Computers (and Microsoft) are driving me mad!

A few years ago, soon after Vista was released, there were suggestions in various blogs, etc, that one of the monthly updates to Windows XP was deliberately designed to cause it to slow down in order to make Vista appear to be faster. I never saw any evidence to support these suggestions, and put them down as yet another conspiracy theory involving Microsoft.

Now this house has three computers, two desktops and a lap top. They are all of different ages and all use Windows XP. Over the past few weeks, all three have all have developed problems. In the case of Mrs EP's desktop this resulted in me having to start from scratch and then re-loading Windows and all the other software.
Now my desktop looks as if it will require the same treatment!

As Windows 7 is now being pushed and XP is no longer being supported it is easy to see how these conspiracy theories can develop, particularly if, like me, you don't tend to believe in co-incidences. Why should all three computers develop software problems at about the same time?

I need a new and faster computer as lately I have got into video editing and my present machine takes all night to process the video to produce a DVD. However, whilst there are quite a few computers to choose from at acceptable prices, it seems that much of my software will need upgrading, the cost of which could be several times that of the computer. My video editing software is stated by Roxio to be a "legacy version" and needs to be upgraded, whilst my Microsoft Office 2000 apparently won't run with Windows 7. Now I am perfectly happy with both items of software, certainly Office 2000 does everything that I need, so why should I pay out for extras that I don't want? In addition, as I have previously blogged, I will need to replace my iPAQ PDA as Active Sync and Outlook apparently are incompatible with Windows 7.

If I do buy a new computer, it looks as if I will be moving to Open Office, after all it's free and certainly seems to do everything that I need, except that it does not have an equivalent of Publisher. Hopefully there will be something free out there!

One thing that I have learnt. When I get a new computer, the first thing that I will do once I have set it up and loaded my software, is to get a spare hard drive and make a clone or an image of the one in the computer. At least then, if something goes wrong I won't have to re-load all the software and settings from scratch.