Maybe too many Americans are dumb.

[soldierant]

125. Oh, wow, are you ever on track!

I'm 79 and have been working with computers (as a user, not a developer) since they were programmed and instructed with punchcards. Over time, though I still love computers and the internet (which among other things is a marvelous boon to the disabled), I have become more and more of a Luddite. For example, I have only recently started to work with Windows 10 (having been using Windows 8.1 since about the time 10 came out), and getting angrier about it daily. It just has too many shiny objects - by which I mean apps and features which for me do nothing except distract.

No, Microsoft, I don't want your games. I have my own games, literally hundreds of them, which I keep on a portable hard drive so they'll be out o f the way when I'm not using them. No, Microsoft, I don't want your damn copilot, which I have already uninstalled more than once but keeps coming back. I don't want your damn mail, I want you to leave my Yahoo mail alone. I don't want your damn Xbox, those are not the games I play. I don't want your OneDrive. I don't want your ugly backgrounds, How many will i have to tell you one at a time I hate, before they are all gone? I don't want Cortana, I don't want anything 3D, or OneNote, or Outlook, or Feedback Hub, or Phone Link, or publisher, or snip and Sketch, or any of the shiny objects I have uninstalled, which took days of my time.

And that's just Windows 10. I shudder to think about what 11 or 12 might do to me. All of hat can be uninstalled - you can fins multiple versions of directions to do so in search engines (some of which don't always work depending on which update you ae on, which suggests to me that a lot of people don't want them.) But their presence take up space and memory and makes everything one wants to do slower, and they are such a distraction - I am beginning to believe a deliberate distraction. I suspect Microsoft could actually make more money by selling new versions on new and even rebuilt computers with the absolute bare minimum required to run the system and selling options separately. But putting out all these shiny objects forces our attention away from the real world and dumbs us down. It's not just the media which removes us from reality with shiny objects. I find myself screaming multiple times per day. And if I am, how is a dumb or intellectually lazy person going to cope with the floods of information, misinformation, and disinformation to which we are all subjected?

Oh, and don't even get me started on how much harder it is if you need a screen magnifier. The one on Windows 10 does not even see everything it is on top of. Just one example - if I put in a usb drive and Avast wants to scan it, I must disable the magnifier just to find the Avast command. (and immediately enable it again in order to find i he drive in File Explorer.)