Wednesday, April 23, 2014

I Need to Do It Again?

Tonight I have one that I have run into very often.  In fact, I ran into it once again just before my recent vacation.  It's something that needs to change but probably won't though it doesn't need to.  Read on to find out about it as it does effect most everyone, in the world.

This is the next one that I wanted to rant about but I couldn't do it last night as I was really upset with events that happened at work.  And as I've said before, I really don't like to vent about that somewhere that may cause me issues down the road.  So what is it that touches most people in the world?  Microsoft Windows updates.  Yep, as much as many of us don't like it, Windows is the most popular OS in the world.  Even if you have a Mac, Linux based laptop, or Chromebook you are likely forced to use it at work.

So now you are probably wondering what my issue is as the updates are vital to security.  The issue is that you run the update process and are required to reboot.  And once the reboot is done, you need to run the process again and reboot once again.  I've had situations where I've been required to repeat the process 4 or 5 times!  Just before vacation, I had to do the cycle 3 times on my laptop, and 4 times on my wife's laptop!  Utterly ridiculous that you need to reboot with every set of patches.  Run updates on Linux and reboots are very rare.  And I've heard the same regarding Mac OS X.  I haven't heard regarding the Chromebook but I can only imagine that they work much the same as it's based on Linux.  And this is why so many companies don't push updates out to your computers at work.  Imagine if your entire office was sitting there waiting for their computers to reboot 2, 3, or 4 times.  What a waste of time it would be.  And it's just another reason that many people are looking to Apple and Linux as replacements for Windows.

But let's look beyond just the number of reboots.  Let's look at the Windows sprawl as I would call it.  One of the reasons that a lot of tech people suggest reinstalling Windows on a regular basis is because of all the leftover parts and pieces that Microsoft doesn't remove during the update process.  Yep, they leave a lot of files that are only necessary for the actual update process right on your disk drive.  And there's no way for you to remove it.  I haven't noticed this on my Linux partition, and I certainly haven't seen it on my Android based phone or tablet.  So why does Microsoft do this?  My guess, they are lazy.  And that annoys the crap out of me.  I don't want to have to take the time to constantly reinstall the entire operating system just because you are too lazy to do the job right.

It would be nice if they changed their practices but with the latest release of Windows for computers, they may have put the nail in their own coffin.  Many, such as myself, have begun playing with alternatives such as Linux just to avoid the stupid touch screen interface.  It just doesn't seem natural on a computer.  And where they will really have issues is in the business world.  The company I work for is still running Windows XP, and I know of many other companies in the same boat.  Moving up to a newer version of Windows isn't an option if the software that you run your business on hasn't been rewritten.  I think they should focus on doing things correctly rather then concerning themselves with the bottom line.

And that seems to be a theme with all of these companies, all they care about is the bottom line, not you.

No comments:

Post a Comment