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I have to admit that I never had any real problems with any Microsoft operating system prior to Windows 8. Windows NT was a good system. Windows 95 was an improvement over DOS 6 and Windows 3.11. Windows 98 2nd edition was great. Windows ME never actually gave me any problems and Windows 2000 was good. We were mostly able to ignore Windows 8 and there were some fixes that made it tolerable if you bought a computer that came installed with it.

Windows 10 has been a major pain, but I have to admit that occasionally the updates actually do solve actual problems. I had to get a new laptop a week ago because the crappy hinges on the one I bought a year and a half ago broke. Fortunately, it was still covered by Costco’s extended warranty, but unfortunately they would not fix it and just gave my money back. One would think that after a year and a half you could find a better deal on a computer for the same money, but I got the other one on a good special. So I had to get another special to get as good a deal.

So the newer computer has a few minor advantages, it has those 2 in 1 hinges and has more metal in it. It turns out that the 2 in 1 form factor along with the touch screen and electronic “pen” actually looks like it might be useful for me. But the Start menu in Windows 10 was screwed up... who knows why. When I reinstalled Microsoft Office, the icons for the trial version which I had uninstalled never went away, so I had two icons for each office program which looked identical, but one of them would not work. Then none of the programs that I installed from the Microsoft store showed up in the menu.

I fiddled around for hours trying to fix those problems. Then I let the machine take the latest updates thinking that there was a slight chance that it would help. Incredibly the problem actually went away and this computer actually is working quite well. It is the first time I can remember one of Microsoft’s updates solving an obvious problem that I was having with a computer.