XP –> WIN 7

I’ve been one of the estimated 30% who mostly stuck with Windows XP right up until the time Microsoft said it would no longer support the operating system. But it wasn’t just Microsoft who bailed on the OS: the people at WordPress who under-gird my blog don’t like that XP couldn’t upgrade to a newer browser; some Web sites I visit join on the same bandwagon; even Google is warning me that my that IE 7 has become obsolete and that they will no longer be “supporting” the old ways. Well, of course not.

Ah, the old ways. By a large margin, the biggest frustration to me has been the loss of Outlook Express–it doesn’t exist anymore in any new version, presumably because it was so damn easy to get it to interface with an Internet service provider that offered e-mail over the Web.  Express was so neat and clean and simple. The Outlook 2003 I’ve been wrestling with all day is cluttered and complicated. Worse yet, Microsoft doesn’t want you using that old product anyway and won’t help you get it running because it wants to steer you to outlook.com because Microsoft wants to compete with Google’s Gmail. These behemoths are falling over each other so that they can scan your e-mails for keywords and monetize the results to marketers. I wish they understood the old adage: you can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip. You don’t see me.

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