Windows Technology

The first version of Windows I remember using was Vista on a HP laptop, until late 2011, I'm led to believe, and barring the fact that the wireless card on the laptop died after a few years and the charger started to hiss in quite a dangerous way nearer the end, the computer largely worked fine for the period of time I used it for. I still can't remember what I managed to do which killed the wireless card, though

I would list my long, long laptop history (starting around 2011), but I have a feeling it would get dull and repetitive very quickly

Dear lord, I feel terribly old if Vista was the first Windows OS you used...!

Windows 3.11 was the first one I used if you really want to feel old...

My first using Windows from primary school in Dublin was either 95/98 on a really old white coloured PC. Talk about being prehistoric.

If I had to go to computer class upstairs in the same building; I had used Windows 98/ME on much newer black coloured Dell PC's at the time. I also had used Windows 98/2000 on the newest Dell Inspiron laptops in the early noughties that were owned by the school. The computer classes were doing the microsoft office stuff on it. But some of my classmates had used the PC's or the laptops; we could play games on it if we wanted to use them. I had really loved playing Maths Blaster & an old mystery solving game which had featured stops from the London Underground on the PC. If I was using one of the laptops; we would play the default Pinball game on Windows along with other games provided from them. Although not every laptop didn't have the same programs on each one.

The current OS that I am using now is Windows 10 20H2. It's not a bad operating system at all.

I literally cannot wait to use the new 21H1/H2 for next year. I heard recently that the 21H2 update will have the new GUI update known as Sun Valley with the new file explorer & redesigned Start Menu. And there is another new Microsoft project in the pipeline already. It is called Project Latte. A similar project like this was proposed by MS when Windows Phone was in use only a few short years ago.

It will allow for Android App support which will provide a shop window for new android apps to be sold directly from the Microsoft Store app on your laptop or PC that will support this new update. That would be terrific news for us if we wanted to use broadcasting or news apps from Windows 10 in future. Microsoft are telling app developers that if they want to use Android apps for Windows; they would have to create them via a MSIX package instead of an apk package that is used for apps on Android devices via Google Play.

Windows Central had reported that Project Latte will be released with Sun Valley next Autumn. What a match made in heaven.

https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-project-latte-android-apps

I can remember installing it from about 21 3.5 inch floppies. A PITA if you got to disc number 20 and the install hung.

Anyway, for someone who grew up with the ZX-81 and loading programs from an audio cassette it was super modern !

Not as mesmerising as the raster bars you used to get though:

I miss watching the defragging blocks on win98. Happy days.

You can't get this back in modern versions of Windows (and its not necessary in this era of SSDs anyway), but in Vista and later they completely removed all the GUI images and pretty colours from Defrag and provided sod all clue as to what it was actually doing, it would just say "defragging" (although they did change it slightly in 7/8/10 and it provided more information but didn't have any coloured blocks moving around)

However you could always use the DOS command version of Defrag which would actually tell you what it was doing, and wave a load of percentages and passes at you. Wasn't as pretty but at least gave you reassurance that something was actually happening and the entire thing hadn't just hung. AFAIK this command line syntax still works in 10.