Just The Facts

Here is a fact that I am coming to accept: I will (probably) never experience life without Windows.

Now let me clarify this comment a bit. I am not saying that YOU should not ditch Windows. In fact I would recommend quite the opposite. It is indeed easy to get along without Microsoft products if you a computer user who does not mind putting forth a little effort to learn something new (allow me to suggest Ubuntu). However...I am planning on a career as a computing professional, not as a computer user, and this changes things a little. First of all, there are the numbers. Something like 90% of computers out there are running Windows, so to forget it exists would have a seriously limiting effect on my future. Secondly, there is pride. People with any kind of expert knowledge are always asked to do things outside of what is technically thier job. I know from being the son of nurse that everyone asks any nurse or doctor they know random questions about their aches and pains and they expect an answer. I also know that from having some aquantences that are lawyers that lawyers always get asked legal questions, I'm not talking about full scale consultations necessarily, but little one-off questions. What I am obviously getting at is that the same is true for computing professionals. I may not be an I.T. guy, but I am, and moslty likely always will be, asked to fix random little computer problems on a fairly regular basis. If someone were to ask me how to get a Windows machine up on their home network, then not knowing the answer would seem like a nurse not being able to take someone's temperature. Now while there is little fear that I would not be able to accomplish such a task at present, the fact is that the computer field changes quickly, and something like that could happen in the future if I ignore Windows for too long. Bottom line: if someone needs some Windows software written, they are not going to pay me to tell them how much better Linux is.

So in light of this I have decided to take up a little experiment. I signed up for a Windows Live account today (with all of the features I could stand), and I am going to try everything out and write about my experiences on my shiny new Windows Live Blog:

http://wshato.spaces.live.com/

This will serve multiple purposes. First of all, It will keep up to date on new stuff that is out there. Second, it will make me better informed when I discuss Microsoft products. I also feel the need to clarify something here. I do not have any intrinsic desire to hate Microsoft (just plenty of good reasons). I do sincerely hope that I find some cool software during this experiment. I am fully ready to praise Microsoft for any quality products that I find. I am also prepared to point out any flaws I find. Either way, it should be fun.