1202 Microsoft Exterminator for Windows 8

1202 Microsoft Exterminator for Windows 8

No, it’s not an app or a game or even a “productivity program.”  It’s a workaround for Windows 8, Mac and Androids’ newborn cousin.

A great big bowl of ugly, this operating system.

But you can beat the system.  Well, mostly beat it.

Eight is the only recognized operating system that’s less attractive than MSDOS.   It makes Windows 7 look like a beauty queen in full makeup and a $1,000 hairdo.

It tries to force you to use Internet Explorer.  It wants you to use and makes it tough for you to not use Word.  It wants you in the Microsoft “cloud.” It almost forces you to use Microsoft Bing as your main search engine.

It almost forces you to use Bing Maps which although better than the iPhone 5 doesn’t have anything near the usefulness of Google Maps or Yahoo Maps or Mapquest.

It looks like a tablet but without the tablet’s ease of use.  And it doesn’t look very businesslike.

The first thing you have to know is that you don’t have to follow orders.

You can download Google Chrome, a good interface and transportable because it synchronizes with all of your machinery:  desktops, laptops, netbooks and smart phones.

While you have to have a Microsoft account of some kind (Outlook or Hotmail will do,) you don’t have to use it.

With your Chrome and Gmail you also get Google Docs and maps and other stuff so you don’t have to use the Microsoft versions which many people dislike.

Ad blocker is a free extension that gets rid of most of the advertising on Chrome and the other Google products. Picasa (also free) is just as good as the Windows “My Pictures.”

Windows 8 seems to not like Gmail.  Sometimes you have to beg or threaten.  But when you insist it comes around.

All this stuff about Google products works equally well with Opera.  The Apple browser is undergoing tests at the Wessays™ secret mountain laboratory.

If you’re a picture person, you probably have Photoshop which is better than anything Micro or Google has to offer.  But you know that.

Now, about non-Microsoft workarounds for everyday programs:

Music?  RealPlayer is free.

Unless you need a word processing program absolutely positively 100% compatible with Word, Openoffice.org will do nicely, and it’s also free.

With games, you’re on your own.  But there have to be workarounds for them too.

Now, can someone please tell me where solitaire is hidden?

Windows 8 users of the world, arise!  You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Shrapnel:

--How about if congress adjourns for the summer and never comes back?  They don’t do anything useful anyway so who’d notice the difference?

--How about if President Obama takes that Martha’s Vineyard vacation and doesn’t come back? He can’t get anything right and stick to it anyway.  So who’d notice the difference?

--How about if the Supreme Court stays on vacation forever?  The justices can’t get anything right.  And that’s something everyone notices... or should.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments and hate mail to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013