I hate Windows but can't live without it

I have finally been driven to blogging. Over many years I have worked in IT (about 24 years), and have increasingly become frustrated with technology, primarily IT but not necessarily confined to IT as it is so prevailant in contemporary life.

I have used Windows in all its versions (version 3.0 - wow - it almost made using it worth while). Even version 1 was fun, having been used to CP/M and MP/M PCs, it made MS-DOS interesting. However, more and more I have been made to use Windows in work. This initially was not a problem as for a while I was employed to support large networks of PCs which were just beginning to move from MS-DOS to MS-DOS + Windows, and so it paid my bills. However, over time I have become increasingly frustrated with the environment.

If you bother to read on you will find that I repeatedly rant on about how annoying Windows is. My main problem is how so many program grab focus. Those of you who have programmed for Windows will know that you can make your program become the focus for the interaction between the user and the computer. However, I have become increasingly frustrated with this capability, as quite often now I will be typing an email, or writing a letter, or typing something into a web page when another program will suddenly decide that it will display a window infront of the program I am using and consequently all my typing will be directed at this new window and not the one I was using. This results in alot of retyping and fairly occasionally alot of shouting. This problem can be exacerbated if the new window is asking for a decision to be made about something problematic like "Do you want to erase everything on your PC and in the whole world?" and I happen to press enter at the end of the line I was typing. This probably is the biggest issue I have with Windows and even with windowing environments - by the way enven Linux appears to suffer this, although not as much. Come on programmer - display your windows but don't grab focus!

Why can't I live without Windows? Well - its actually quite good at simple things. Web browsing is particulary good do to the font support. Games - all the decent games are one Windows (sorry ignoring consoles for the moment). Also, my family have been turned into Windows zombies. The schools that my kids have attended forced them to learn how to use Windows (they don't know that there is an alternative). My wife just wants to use what they use. My parents use it because it comes with the PCs that they have bought. They want me to communicate with them using Messanger. I'm stuck.

It is getting worse though. Vista. Pretty, but very very annoying. Start - click on program - do you want to run this program - this program is trying to run do you want to let it. Yes, yes! YES! Also - why is it so much slower. It really makes XP look fast.