Microsoft Support..... or not.

When I got this computer new, it came with an Nvidia graphics card that was quite adequate but certainly not spectacular. It worked OK on Windows 7, and it did have its own built-in RAM, but not a lot. So when I first started testing the beta for Windows 8 I had it replaced by an ATI Radeon HD 5450 which has one Gig of its own memory, the reasoning being that Windows 8 is even more graphics-intensive than Windows 7. And the new graphics card works wonderfully well.

The problem isn't with the graphics card, it is with Windows Updates which keeps trying to offer me updates for the long-gone Nvidia graphics card. So I thought I'd send a little 'heads-up' to Microsoft about it, and I contacted Microsoft Support. After providing my Microsoft I.D. and all that, I finally got onto a page that offers live chat with one of their resident experts. There's only one problem with that: if they actually do something for you, then there's a charge of $99.00 for the service. My Windows 7 Home Premium cost me a little more than that, but not much, and my Windows 8 Pro cost me less than half of that - just over $44 with tax. So if you have problems, it's probably cheaper to throw out the operating system entirely and install a fresh version rather than pay Microsoft to try to fix it. You can re-install Windows in about 45 minutes, and you won't have to play "20 questions" with a Microsoft Tech, or spend another hundred bucks for doing it. ( I didn't buy their help, by the way - I was simply trying to let them know that Windows Updates can use a little more work on its fine tuning.)

And if you get really choked up over your Windows problems, and want to try something entirely different and yet entirely free for the taking, you can always get a copy of PC-BSD 9.0 which looks and acts a lot like a cross between Windows and a Mac, and comes with plenty of also-free add-ons in the form of programs with which to fluff it out and pump it up and make it a real 'giant-killer'..... So I just wanted to mention all this, before you whip out your credit card and make Microsoft considerably richer without sufficient provocation. Because? Because - there's always more than one way to skin a cat. 

This is a screenshot of the desktop of PC-BSD 9.0 showing a few of its Widgets - the main ones - which open up all sorts of other possibilities. I'm still learning about most of those, so I can't give you a long story just yet, but I can say that I'm very surprised and impressed by everything that this operating system contains, and the many items that can be added to it. It is a very detailed and carefully planned system, and you ought to take a look at it for yourself. You will, of course, need to create a new partition on your drive to make a place for it, but that's not a big problem. And in case you may be wondering, there is a very nice selection of programs, and more than one of each type, from which to choose when you want a particular application for a specific set of tasks, so there is a variety of things available and you aren't limited to simply one or two or 'take it or leave it'. There's plenty of choices.
It puts its competition in a whole other light, lets say - and if you try it, then you'll see what I mean. This is a very nice operating system.

Here is a different background, and the main portion of it is displaying the many choices available in graphics programs - just to illustrate what I said earlier about having plenty of choices. Very nice!