A lovely sunny day today, but still cold. After a good night's sleep and breakfast, I walked to St John's to celebrate the Eucharist there for the first time since last autumn. It's the first public service to be held here this year too, and a Requiem Mass for Prince Phillip. Fr Benedict shared the liturgy with me and a congregation of eleven regulars a heartening return to regular worship.
After returning home and cooking lunch, I slept for an hour and a quarter, which surprised me as I didn't feel especially tired. I then walked into town to the Camera Centre to follow up on my Monday visit, and buy a 14-150 telephoto lens for my Olympus camera. I've been mulling over this purchase since before the last lock-down began. My preference for using longer lenses is reflected in the cameras I've bought over the years. This new Olympus lens certainly offers the scope I need. This lens and camera together weigh half as much as the equivalent lens with my DSLR, as well as being physically smaller. In the six months since I bought the Olympus second hand, it's proved to be a camera system worth investing in.
On returning home, I contacted one of the two families for whom I shall be taking a funeral next week, and with the information received, drafted a service for consideration before supper. Afterwards, an hour or so uploading photos into an assortment of subject albums spread across three accounts. It's a fiddly job but worthwhile for easy access, if only my Windows 10 workstation wasn't so slow.
Speaking of which, I read a tech blog post yesterday which got me thinking.
It spelled out the implications of Microsoft's strategy of moving data and apps to the Cloud and the way it affects the average consumer. The digital architectural design underlying Windows 10 relies not only on internet access speed, but on the memory capacity of the device being used. 4GB memory was worth having for Windows 7 or 8. It was OK when Windows 10 arrived. But no longer.
I've noticed the progressive slowing down of my Core i3 desktop mini workstation since I bought it five and half years ago. The boot process is slow. Attaching the Cloud file system is slow, and loading files into Open Office or Gimp is slow. All slower than they used to be. It might be faster if I upgraded the RAM to 8GB, or replaced the 1TB hard drive with a smaller SSD, but one way or another it's evidence of ' built-in redundancy' nobody needs
The operating system works better with newer components, not just a faster SSD, but say, 8GB of RAM for my mundane purposes. If I was a business user relying on Microsoft Teams or the likes of Zoom for conferencing, I'd need 16GB of RAM or more to work in a smooth efficient way. Ultimately Windows 10 is designed with this in mind, which means new hardware all round. Well, I guess many companies do this anyway, and it's tax deductible if you need to. But think of the consumption of physical resources which forced upgrading requires. Think of the carbon footprint of all that Cloud server activity, much bigger than we may imagine.
Meanwhile, I can re-cycle my desktop HP Mini using the latest Linux Mint. Even with its existing hard drive it will do everything I need ten times faster than Windows 10, and not give me the same grief about system updating. I can still easily access Cloud applications and data services. The design of Linux is more efficient, even if it doesn't look as sexy.
I'm rather obliged to maintain a Microsoft platform for easy compatibility with most other users, but for everyday use Linux and Chromebook deliver what I need when I need it and easier. Even on devices that are ten years old. It's ridiculous if you think about it. Crazy to think that the major producers of public digital devices have been conning us for the past quarter century by under-delivering the longevity and reliability many consumers need from an expensive purchase.
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