Good Morning, Snow-shovellers! Take a break.......

All that unaccustomed exercise isn't good for your heart and therefore your future. Relax - have a cuppa, and get warmed up. Those of us up here in the Great White North, where the grass is green and it's raining lightly send you our sincere (well, maybe semi-sincere) condolences. You see, we've 'been there and done that' a lot. For us, it's an annual thing.  Look on the bright side - you've just had a winter vacation without leaving home....

Times change. I used to get up around five-thirty or six a.m., and stumble to the door, hoping none of the neighbors would see me not yet dressed, as I got the daily paper from the doorstep, and prepared to pick three or four items from it to include in my daily fax to Dear Editor. The paper's still at the door each morning, but now it's frequently ignored. Yesterday, I didn't pick it up until about one-thirty in the afternoon, when the building manager came by with his almost-three-thousand-dollar floor grooming machine, doing the hall carpets for their weekly fresh-up.

These days, the computer gets turned on first thing instead, and this morning I was greeted by this screen during the start-up....

That's annoying, because everything comes to a halt until you choose one of those two selections. I have to interrupt the start-up routine to answer Microsoft's uninvited question, and there's no 'comment' section where I can tell them what I really think of Windows 8.1. They're obviously aware that not all of us loved it passionately. Not nearly as passionately as we loved and still love our Windows 7.  So, unable to punch 'Get Lost!', I click 'Ask me later' (much later, please) and move on to my own opening screen for Windows 8....

You've noticed that it has those neat gadgets Microsoft told us were a 'security hazard' when they removed them from the operating system. You may also notice in the upper left of that open 'Gadgets' window, it says 'Page 1 of 3' and 
that's not a typo - there are three pages of them now, if like me you have installed '8GadgetPack'. And this is just one of the reasons I'm not in any rush to download the free upgrade to Windows 8.1. The other reasons are:-

1.  It comes as a direct download, not as an .iso with which you would make a disk for the actual installation - and save for later repairs. 

2. It doesn't have enough improvements to warrant all the arm-twisting that Microsoft has been subjecting us to, while trying to push it onto our computers.
So please, Mighty Microsoft, take the gun away from my head. This is my computer, not yours, and I'll run whatever operating system I like on it - and right now, I'm running three systems on it: Windows 8 Pro, Windows 7 SP1, and PC-BSD 9.2. And that Unix-derived version of FreeBSD seems to be doing just about everything one might wish to do on a Windows operating system, with one glaring difference: it's a free program. Just go to their Downloads page and help yourself to a free copy of the .iso which you then burn to a disk for the actual installation. What's it like? Try to imagine a cross between Windows and a Mac. Without viruses. With 1169 specially-chosen programs in a wide variety of categories from which to choose - including the also free and open-source program Open Office 4, which lets you do everything you'd do in Microsoft's Office, including working with Microsoft files. Need I say more? Try it.....

This is the desktop for PC-BSD 9.2, showing the digital clock widget, and 'Daisy' the grouped icon display. It can be either linear or circular as you choose, and the individual program icons are selectable. There's also an optional widget bar dockable to an edge of the screen, as well as several screen 'hot points' in the corners and along edges. This is not a 'plain Jane' operating system. And, like Windows, the desktop backgrounds are both changeable and customizable. If you want your own pictures for wallpaper, just size them for your desktop's native resolution and use one. Looks good, and it works! You should try it.