Microsoft Windows rant

Trigger warning - if you are not a computer geek, this post may be of no interest.

(Yes, yes. I know this isn't quite the way "trigger warning" is generally used. It's use was meant as a bit of subtle humor, apparently too subtle for some....)

I have (had) Windows 10 on three of my computers, a desktop and two laptops. This week the "Spring Creators Update" version 1803 was rolled out - one of those forced updates we cannot avoid (though with some obscure register settings one can at least delay them for 180 days) .  This update thoroughly clobbered all three computers. It killed my antivirus (Kaspersky Internet Security), which had to be uninstalled and then reinstalled to make it work. It removed the HomeGroup sharing option, which is how I interconnected my computers. So now I was supposed to set up a whole series of new services, and the forums reveal that a lot of people were finding the new sharing services don't work dependably. And it removed several other application programs that I regularly use and which it claimed were "no longer compatible" with Windows.

After spending a whole day trying to "fix" my wife's laptop after the update I simply gave up and rolled all three machines back to Windows 8.1, which is the last stable version and to which Microsoft isn't "forcing" feature updates (with "features" I neither want nor need) twice a year. Window 8.1 is still under extended support until 2023, which means I can get security patches (when I ask for them) until then.

It is simply unacceptable to have an operating system on my computers that is destabilized twice a year by "forced" automatic updates when I am not looking. Microsoft is of course trying to force everyone onto Windows 10 so they can sell more subscription services, like Office 365. As of August of this year, about 40% of the world's Windows computers are still running Windows 7, and I know why. Corporations simply can't afford to have Microsoft screw up all their thousands of computers every six months with a buggy "Creators Update", And neither can I.

So I am staying on Windows 8.1 until at least 2023. I don't know what I will do after that, but perhaps Microsoft will have come to its senses by then and revised its update system, or perhaps some bright and adventurous young entrepreneur will field an acceptable replacement for the Windows operating system and give Microsoft some badly-needed competition. (and Mac OS, at just over 9% of the current market, probably isn't that universal replacement).