IT wars

Isn't it difficult? I like Windows. I like Google Chrome. I use Google all the time. But now they are fighting over me in the same way that the omnibus drivers used to mow down the customers who were waiting for a rival firm's bus.

It started when I downloaded Windows 10. It took hours and hours and afterwards my computer hardly worked at all and as for getting the Internet - each time I clicked on Chrome it melted into plain screens and locked up. There was no start menu. I had to crash it twice. What could I do? I thought I had overloaded the poor old thing to destruction and I went to bed with a heavy heart. Could anything be salvaged from the wreck of my laptop?

Next day Windows 10 started to work. It's looking good. It's finding all its elements. File explorer is better than it was; it prioritises the things you actually look at. When you finally get the start menu that looks good too, and it's gradually doing its job.

What goes wrong is when you ask Windows 10 to open Google. It says, Oh yes, I hid that in the attic, and goes off to have a look, and pokes about for a while, but no joy, and it thinks it might be in the back of the garage behind the rusty bicycles and under the old kitchen shelves. That box there. Have a good feel around. Got Google? No. Then it's completely exhausted and starts to freeze in panic, and finally you have to do the IT equivalent of smacking its face, ie. Task Manager, End Task.

But what is really annoying me now is that I can't play anything on iPlayer. I had no idea I wanted to do this so often. It happens that this week on Radio 4 there is an interesting series of talks from Europeans about the local bookshop in their town. I caught the first one - what the Danes are reading - on Monday morning, after Start the Week, and I have been trying to listen to it again and catch up with the other nations' state of play ever since.

But Windows 10 just doesn't seem to be able to find the software that streams content, even though it was there before, and I suppose I will be have to be patient while it rummages about in a few more packing cases for things that were lost in the move.

Postscript: Windows 10 is working fine now: streaming content and finding things quickly; I am happy with it.

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A friend came to see us recently who is still working on "heritage" computer programmes, working his way through old programmes (25 years old) and trying to work out what the coding is for. He is something of an expert at this but even he has to give up sometimes and say: we don't know what this part does. Sometimes he is amazed that any computer programmes, anywhere, work because they are all patched up and working around defunct bits - it very much reminds me of DNA, which for a while, geneticists said, not much of it seems to do anything! (Perhaps they know more now.)