Thanks a lot, Microsoft

Thank you, Microsoft, for convincing me to update my video driver. I had run the same video driver for two years, ever since I built this computer. But thanks to your automatic updates hosing my video driver, I now have the latest video drivers. All it took was about four hours of fighting the software you trashed. I’m not using some off-brand video chip, either. Nvidia is one of the top chips and the video board runs great and has for two years. Until Microsoft hosed it, of course. I realize this isn’t a big deal, unless of course you have 50 machines with Nvidia graphic chips and Microsoft hoses them all. But it is aggravating, isn’t it, when a perfectly fine computer downloads updates and goes all wonky? While we’re picking on Microsoft, the 50 million of you still using Windows 98 (according to some estimates) better make a decision quickly. Microsoft ended support for Windows 98 this week, meaning no more security upgrades. Windows 98 security wasn’t much to talk about anyway, since Microsoft released that operating system before they grokked the Internet, but at least they made the effort. No more of that, friends. If you haven’t replaced Internet Explorer with Firefox of Opera on your Windows 98 machines yet, better hop to it. That will help keep the spyware folks at bay. Some (including me to at least half the people I talk to about Windows 98) advocate switching those older computers to Linux. More efficient with older computer hardware than Windows, a Linux operating system will improve performance on standard business functions over Windows 98 on the same computer. You’ll also avoid about 99.9 percent of the spyware and viruses that plague Windows systems as well. I have friends who believe SimplyMEPIS is the best Linux operating system for Windows refugees. Others swear by Xandros, especially their new Home Edition. You can get these or other Linux operating systems at many of the sites we’ve been talking about for schools, or check out LinuxWorld for other ideas. The only real problem with replacing Windows 98 with Linux is that many custom applications that run businesses all over the place must use Windows 98 (or 95) because those operating systems strongly support of DOS. That’s why those Windows 98 computers weren’t updated to Windows 2000 or Windows XP in many cases, because the two newest Microsoft operating systems ruined the ability for developers to run DOS applications with full access to the computer hardware. Once again, thanks a lot, Microsoft.