I play Civilization 2 on the old PC. Its not connected to anything but it does run. After playing a game scenario twice, I discovered that I couldn't overwrite the previous games of the same dates and was slipping into the previous game versions on the same months (the game progresses by months). I was playing the exact same game as previously. The third trip around the game. I caught on.
That kind of thing pisses my off royally. And I really wasn't calm about it.
So I just spent 4 HOURS digging into the PC and deleting most of its functions until it finally stopped fighting me. You wouldn't believe what it was doing. I found where it saved all the previous games. But that wasn't enough. Microsoft insists on protecting you from losing old games.
It kept COPIES of all the previous games! Every *&#$*@g time I tried to replay the designed scenario (designed to be replayed you understand), good old Microsoft insisted on reloading the original version of the first game I played by month of the scenario. It took me a few tries to figure THAT out. Sort of a "Wait, I didn't do THAT this time". But the computer did. Everytime I hit a month file, it loaded the old one. I was going crazy trying to change my strategy and it wouldn't let me.
I had to dig into the actual files and drag them to the death realm. And I'm angry because I spent 5 hours playing a WWII game scenario only to have Microsoft overlay OLD games of the same WWII months over the new one AND I had to spend 4 hours killing the old files it hid very carefully.
I'm going to repeat this so that it is clear. Microsoft not only kept, say,"March 1942" so that it loaded that old file when I started again in Feb 1941 and gradually played to March 1942. It kept a COPY of the old file (really copy.filename) so just finding and deleting the original version on the scenario wasn't ENOUGH to clear the game for a new start.
They are either evil or abominably stupid, I don't know which and I don't care... And this is on a computer I deliberately disconnected from the internet for safety's sake.
There are times when I can barely express my "despicification" of Microsoft's controls.
4 comments:
You're a brave man to take Microsoft on! That is well beyond my capabilities.
Megan
Sydney, Australia
I feel your pain.
Microsoft controls the current PC software market and has a de facto monopoly on the desktop computer. This monopoly has not been achieved and is not being maintained by offering the user community better products than Microsoft's competitors can offer. On the contrary, Microsoft has earned a reputation for selling unreliable products, thrown together from third-party technology, full of bugs and security holes, and in need of constant maintenance and repair. Microsoft products are essentially re-wrapped bits of old technology which offer no essential improvements over previous or competing products, and with a Return On Investment between small and zero. Microsoft has focused on using brilliant but doubtful marketing tactics to force their products upon the user community in order to establish and maintain their monopoly. These methods include a tight integration of applications into the operating system, the bundling of applications with Windows to force competing application vendors out of the market, the mandatory bundling of Windows with new computer equipment, deliberate limitations in the compatibility of their own software with competing products, contracts that keep third parties from doing business with anyone but Microsoft, and retaliatory practices against non-cooperating vendors.
We had a computer die - can you tell I have been wrestling with Windows all day?
Note, Google is just about as bad - Anderoid on the tablets is awful!
I feel your pain too. Our son in law is a tech! My computer on internet explorer runs sooooooo slow. He has done everything he knows how to do, talked with people he works with, etc., and can't figure out why it's so slow. We have the same internet service that he has. I've been using Google now for the search engine. Microsoft is creating a black hole and a lot of techs are fed up with it too.
It doesnt matter who creates it, but when a computer starts thinking it's "helping" you do something you didnt ask it to.. there's always trouble!
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