Up and Down Upgrade Mountain

Why not it's just another "upgrade", right?

I've gone from DOS 2.5 up to 5.x, back down to Windows "gooey" 1.0; climbed aboard the 95 bandwagon, rounded the big bend with 98, then flew past ME up to Highway 2000, merged over the NT ramp to the XP expressway and stayed on that route for quite a long journey.

I jumped into my old '07 cruiser back in 2011 and passed by every one of the Exit 8 and 8.1 off-ramps, just couldn't find it in me to leave behind the old girl I'd become so fond of over the years. But it's time for a change...
It's Been a Long and Whining Road

I've been beating around the inside of metal boxes and busted operating systems since the days of 8 bit memory and cassette tape drives...before floppies got hard and before lasers ever beamed. My "old friend" was made up as a build that started with 8 Megs of memory and and a 40 Meg hard drive...oh how it was to have to keep removing files to tape backups just to have room to work! The days of high memory settings and blue screens of death are surely a thing of the past, that is unless grandma is still running her Commodore 64 or grandpa still has a "Trash80" laying around?

Now it's Macbooks and Ipads and Androids with Chrome finishes. Its gigabytes and terabytes and thumb drives that run faster and hold more data than 4 paralleled computers ever did. Devices that fit in your breast pocket can compute and store more information than we could have ever imagined only 25 years ago!

Kids of this day and age don't know how good they've got it!

Windows to the Soul

I know, I know...lots of people hate Windows, or maybe they just dislike Bill Gates a whole bunch, I'm not so sure which it is. But I'm still a big user and fan. I used Apple 2c's before they were fun, coded them and watched them gather dust. I've spent hours building Linux kernels having such a ball trying to get software to talk to hardware and do that little dance they do so well...oh the hours lost before red hats became black.

But for some reason, I've always come back to my old friend. I still see my mistress Ubuntu now and then as she passes by on an open tab, but the thought of another dual-boot makes the hair on my arm stand up. It shouldn't be so scarey, I've been down that road before. Maybe this summer I'll take another drive? Just maybe...

A New Skin for and Old Friend...

I never did understand the upgrading sequence devised by the Microsoft programmers. Or the code names like Chicago and Vista...was this 007's idea? All was going well in the DOS days when numbers went up each time a new version arrived, as was the case when Windows 1, 2, 3.0 went to 3.1x.

Then Chicago became Win 95...great marketing ploy I suppose with it being 1995 and all? Chicago was a bad name for an OS anyway (OS/2 was cool, too bad that flopped)

We thought at that time counting would be simple, 1995 to 2000, maybe? Nope, 98 came next, then ME (remember that one? lol), then NT 3.x, then 2000, then XP....OK enough already...can't we just get back to BASICs? (pun intended, of course)

There's not much to say about Server 2003 or Vista, so we'll skip on past that...

KaBoom! It was 2009 and Windows 7 was born! WTF? 7? Where did 4, 5 and 6 end up? Why not 9? (think about that, it'll come to you!) It's supposedly bigger, better brother Win8 didn't seem to make the cut for many, and now we finally have it....Windows 10!

Just One Question for Bill

I've installed Windows 10 on several machines now...very smooth upgrades... for once I must say. I'd also add that I like it so far. I've experienced a few glitches, but for the most part, for a beta it seems pretty stable.

So I'm happy, but I'd like to ask Mr. Gates one simple question...
"Can we please go back to counting like normal people again?" (Windows 11 maybe?)

I would even settle for going on from here by 2's, 5's or 10's!

Wouldn't you?