I hate Microsoft, it's business practices and its products

Why I loath Micro$oft, it business practices and its products

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Why put yourself through this hell... When you can use openoffice, Freeoffice or Libreoffice??? (My teaching material is produced using Openoffice).

And why the hell does Office 365 demand internet connectivity to open a file YOU own, saved on YOUR hard drive? When I took delivery of my teaching laptop, the first thing I did was to remove Office 365. And... I so wish I could remove Windows (and recover the cost of it) too!

Since I have been using my own laptop for my work since early 2015, no one has forced me to switch to Windows 10. I cannot tell you how nice it has been to work on a computer that I own. The fact is that I have no plans of ever switching to Windows 10. Here's why.

The number one reason I am not switching is that I have never really liked Microsoft or their products. Many who are reading this article are too young to understand intuitively why I dislike Microsoft, so I will try to explain. For decades, Microsoft did its best to force PC users to use its products exclusively. Bill Gates started the company with that goal in mind. Read the book Hard Drive if you don't believe me. It is eye-opening. And for a while, it looked like he would succeed. With Microsoft Word, he managed to drive out of business all other makers of word processing software. I plumped for Turbo C++ in 1995. Then I upgraded to Watcom C++ in around 1997. Then, Bill Gates killed the makers of compilers with Microsoft Visual Studio. One company after another fell to the Microsoft Behemoth. Throughout the '90's, for almost everything I did on my computer at home, no viable alternatives to Microsoft products existed. From the early '90's until I began using my own laptop in 2015, all the software that I used at work came from Microsoft. I was forced to use Microsoft products for three reasons: 1) the companies that I worked for provided computers that ran Windows, 2) I had to use programs and file formats that were compatible with those that everyone else was using, and 3) I wasn't able to find alternatives to Microsoft products that did what I needed them to do.

In addition to disliking Microsoft's business practices, I also dislike its software. I wrote in a previous article that I stopped using Excel something like 20 years ago because Microsoft kept changing the menus for no apparent reason. My opinion is that most Microsoft software is harder to use than it needs to be. Try making an index page in a document in MS Office. Try finding anything in the menus of Power Point. There are so many options that I will never use, that I can't find anything. In my opinion, Windows and most other Microsoft software is far too bloated and slow. I do have to admit that Microsoft software is less buggy than it used to be, but that is only because it used to be so horribly buggy.

When Linux first came out in the early '90's and for many years afterwards, it simply was not up to the job. I tried a couple of Linux distributions in the mid-to-late '90's. They were useless. So, I ignored Linux for a couple of years. In 1999 I tried Peanut Linux. Total disaster. Whenever I tried to run any applicaton it crashed my computer. I ignored Linux for a few more years. In 2003, after trying for days to get on the Internet with Red Hat Linux 5, I decided to ask for help from our Linux "experts" at work. Of the three I talked to, none had actually used Linux to get on the Internet. That was when I knew it still wasn't ready. So, I left it alone for a few more years. Then in 2010, I tried it again. It seemed much better. I went through maybe a dozen distributions, including Ubuntu, looking for one that would work with every piece of hardware on my computer. Then I found Linux Mint 7. It worked with my Ethernet network interface card and my sound card. I could play music, watch videos, and get on the Internet! The Linux Mint GUI wouldn't always mount my USB stick when I plugged it in, but I could use the command line. And a new thing called a Linux repository had come along, with lots of free software--useful software. I had finally found the solution to my Microsoft problem--at least at home. And on top of that, it was much less susceptible to viruses than Windows. Linux was finally up to the job of being my operating system! At last, Microsoft could no longer force me to use its products. At least, not at home.

One of the things I've disliked most about Windows itself is that it takes over my computer like it owns it. And it's rather difficult to wrestle back control. If I don't stop it, Windows constantly churns on my hard drive, rearranging files. This bothers me because when I am not doing anything, nothing should be happening. I have no way of knowing whether Windows is doing this or whether my computer has viruses. If I don't stop it, Windows will take full control of my computer to do "updates", and it will completely lock me out, sometimes for over an hour. This is all occuring while I need to get work done. For years, I've hated fighting with my operating system for the right to have top priority on the computer that I own.

Then Windows 10 came out, and on top of all the other things Windows was doing, it added to the list:

Updating itself without my permission, with no settings that I can use to stop it

Tracking everything I do online

Possibly snooping on everything I write in MS Office

Using my computer as a server and my Internet connection to update other people's computers! Seriously Microsoft?!!!

Most likely backdooring its disk encryption

Displaying advertisements for Microsoft Products

Disabling Windows 7 and 8, so that I am forced to use Windows 10

As I mentioned in a previous article, I removed Office 365 when it demanded that I connect it to the Internet before it would let me open a document, a document that I wrote, a document that was stored on my hard drive!

No, I have no plans of ever going to Windows 10, at least, not unless Microsoft can force me. I know it's trying. First, it invented UEFI in an attempt to keep Linux off all PC's manufactured after about 2012. It denies that of course, saying that UEFI is needed for security. UEFI has been shown to have it's own security flaws, by the way. Then, Microsoft employed the same tactic it used to drive word processor and compiler manufacturers out of business. It added Linux to Windows. Same old Microsoft, same old anti-competitive tactics. What Microsoft seems to not understand is that makers of Linux are not in business. They don't have to make a profit. They are volunteers. I wonder what Microsoft will try next.

One other thing to mention here. Windows (you really don't want to be running it you know) has other issues....

Micro$oft Windows suffers from something called "Windows rot" that slows Windows computers over time. When some Windows users experience Windows rot, rather than understanding its cause, they believe they need a new computer. Windows rot has three main causes: DLL's and other files being duplicated, growth or corruption of the Windows registry, and fragmentation of hard drives. Windows rot usually becomes noticeable after a year or two of using a new computer. Two methods exist for dealing with Windows rot. The first is "cleaner" software like CCleaner that removes extraneous files from Windows and cleans up the registry. Hard drive defragmentation should also be performed on Windows machines about every three to six months for average Windows users. SSD's do not require defragmentation. You may also want to run a free, portable virus scanner like ClamWin because viruses can slow Windows computers to a crawl. I do not recommend the installation of antivirus software, especially on old computers, because it can slow them substantially. ClamWin does not install onto your computer; it runs from an external USB dive.

If CCleaner and ClamWin or similar software do not noticeably increase the speed of a Windows computer, the next thing to try is wiping the entire hard drive and reinstalling the operating system and all of the software. Make backups first! This will also remove any malware from a hard drive that may have remained undetected by virus-scanning software. After reinstallation of your operating system, your computer should run like it did when it was new. If it does not, and you have a spinning hard drive, check to make sure your hard drive is not going bad.