THE STORY SO FAR: PART 329: SUNDAY

THE WORK OF THE DEVIL

Every so often, Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer—which I like a lot and use for blogging—seems to get confused by life and refuses to upload to my blog. Yesterday that happened again—to my vast frustration. On the other hand I eventually found a solution so arguably should pleased at my ingenuity.

I am reluctant to take a bow. I don’t pretend to be a computer guru—and will happily settle for software that just plain works.

Years ago, I forecast that we would reach this nirvana by 2010—(and I started trying to use a computer, after some preliminary disasters, in 1986) but it appears that I have been optimistic. Certainly, there has been considerable progresss, but I still seem to spend too much of my time advancing from glitch to glitch. That said, I get a great deal of work done by computer so I shouldn’t complain too much—and I’m deeply grateful to those companies whose software can be relied upon.

In that spirit, from time to time, I’m going to recommend software that I have used personally for a period (in excess of six months) and which I have found robust and reliable. This does not mean no glitches will ever occur—bug-free software is, so I’m told, as rare as hen’s teeth. It merely reflects my experience. After that, you are on your own.

My opening advice: Buy a Mac. Windows, despite being vastly improved, is the work of the Devil at his absolute worst.

Bill Gates, despite the commendable work of his foundation, needs to apologize to one and all for the misery he has caused by marketing an operating system that not only sucks—but which is endemically flawed because of its underlying structure. He knows this is the case, yet has never tried to remedy the problem. In contrast, when Apple recognized the limits of the Mac OS,  they bit the bullet and introduced the Unix based system that has been so extraordinarily successful ever since.

SOFTWARE RECCOMENDATION: If you are a compulsive note-taker and collector of electronic clippings—which I will confess I am—you would be hard to do better than to store your data in EVERNOTE. It is cross-platform, features EVERNOTE CLIPPER which makes saving web pages ridiculously easy, and saves both in the Cloud and on your local hard drive. Go look and play. There is a free version or you can pay. I pay. It’s worth it.