by Kevin Burton
It’s been almost five years since Microsoft released Windows 11. Now, this humble blogger is on board.
As I type this, I’ve been using it for maybe an hour. Did I come kicking and screaming to 11? Not exactly, but you can see I didn’t rush into it headlong and breathless.
Remember I mentioned there was a virus on my old computer? Well I told the guy at the shop who was fixing it, while you’re at it, please put 11 on there.
“This unit won’t support 11,” he said, calling my old computer “too aged.”
I didn’t much like that, being too aged myself.
My new computer, armed with 11, arrived Wednesday from a place in Texas called Computers for the Blind. I have recommended them probably 100 times, to blind people needing a new system. This was the first time I bought one of their computers for myself.
The customer service process was amazingly smooth. The first thing they did was make me prove I am legally blind. Once I did, by sending a document, they called me back and I had a computer ordered in maybe 15 minutes. And the unit arrived right when they said it would.
When it came time to replace my Dell computer (and since you know me pretty well by now, you know it was way past time), they gave me such a runaround that I went to a smaller place called Ribbit computers. God bless those guys and I hope they stay in business, because if so, I won’t be going anywhere else, ever.
The first thing I noticed when the postal service left the box on my front porch was the computer wasn’t heavy at all. My old CPU is about the size of a respectable footstool. The new thing is the size of a personal pan pizza.
Lord have mercy, if I live long enough to need another new one, it may be the size of a pack of chewing gum.
So far I don’t see much difference between 10 and 11. I’m still looking around. I would never have moved off of 10, except Microsoft stopped supporting it.
You can rearrange the letters in “planned obsolescence” to get “cold, obscene plan seen.” It’s not the way America used to run, you know?
Actually, I’m not always resistant to change, so you can’t just stereotype me as an old guy stuck in his ways. It’s much more accurate to say I’m oblivious to change.
Here, for what it’s worth, is why people (not just old people) are resistant to change, according to Psychology Today magazine:
1. Fear of the Unknown. With change comes uncertainty. As a result, people tend to shy away from change because they are fearful or anxious about what the result might be.
2. The “Moral Force.” Humans tend to become set in their routines to such an extent that they resist change because they truly believe that the status quo is best. It goes something like this: “The old way is the best way. The old way is the right way!” Psychologist Howard S. Friedman suggested when he called it the “moral force,” that people cling strongly to the familiar, the tried and true, and what is familiar and comfortable becomes “morally correct.”
3. Fear of Failure. Another source of anxiety associated with change is the fear that any change will result in failure or even disaster.
4. Apathy. Sometimes people resist change simply because change causes some effort – to learn a new procedure or to adapt to the change takes work.
5. Lack of Faith in Changemakers. At the organizational level, people may resist change because they are wary of those advocating change.
Wednesday night is trash night at my place, but the old computer did not go out with the coffee grounds. I will keep it around to use for word processing tasks that don’t involve the internet. It can be another work station, for another part of the house. Or, whatever. I’ll think of something, I always do.
Now that I’ve finally made the move to Windows 11, can Windows 12 be far behind?
Finally, get this, there is even more change these days in the Burton household. We have “cut the cord,” gotten rid of cable television. Yes, I know most people did this years ago. For us at least, it was not as simple as going snip, snip.
But more about that tomorrow.
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