Once you left XP behind, you entered Microsoft's world of pain.
With Windows 7 & beyond, MS went all totalitarian. You lost control..
Windows 98; the cleanest OS ever.

I remember I had no problems with it, and that's saying a lot for me. Anyway, I should get away from Microsoft altogether. Better not to support economic empires. Meanwhile I'm accepting no more updates from them.

make me laugh the way google and facebook are now making microsnot look good

> Better not to support economic empires.

you have no choice with operating systems.

i believe updates are important for security ... against malware etc ... among other things. not sure it's a good idea to turn them off.

Thanks for the advice, dolphin. Things seem to be working more or less right again. I have no idea why, or whether this is likely to continue.
Economic empires - Bill Gates does not make me feel good. Am thinking about getting a Mac - Steve Jobs is dead, who's running their part of the universe these days? Is he/she/they nice?

There is always Linux, which is open source. The office suite is not as flexible (powerful) as other products, but it is MS Office compatible. Also the range of APPs available for it is smaller than the range of APPs for MS Win OS, but it is getting better.

I have Linux Mint (like windows) on one of my old laptops, and because it is less memory hungry it runs fine on the 15+ years old machine. Because Mint looks similar to a Windows/Mac environment, it is pretty intuitive and pretty easy to adjust too.
I am sure that Linux products and choice of compatibles has moved forward a lot in the 4 years since I had it installed.

Why are you explaining Linux to a lay who condescends machines as "twinky".. "crap"... of "geeks" as if his outdatedness is superior?

Ishmael's got his point of view on new technologies. I don't necessarily agree with him on everything but smartphone addiction and endless posting of pointless content are real problems. A related point that I think he's making in a roundabout way is that well designed technology shouldn't require great expertise to use. That's definitely correct I think.

Linux was supposed to be anti establishment. Go ahead if you want to waste half your life tweaking your operating system and if you like bugs.

the guy who replaced jobs wants to take over the world, I think. But I hear he likes cats.

Stick with microsoft. Steve Ballmer is called The Embalmer. How cool is that?

I'm of the camp where if I'm addicted to sex, I blame my own vice and predisposition, not sex itself.