I was visiting my parents in Spain. They've bought a computer that comes with an operating system named Microsoft Windows Me. (Probably, "Me" because everything everywhere is "my documents", "my music", "my network places", "my photographic center",... Why they don't just say "Music", etc. May be it's not mine,... may be it's ours.)
They've bought also a beautiful scanner. So I decided to scan a number of pictures from my early childhood to surprise my wife back at home. To get them into jpegs was fairly easy. Then, I though it īd be a good idea to arrange them in a text editor wrapped with place and date and some comments from my parents.
The first problem is to find the word processor, anything like Microsoft Word 6.0. It is now embedded into some kind of interface called Microsoft Works, where you cannot just open a file, but you have to define a "task" or open a program. In this case, I had to open a "Works text processor", and then "Generate a document of the text processor". I was already wondering how can you open an already existing document.
Of course, in the end you are in something like Microsoft Word 6.0. However, it has some basic options apparently missing. I cannot find a way of defining heading levels, and I cannot choose the way I see the page. So I loose a first good quarter of an hour trying to figure out how to do that without any success.
Nevermind, I manage to insert the pictures and some related text during a couple of hours. Unfortunately, I forget to save the document from time to time. When I'm about to finish (a nice job) the program crashes with a warning window with one single button that has to be clicked, and next thing I'm back to the Works interface with nothing left of my work. I realize what a damn idiot I was not to have saved the data before, but I know how to recover lost files... in MS Word 6.0. I search the help of the program. There is no mention at all of things like "auto-saving" (the program saves alone security copies from time to time; some even can do this when they are crashing, but probably you cannot do this under DOS). There is no mention at all in al the help of the possibility of the program crashing and you losing your file. They don't even tell you something like, "Mind you, we are so fool that we did not care of allowing you to recover your data when the program crashes, so just save it often". After all, it's my fault, so I re-do the thing.
As usual, second time takes less time. Short term memory works well, and I have my document in half of the time I needed before. I am using old technology, and the computer is not yet connected to internet, so I have to put my file (sorry, my Works text processor document) in a floppy, which is already containing the pictures I've scanned. It won't fit and, anyway, the document contains the pictures so I delete the pictures from the floppy (by putting them in the "recycling" bin AND by emptying the bin) and I'm about to put the document in the floppy when I realize that the extension of the document seems to be specific of Works (wps). Suddenly, I see that MS Word is not going to recognize that in a million years. No way. I have to save it in MS Word format if I want to have any chance to see the file at home in my Windows 98 PC.
Back to the text processor. The "Save As" has a good variety of options. I try the Word 6.0/95 (*.doc). The program produces a file that takes now 5Mb instead of the 1Mb that had before. There's no way I can fit that in a floppy. It's absurd. The pictures take a mere 800K, and the text cannot be more than 10K. I try Wordperfect 5.0 (also a .doc extension). The program produces a temporal empty file and crashes! I try some of the rtf formats. The resulting file gets a good 11Mb!
I definitely quit. I'll print the damn thing and I just keep the pictures. I can insert the text at home again. The pictures... I deleted them! I fear that this is going to be terrible now. If DOS keeps the same as it was 20 years ago, files are deleted by removing the first character of the name of the file. If you don't write anything on top, the file is there. Except one single character. That's used by many programs that allow you to recover accidentally deleted files if you are quick enough. But, will Microsoft Windows have that option?
Half heartedly, I scan the help of the computer to find about how to recover deleted files. Well. Can you imagine? The possibility is not even considered. Zero. Nothing at all. Probably, one should never empty the recycling bin. But then, why I'm deleting the files in the first place? In any case, there is my floppy with the pictures on it, or almost.
Suddenly I get the idea. Somewhere, I have to have the floppies that I was using years ago when my parents had a 286. Feverishly I search them, and when I finally get them I browse the labels for... YES! The NORTON utilities! I insert the floppy, I get an MSDOS console (Thanks God they did not disallow that option yet!) and I get the program I was looking for (amounting to 18K and dated from 1988): it is called QU (Quick Unerase). When you run it in command line it shows you the files that it can see as deleted, the name (except the first deleted character) and if the file is entirely there it prompts you for the missing character. And there you are! I've got back my pictures in one minute.
So, what is the lesson? I think that this is the effect of the Microsoft world monopoly on software and operating systems. There is no competition for the market of people buying the first computer. Therefore they can allow themselves to do anything to them. They are trying to make everything very simple, but at the same time they make everything inflexible and in the way forget to fix things that were solved many years ago.
This was My first experience with Microsoft Windows Me. Punching the face of Bill Gates with My fist would make My day. That's My feeling. Excuse My!