Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Calling Bill Gates

One thing I hate about Microsoft: Its computer programs keep updating themselves in the middle of the night. I don't particularly like my computer updating itself without me knowing about it -- who's in charge here? -- but that's not what gets me.

What gets me is when I'm cranking out the weekly Outpost at four in the morning and the computer sends me a message telling me it will restart in five minutes unless I tell it to go away. Then when I tell it to go away, it's right back in five minutes warning me again that it will restart.

When I am four hours from deadline and have eight pages to go, which is often the case, there are few things I want less than a computer update. But it always gets me. This morning, I had been fighting off reboot warnings for a couple of hours, and I was a third of the way through my story on the Democrats when the 19 hours I had been on the job finally started to get to me. I slumped back in my chair and closed my eyes for a few minutes. When I awoke, the computer had shut down all my programs and restarted.

No major damage, but the incident raised a couple of questions:

1. Is there any way to turn these reminders off?

2. If I were to call up Bill Gates, would he come over and show me how to do it?

3. If I spent all the money to buy this machine, why does Bill Gates seem to own it?

2 comments:

Dave said...

1) If you're lucky enough to still be running Windows 2000 or XP, you should be able to go into the Control Panel and turn off automagic updating.
2) I wouldn't recommend holding your breath waiting for that.
3) Because it has MS Windows installed on it.

I have a standing offer to send a free (no charge to 'you') Linux "live" (everything runs off the disk, no harm to your existing files/data) CD so you can see that Linux is a viable alternative to Windows. Shoot me an email [ dkmerriman AT gmail DOT com ] with a snailmail address to send it to, and I'll have it in the mail to you the same day.

Chuck Rightmire said...

Or a Mac!