When One is troubled with Windows What one can do?

When One is troubled with Windows What one can do?

It is strange that when one is troubled with Windows he or she goes into shell and blame oneself and not the operating system.

It is the opposite when one is troubled with Linux.

If he / she is a one who comes from the windows background without batting an eyelid he / she blames the distribution as if the whole hell has descended on him / her. 

It is often a minor glitch he or she has overlooked to configure or may be downloading a suitable alternative package or worse come file a bug report to which a ready solution is available within 6 weeks.

If that does not help one can swap the distribution and select one that suits and download it.

(I have two books already available, not digital yet selecting a distribution and also the utilities and packages, if this blog entry is not adequate enough).

One problem with this approach is if one is not using a torrent download (even this can be painful if there is one seeder who has gone into hibernation at night-simply switched off the computer) it can be time consuming. 

The download time can be awfully long and painful (I have enough of stories often due to failure of the telecoms but now never or do not complain because I download several at a time and I know one will be finished by morning when I am in deep sleep and dreaming some bizarre episode of Cloud Computing like star wars of yesteryear).

But once one has a CD (ideally D.V.D with almost everything one needs in one pack) the live session is breezy and installation is cakewalk if not catwalk.

Only thing Linux guys forget is to keep it running 24 hours (cron jobs at midnight are vital to get rid of the junk files that collect is one switches off the computer regularly; leave seeds for others to access) at least once or twice a week.

If you are lazy use a the sweeper or do it manually which I prefer now because of the frequent downloads.

Now come to Window guys/girls.

Steps.

1. Do not blame yourself.

2. It is often the operating system at fault.

3. It can be due to a corrupt file or large macro sitting on the file and spying on you.

4. The pet device to blame is the latest virus and I bet you will not have a solution this side of 6 months.

With so many holes in the operating system which Microsoft will never able plug and then they will promise you the new version is very beautiful (but very slow to run unless you doubled up your RAM) and one should change and upgrade and works better (of course till the next ultra new version is ready for upgrade).

You are in this vicious cycle (V.C) and never get out of it.

If a guy of my age descends on me with a problem, I do not try to convert the guy to Linux fearing one gets a heart attack.

I ask a few questions.

If it a pirated copy.

If the answer is yes, thrash the pirated copy and get a copyrighted version.

This is I am openly campaigning for the guy to remain with Microsoft.

Microsoft should be happy with my efforts now but I do not charge anything for this advice.

The poor guy has to pay through his nose anyway.

Do not forget the virus guard and that also will cost you some quids.

Get somebody to format and install, I won’t do that for you unless he or wishes to have a Linux distribution dual booted.

His has to spend a half a day with me with food and beverages ready and ample.

This is Christmas time anyway.

If the guy has not got the money, then the scenario changes.

I ask what are the things that he uses computer for, regularly.

Invariably, the answer is that he uses the email and nothing else to be in contact with the family and friends.

Then I give him a breezy Live CD and ask the guy to use it till he himself try to find a remedy for the malady or ultimately ditch Microsoft and ask me to install the new distribution in his computer.

The long course works well for Linux and I of course have to have two visits instead of one.

That of course keeps our friendship lasting and viable.

Who says Microsoft is bad.

It makes “my sphere of activity” to enlarge and expand.

Microsoft Productivity Time (LMPT) and the Learning of it.

It was an awful and painful experience to use Word 2007.

It is supposed to be user friendly and not at all.

Not so sweet story today, I should share with.

I was preparing to do a survey on some penetration testing of computer utilities with my students.

I wanted to do this but kept postponing it.

I tabulated 101 items of Apple, Microsoft, Linux and third-party software for testings.

I did this on Abiword and made a Microsoft version since I have run out of toner in my printer.

I may have done this in about 15 minutes and prepared the printer setting to my liking and copied it into mini re-writable CD.

Then at the office I opened the file and made a copy in Microsoft had a printer view and there were some ugly sections.

Wanted to break them into new table section and right clicked and looked at the menu to find table split.

Mind you I have worked extensively with Microsoft from Win 95 to XP 2003 and have series of books on Words which are in the attic (I do not like to donate or burn them, they are museum pieces anyway) and I knew the exact utility to use.

The Table split.

I could find cell split but not table split.

After 10 minutes of searching I asked our Secretary for help.

She could not find it.

I asked one of my colleagues.

She could not find it.

Unfortunately the technician I trained in computing was on leave.

Then the chief technician came and did a page break and broke the table in a place not desirable for my liking.

After one hour everything was in a mess and print preview was a disaster.

I do printing only twice to see typos and keep as my copy and the other for final copy.

Thankfully my chief technician showed me the step to page break.

PageLayout and then a another layout and hundred of bizarre arrangement of word utilities.

I could not delete the page break and accidentally clicked layout and found the table menu and somewhere there I saw table split function almost hidden in the clutter of many other utilities I will never use in my life time.

I need to get the page break out tried 10 minutes with View  Menu to see  the background layout lines and I could find any.
Simply I could not delete the page break.

Annoyed I started undoing one step at a time and also deleting corrections of typos and after another 5 to 10 minutes, I was back to where  I started and with another numerous clicks got to split table (mind you I was an addict of tables) and split it exactly where I wanted got the printer layout checked  and did the typos again and saved and got a print out after one an a half hours.

That is  90 minutes divided by 5 pages and 18 minutes per page to get print ready material.

Original typing with five typos (I do many typos now due to poor sight) took probably 15 minutes.

This is what I call Microsoft Productivity Time (MPT for short) which is amazingly long and when its windows 8 comes this productivity time will grow by leaps and bounds.

Then I have to call it Learning the Microsoft Productivity Time (LMPT) for Win 8 and reading it will take another two hours.

Every time a new product comes productivity time lengthens.

That is how Microsoft make writers life writer friendly but the writer should use Abiword for the final product even though he is a Microsoft user.

It was 4 years ago I used Microsoft Word and extra time I saved during these four years I use for blogging on my life free of Microsoft.

Thanks Microsoft for your hard work on Win 8 and I will copy all the web publishing currently published on the web to calculate what a lot of productivity time writers waste on non-existent product.

Postscript

I managed to find the way to delete the page break.

Go View and then to Outline and select the line and press the delete button.