OMG what have I done?

 

OMG! What have I done?! (I know it's a bit of a stretch, but try to think of me as an eager teenager.)

 I've committed myself! I can't  go back now! I've thrown myself into the arms of the all-powerful, but deeply flawed, the wonderful but horribly  irritating, that great power that rules the lives of half mankind, (and a fair proportion of womankind as well), the one we love to hate. No not God, but near enough. It's Microsoft of course!

 'Ah,' you say,'most of us do Windows, but we can take it or leave it - we're on the tablets now.' True, but I have gone two stages further. I've committed to the uber-flawed Windows 8, and to that strange new beast the' Surface'. Why on earth is it called 'surface', and why in the name of some other all-powerful being is it controlled by things called 'charms'? We mere mortals can only guess at what goes through the minds of those precocious infants at MS headquarters.

This is what I am doing:

I have raided the kids inheritance and bought the not-yet-released-in-Britain 'Surface Pro 3'. Look it up - it does everything and does it well. It will be my only computer.

 

Next I'm abandoning what we now have to call 'Office Outlook'. We  have to call it that because in an act of deep perversity MS have decided to call their new email and general organiser 'Outlook.com'. As if that weren't confusing enough there are two of them: the app 'Outlook.com' and the online version, also called 'Outlook.com'. The 'old' Office Outlook does not sync with Outlook.com, and it is quite difficult to get the data from 'Outlook' into 'Outlook.com'.

Just to complete the picture, I'm also committed to the wonderful 'OneNote'. It's a great piece of software, but things were getting too clear and organised for the MS geeks. They had to introduce some chaos, so along comes 'OneNote'. No, it's not the same. This is the free mobile app called 'OneNote' and (you've guessed it) it doesn't integrate with 'Office OneNote'. (I've kept the bits of hair I tore out some weeks ago. Let's face it I might need them.) 

It gets worse: Windows 8 has a' Mail' app which looks exactly like 'Outlook.com' but behaves slightly differently. So, either the geeks have emigrated to the other version of Planet California, (the one with the same name as the earthly one) or this is part of a long term plan to change the nature of the Microsoft environment. I believe they are eventually going to either sell 2 different  systems, or abandon the old complicated desktop set-up in favour of the new 'Metro' environment. If what we end up with is an attractive and functional operating system which keeps a highly efficient business environment, and at the same time keeps us entertained and in touch, then perhaps it will all have been worth it.

I don't know where this road is going to lead me. I know I will face total exasperation at many points in the journey, but I really think that what those MS geeks are trying to achieve is worth committing to. So there.