The Big Experiment Part 2: The Little Things

Not Likes: 1. I am having trouble getting used to the fact that the red X button on the to p right of a window shuts the app down - and not merely close the wind ow. Dang. I unlearned it before, now I have to relearn it again. 2. Is the constant rebooting really necessary? 3. Closing the lid and letting the T43 hibernate or sleep instead of turning it off is like Russian Roulette - you never know if it's going to screw up. Must I resort to physically turning it on and off every time? I miss just shutting t he lid when I'm taking a break and then just opening it and jumping right back in without waiting and worrying. 4. The biometric finger scanning is cool, but sometimes it simply refuses to read my digits when at other times a casual swi pe is all it takes. Sometimes it accepts the scan and seems to proceed, but som etimes stops and asks me to swipe a second time, as if it got suspicious and ch anged its mind. Duh? 5. The video output is ...chunky. I'm used to the beauty, grace and clarity of OS X's Quartz Extreme. ClearType? Pwe! 6. What's with the constant updating? Every. Single. Day. There. Is. Something. Critical. 7. I miss the Apple Key. (Incidentally, the T43 is the one Windows laptop that does NOT have a Windows key.) 8. Sometimes I notice that the hard drive activity light flashes endlessly, eve n if I'm not doing anything, and the little network activity indicator flashes just as often. (No, I don't have any background processes set up and running. I 'm not a newbie; I'd know the difference.) So WTF is it constantly doing? Virus es hard at work? Nope, I'm clear, according to Windows Defender, AVG and Norton AntiVirus. Are the Microsoft gnomes playing with my data when I'm not looking, changing it around and sending it home so th at the other gnomes in Redmond can have a good laugh? It's making me paranoid. Creepy, man. 9. The trackpad of the T43 is crowned by a set of large buttons with colors (this is apart from the two large ones belo w it), and there is this red pencil eraser smack dab in the middle of the keybo ard. Crowd me, why don't you? I feel like I'm going to accidentally trigger WWI II with a wayward button press. 10. Sometimes doing simple things, like just dragging a file to a folder, drive s the OS into a deep coma, and I face the choice of either being patient and se e if it eventually slips from its funk, or just reboot the damn thing. 11. That little viper nest of a billion useless icons (I think it's called the Taskbar?) on the lower right corner is maddeningly distracting, with all its bl inking and dialog bubbles popping up constantly. 12. I miss my Dock. 13. I miss Dashboard and my beloved widgets. 14. I miss jamming the cursor into a corner and seeing my desktop clear instant ly. 15. Why does it have to be "My" ever ything? My Network Places. My Bluetooth Places. My Computer. My Documents. My Programs... I mean, I know they're mine, am I that insecure that I need to remind myself I own them every time I look at the screen? 16. While we're on the topic of naming things, why is the trash can called Recycle Bin anyway? What are we recycling? 17. Just the act of installing a little piece of shareware can freeze the whole thing and turn it into an expensive paperweight. Why can't this billion-trilli on-gazillion industry fix such a small thing? 18. Microsoft will only let you update the system via web if you're using Inter net Explorer. Is that childish or what? 19. It takes forever to just unplug a USB flash drive. 20. Control Panel is a crowded, confusing, complicated jumble of potentially dangerous choices. Give me System Preferences a ny day. Likes: 1. I like the games.