The Windows 7 fooferah is in full swing, both here and elsewhere, and I for one have little or no contact with it. That’s partly because I have little or no interest in it, and one follows the other, so to speak.

Since I am not a Windows user and probably never will be, I won’t bother denigrating the latest Microsoft effort to stay in business. Although after a while, it becomes obvious to anyone — Linux users or Windows users — that people have to keep buying Windows, or Microsoft would go bankrupt. And from that, it becomes equally obvious why there is so much fooferah, and why Windows’ reputation for performance suffers so many critics. Myself included. 😐

To put the lid on the fooferah, I’ll just post the photo that’s been reposted so many times elsewhere. …

Sent to me by one of my detractors, who prefers the expensive corporate swirl of electronic gobbledygook in order to use a computer, as opposed to the free and easily understandable gobbledygook that I use. Questions that might arise from looking at that picture — What does that mean? Are they for real? Who in the world would buy that? — would be better directed toward Microsoft, with regard to their product: What do you mean? Are you for real? Who in the world would buy that?

Next stop, a brief interlude to mention the BBC and a blog post by Rory Clellan-Jones, regarding Ubuntu and its viability when compared to Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.x.x (I can’t keep up with the versions there). I don’t know RCJ from Adam, and to be honest, it’s neither here nor there to me what the BBC has to say about Linux.

If there was ever a shill for Microsoft, it is the tech news department of the BBC. I respect them as an international news-gathering organization and I would crawl through a pit of red-hot razor wire and broken glass to get news from them over anything pumped out of America these days … but let’s face it: Their IT reviewers and tech pundits don’t impress me as much more than press release rewriters, latched firmly to their fax machines awaiting the next truckload of nonsense from Redmond. Or Apple. Or Twitter. Or Twittering about Apple. 🙄

So whether or not Rory Clellan-Jones knows a mouse from a hole in the ground is moot point to me; I stopped listening to their IT news not long after I started using Linux … because changing your perspective in that way makes them look foolish. On the other hand, aysiu has a much more effective rebuttal to RCJ’s review. 😈

Lastly, before anyone replies in any way to the pro or to the con about Microsoft’s latest release, it might be worthwhile to note that a good test of any product is to see what the people who sell the product use. Who cuts the barber’s hair, so to speak.

And in this case, the issue is up for debate. Ask Netcraft.com what bing.com uses as an OS and it will tell you Linux, but as is discussed, that’s more than likely a rerouting through another server system that is being reported, and not actually the inner sanctum of the Microsoft cathedral itself.

Personally I still find that ironic. Either side of the software freedom debate can rationalize that fact as they like, but to me, it speaks volumes that the world’s most powerful company and entrenched software producer relies on something other than their own product to relay information to their own service. Full stop.

So there it is. For me, for all practical purposes, Windows 7 is come and gone. Like it, hate it — decide for yourself. My own opinion was formed when the aforementioned BBC fawned over it with this quote, from only a few days ago.

It needs less computing power so older PCs run it quite happily. “Our PCs have gained another two years lifetime,” says Chris Page, who deployed Windows 7 on nearly 700 computers in schools run by Warwickshire County Council. Just one five-year-old laptop refused to run the new operating system, he reports.

Wow, a 5-year-old laptop can’t run Windows 7? Well, I guess that closes the door on me.

Until tomorrow. …