One day, I saw a quip that I found particularly humorous. As with most things humorous, there was a kernel of truth in it. Perhaps some of you already laughed at it, maybe even experienced the little bit of truth encapsulated in the few words: “The hurrier go, the behinder I get.”

The first PC compatible computer I bought ran on a 16 MHz clock, had 1 MB of memory and a 40 MB hard drive. Some might wonder just how I managed to get anything done on it. Yet, it took less than 30 seconds to boot. It took roughly 30 minutes to completely reload Windows 3.1 using floppies. Otherwise, I rarely waited for it to do anything. It was genuinely fast.

Now I have three computers. They are all incredibly fast with enormous amounts of memory and a hard disk that can store most of the printed word in 1900. I don’t know. Conceivably twice that.

However, I would never think about reloading Windows. My guess is it would take two or three DVDs and maybe as much as 4 hours. Then, I would need to connect to the Internet and upload software patches for the next few days, or weeks.

With all that, I must upgrade about once a week. On top of all that, every time I start an ap, I wait. Sometimes, it’s 5 or 10 seconds. Some apps take a minute or more.

They’ve come up with a sleep mode. That’s where you can turn your computer and it restarts where you turned it off. It became somewhat mandatory. If they didn’t give us the option, it takes 15 seconds to turn one of these new speeders off and a good 2 or 3 minutes to bring it back up.

It seems every since we past Windows 98, these software engineers are doing all they can to make sure we spend as much time as possible sitting on our hands. More than that, they are doing all they can to squeeze us amateur hobbyists out. I used to be pretty good at programming. Now they don’t allow VB 6.0 or any version of Delphi. Not sure about Pascal. So frustrated at losing my Delphi I haven’t tried.

Also, they keep demanding more and more of everything: speed, memory and disk. Now these brilliant guys want me to store my books on the cloud. I can understand that for the big guys, but it’s just little ol me. I suspect there are others who have a similar point of view.

In addition, they have turned, perhaps 1000 dollars of programs of mine into useless junk. I have a copy of Word Perfect that I can no longer use. The bad thing about that is that I much prefer it to MS Word. Tried pro version of Word a few years ago and removed it the same day I installed it. It ran slower than my old Vic-20.

Mostly, I’ve been using the bargain brands. They aren’t fast, but at least they work. Mostly, I use my little Samsung pad I got from T-mobile to write my post. It’s a little awkward, but I can mostly finish the post on the Tablet by the time I start typing on my computer. On the other hand, the computer version is better at finding my errers.

Oh, and by the way, the taplet is considerably more green. Even my laptop uses more power, far more power.

Most important, I don’t think one person in the hierarchy of Microsoft cares one iota about me or the likes of me. They are too busy keeping people from using their software without licensing.

Oddly, it might have the reverse effect. More & more of us just might go to the little tablets. My tablet is on the instant I press the button and rarely needs updating.