebook (which I do not use) and Instagram (which I do not use or know what it is), and will be optimized to stream video and the like, when I simply want to work, and write these columns.

I swear it is going to give me much better performance of apps I never use, and force me to change my normal interface to give me what I don't want.  Sort of like Obamacare, when I had to buy pediatric dental insurance and maternity coverage even though I had no children in the house and maternity was 40 years in the rear-view mirror.  No wonder the tech giants are all big Democrat donors.

My hope is that the next Windows version comes out the day I retire.  I simply don't need it.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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