Windows 10 @ $WORK (...and $HOME)

Anyone who knows me knows I am an open-source Linux advocate from way back.  And they know I drank the Google Koolade early.  So here I am writing in a Chrome browser running in Linux about ... wait for it ... Microsoft Windows 10.  There I said it.

Turns out Windows 10 is great.

As the Manager of Information Systems here at $WORK I have maintained a love/hate relationship with Windows for the last 20+ years.  Beginning with Windows 3, then 3.1 and 3.11 and engineers wanting me to explain why their system crashed when they lost all their work.  I managed to skip over the ME and CE and went to NT.  Somewhere in there was Win 95, XP, Vista (didn't even try it), Win 7, 8, 8.1 which I campaigned but wasn't comfortable with.  Now its the last Windows you will ever use, 10.  Or so they claim.

From a $WORK perspective where we are still trying to kill off our last XP box, Win 7 is the standard.  Trying to be forward looking I worked in 8 and 8.1.  As a "Microsoft Insider" I started with Windows 10 as soon as they made the first betas available.  From that day to this I am convinced the next migration will be directly to 10.  No muddling through 8 anything.

As for $HOME my wife's Windows 8.1 was already beginning to show signs of windows rot.  Somewhere in the last couple of months it lost track of the CD/DVD drive.  When she went to use a DVD application she was sorely disappointed.  I tried a full compliment of disable/enable, delete device|scan for new devices, update driver, etc.  No love, no CD/DVD drive.

That came to light last week.  Frustrated, I told her to hang tough for the Windows 10 roll-out.  Last Thursday morning I brought her PC to work (we have a fat internet pipe).  In less than 2 hours Windows 10 was loaded (officially reads "Upgraded").  Everything just worked.  All of her ancient legacy apps ... and the CD/DVD drive.  I got big smiles when I took it home and set it back up for her.

Yeah, there are a few quirks.  Settings are a bit different.  But all in all Windows 10 is great.

Great minds...sure wish I had one.

Frank Paynter over at Listics Review is rousing the rabble...again.  Never one to let sleeping dogs lay he says, "I'm beginning to notice some improvement".  Making the audacious claim that writing blog posts might afford some noticeable improvement.  Yeah, well, maybe for you, Frank.  I can find little hope in my scribbling ever making any improvement in my unremarkable writing ability.

What struck a chord, a harmonic I have heard in other quarters, is the need to reassert our bloggishness.  To re-establish the community of scribes.  Something that I lost while "liking" Facebook memes and trying to read Twitter at the speed of #hashtags.  Lost were the developed thoughts, filled in and fleshed out.  The true discourse of rational minds.  (Wish I had one of those as well.)

Mind you this should not be a scripted conversation between like-minded people.  This should be a return to the Wild-West-Internet days of yore.  Folks finding their one forum, a place where they can blow their own tuba.  A place for intellectual exchange and sophomoric syllogisms soliloquies ...oh hell, just anything you really need to get 'writ down'.

So, if you don't mind, I won't mind if you don't read this.