I work for a company out of my house that contracts to smaller internet companies and provide technical support over the phone and most importantly provide remote support by connecting to their computers via software and help them fix their problems in real time.

There used to be a time when Microsoft ruled the computer world in the late 80’s and early 90’s with their early versions of Windows.  The one I learned at a small age was Windows 3.1 which came pre-installed with my PC.  If you had an Apple back in the day, you were considered basically a loser and nobody respected you.  With the advent of Windows 95 it basically put Apple in the brink of extinction.   Every PC computer manufacturer shipped Windows 95, making Bill Gates one filthy rich man.  Soon followed Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, and Windows Millennium.  Anybody using a Mac during these times, was pretty rare although Apple did bring out the colorful iMacs to try and be relevant, however it didn’t really dent the PC world and that of the Windows operating system.

The turn of the new millennium brought in Windows XP and the PC market still reigned supreme.   Steve Jobs from Apple made the impossible, possible.  With the release of the iPod, Steve Jobs was able to bring back Apple to life.  Followed with the iPhone and restructuring the Mac OS system, it started to finally make headway in the computing world.  With hackers putting all their efforts into attacking and exploiting Windows based PC’s, it didn’t take long for PC’s to start getting a bad reputation for viruses and other malware.

The year 2007 marked a huge decline for Microsoft,  Windows Vista was released and instead of improving PC performance it seemed like it it slowed it down to a crawl, not to mention viruses kept on sneaking into people’s computers didn’t help Microsoft much.  The 1st generation iPhones appeared, Mac OS X which was around earlier kept releasing better versions and providing a stable platform for people to use caused many people to switch and not look back.   Vista didn’t last long in the market as Windows 7 was released 2 years later and finally had major improvements in PC performance.  Still Microsoft and PC markets struggled to keep up with the pace of Apple and with viruses ever so prevalent attacking Windows based computers, Apple finally was able to leap forward.

As technology has evolved and mobile computing becoming more mainstream, Microsoft didn’t want to fall behind to the likes of Apple and Google that they released Windows 8.  Instead of becoming more user friendly, Microsoft removed the traditional start menu, put a tablet type of interface called the Metro and made things hard to find.  When this shit was released, fellow technicians and myself had non-stop calls for days with the typical “I don’t know where this is, I don’t know how to do this or that” it was horrible listening to the old people who couldn’t figure out how to get on the internet, many thanks to Microsoft on that one on making it hard for old people to finally understand Windows to just say “You know what guys, fuck it, we gonna change everything”

After many petitions to put the start menu back and countless things that Microsoft removed, they finally listened to the people and released Windows 10 a few weeks ago with the classic start menu back.  All those people that would call in day in and day out on something Windows 8 related, have called back and even though there is plenty of calls to go around, all of them have been pleased upgrading to this newer windows version.  I haven’t had yet a horrible experience helping someone with Windows 10 and hopefully Microsoft can build on that.  The tablet