Microsoft mess

Ann and I went to St Catherine's for the Sunday Eucharist today, Clare stayed in bed. Rhiannon and Kath left for Kenilworth just after we left for church. Fr HUw Rhydderch, retired Rector of Dinas Powis took the service, speaking about Harvest and about St Francis' celebration of creation. I think this is the first Sunday this year when I haven't had a service to take. It was a welcome break.

When they arrived last night, I was presented with the laptop I gave to Rhiannon last year to repair. It's suffering from incredible slowness and a tendency to shut down on the job every 15 minutes. The key issue is to establish if this is a hardware or software fault, and the Windows 10 software plays hard to get. There's no doubt the machine has been abused in practice, put into sleep mode, or hibernating due to lack of battery power, either/both occurring while Windows 10 updates the security library, or does a system update. It was 94 days since the device had last successfully installed its anti-virus database, and the list of failed system updates reached back beyond that. 

With so many stop-starts, no wonder the system is always catching up and failing to complete, especially if power settings, arbitrarily tweaked, force it to shut down again mid-stream, even when it's on mains power or has a full battery. This represents a strategic failure in design, refusing to take into account real world use by teenage girls, let alone busy mobile using executives. What a contrast to Google's Chromebook speedy and seamless way of working, regardless of its limitations on file transfer and printer connectivity.

Microsoft has the de facto standard user interface with Windows. It makes everything harder to use for everyday non-technical users than Android, Apple Mac, Chrome or Android user interfaces, and its technical weaknesses make it easier to not use properly day to day, causing system failures, not to mention outright abuse of systemic weaknesses by malware. 

A computer should be as simple and as safe to operate for everyday communications purposes as a phone, a fridge or a washing machine. We're now entering the era of 'smart' domestic devices, and by nature of their computer operating systems, Windows or otherwise, the contain similar vulnerabilities. How amazing our willingness to put up with all these fundamental weaknesses in an effort to keep up with consumer fashion! When will we ever learn?

Kath had intended to borrow Rhiannon's small laptop for travel to USA with Clare to see Rachel in two weeks time. As it's currently not fit for purposes, she asked if I could lend her a small laptop instead. I readily agreed, although I'd intended to take my small Acer with me to Spain next week. It was, however, more of a problem to set up a user area on this machine for Kath to work with, than I had imagined, as Microsoft steadfastly refused to co-operate and implement a suitable file system on the machine with which to sync her existing OneDrive file system. I had to let Kath take the device home with her, and figure out how to complete the process, in order to get it to work, as it should, to her benefit.

There'd be far fewer problems using Linux, but proprietary software is hard to use on a Linux base apart from the amazing wonderful Libre Office, which can match anything MS Office produces. 

Upgrades complete, web authoring re-starts

Things are a bit quieter this end of the week, thankfully, so a day of not doing much apart from a walk into town and back was very welcome. I seem to need good exercise as much as rest these days, if I'm not to feel out of sorts much of the time. The city centre was full of New Zealand rugby fans ahead of the evening's match with Romania. There was an atmosphere of congeniality and boisterousness, few signs of misbehaviour anywhere. 

My only complaint is the amount of fast food rubbish, discarded cans, plastic beakers and bottles parked on wall and window ledges, or in the gutters. Litter picking and bin emptying may well occur during as well as after the game. Maybe rubbish bins provided do become full too quickly to prevent this but in the end organisers of major sporting events could do something to nag supporters to make an effort not to dump their empties for others to clear up behind them.

There was no need for me to go into the office while I was in town. I just wandered around watching tens of thousands of visitors having a good time. Julie texted me to say she'd finally found space in her work schedule to let her PC do the Windows 10 upgrade. It had taken two hours in total and was done without hassle. 

That's the last of the machines I oversee to be upgraded, and I didn't have to do anything apart from advise Julie to keep to the routine of using Chrome browser to access emails, which she knows, rather than learn the new Edge browser, such a fiddle to configure to one's own needs, or the new email client, so far, still a bit unreliable. Better to stick with tools you've adapted to your workflow, than get distracted into learning new apps which sabotage effective working habits. Or, only put the effort into something new when your workflow is definitely unfit for new purposes.

The database is now working properly, at least until the next problem is uncovered. Now I can get to work on re-building the websites I made for CBS and the BCRP. I couldn't remember which web authoring tool I'd used a decade ago, but googling soon revealed a forgotten application 'NVU' for Windows, and its correlate KompoZer for Linux. The latter I was able to download and after a brief visit to the Linux Mint help forums, found out how to install and run. There are loads of free templates to make use of on different websites, but initially, all I want to do is try and reproduce the format of the pages I made sitting on Google Sites, and hard to link up to a proper URL, with such user unfriendly instructions. Now we've hiring our own web hosting space, a little learning by doing is possible before going live. I never thought I'd get back to doing this again after so long.

Edging out browser choice

In the office again this afternoon, evaluating the new Microsoft Edge web browser, and setting up the new Acer desktop computer for Ashley, who's been too busy even to take it out of the box. As soon as the registration and initialization procedure was completed, the machine flagged up that it was immediately ready to upgrade to Windows 10, so I let it run, even though  had to leave before it was completed.

Edge presents itself with a minimal interface, a like Chrome in the early days. Changing the default  search engine from Bing to Google involves drilling down into the advanced settings menu. It's not wholly explicit. It doesn't list options, just gives you few greyed out empty menu options. You need to call up a Google homepage tab, then go into the settings menu before it displays a menu option that reflects the tab you've opened. Only then can your default setting be changed.

Come to think of it, the browser choice menu doesn't appear, giving you the option from the outset to choose between Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Does this mean that Edge as the default browser will be imposed until another round of litigation takes place? The enforcement of browser choice took place when  Internet Explorer was presenting so many security problems that an argument for choice was reasonable and in everyone's best interests. Edge hadn't been born at that time, intends to provide the security Internet Explorer at once failed to do. So, part of the argument justifying browser choice no longer exists, unless advocates for software freedom once more take Microsoft to law, an expensive process, with less certainty of winning. Time will tell, I guess.