Two Restarts

Two restarts and a cold, cold heart: Living with an aging laptop is, I presume a bit like living with an aging relative of some sort. The grumpy soul who you feed with soup, small talk and AC/DC on the headphones while trying to ignore the numerous slip-ups they make. So as my laptop is too old for an upgrade to the lofty heights of  Windows 11 we struggle along together through the maze of regular Windows updates, administered like the bedside drip of drugs or fluids plumbed into the limp arm of some terminally ill patient. There is a real buzz of satisfaction when it's done and knowing that Windows is smooth to use for a while.

Without these regular clinical boosts and the ever lengthening restarts that accompany them it would all be over in seconds as the Windows 10 mechanism and it's aging processors slowly slip away into a numb coma of flickering chips and failing connections. Then total shutdown and onwards into the pile in that special place where old laptops are stacked awaiting ... a fate nobody quite knows anything about. They are simply there like the old phones, chargers and connectors that we have no more use for but can't quite face the treacherous act of disposing of them.

But it's not dead yet. I see it as being a bit like a classic car, overtaken and made obsolete by bland looking EVs, bristling with screens and apps, fancy door handles, distinctly iffy build quality and a pitiful range. All the faithful laptop needs is that odd jump start to get going again to get back to wagging a finger at you and crunching a few of your files. It's not as if I'm asking much of it either, it's hardly pulling a caravan, nope, just a few documents to tweak, editing photos and routine browsing mainly. It's in a permanent and sedate retirement place really but for those bullies at Microsoft shoving down our throats the fairly obvious news that it can never be compatible with Windows 11, oh no, never and that's their final word. We're living the twilight life of the cancelled.

I recall Apple doing the same over their operating systems in my Mac Book days. Just keep churning out the devices and make sure everybody has to keep up, all appliances are cash cows. Obviously they're right in as much as the systems move on but it just riles the gristle filled, stubborn part of me that admires 40 year old fridges, real books, cassette decks and the odd German built sports car from the last century. Whatever happened to those ridiculous ideas of sustainability and continuous improvement that might consider the end user as possibly being important?