Tim King's homepage with images and writing about technology, education, visual art and motorcycles!
Taken using a Ricoh Theta V 360° camera attached to a flexible gripper tripod on an extended threaded rod. The Theta V lets you take a remote 360° photo every 4 seconds, so you’ve got a good chance of catching something good. When I get back I plug in the camera and look through the shots for something catchy. Here is a how-to if you want to capture your own 360° on-bike photos.
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My lovely wife convinced me to do the Ancestry.com DNA test. Being very British, the results that came back were a bit surprising. Genetically speaking I’m the result of the fact that Europeans love to get to know each other intimately.
My people are from Norfolk on the east coast of the UK, so a strong Scandinavian influence was to be expected (damned vikings!), but the rest is interesting. I had no idea we were part Irish (evidently everyone is), and the trace bits at the bottom are also cool. Realizing I’m made up of all these different cultures feels good.
I other news, Marc Marquez just won the MotoGP championship in Motegi, Japan. I started watching MotoGP during Marc’s first year in the championship and it was thrilling to watch this astonishing talent blossom even as I was getting acclimatized to motorcycle racing. It was hard not to become a fan. I remained a fan up until last year when Marc made a young man’s mistake.
If he’s fighting for a championship, Marc parrots words of respect. but only because he’s going to win it. When he’s out of the running his arrogance comes through and it isn’t pretty.
I find it hard to support a guy who thinks he’s more important than the battle itself. Motorcycle racing is Hemingway-esque in the demands it places on participants. If you do it wrong it will kill you. When doing something that potentially lethal well you need more than quick reflexes and arrogance. The world is full of fast, dead motorcycle riders. Motogp, being the very pinnacle of motorcycle riding, should present professionals who respect the dangers of the championship they are chasing. What Marc did last year in Sepang suggests that he thinks himself superior to others who face the same peril. A rider who thinks he can dictate the outcome of a championship he can’t win is not only arrogant, but dangerous.
If you’re going to stare death in the face with only your reflexes to save you, you should approach your work with a degree of respect and humility. I just finished the Australian GP, and watched Marc toss his Honda into the countryside while leading. He’s far from perfect, though still no doubt a once in a generation talent. I’d like to be a fan again, but not if he’s going to disrespect the brave thing these riders are attempting.
Now that I’m 2% Spanish and we’re coming up on the anniversary of Sepang, I want to say something to my countryman:
“Marc, it’s not your place to dictate the outcome of a championship for anyone but yourself, and there’s something to be said for apologizing. I want to be a fan, but unless you’re going to respect the battle you’ll never be more than an ego with quick reflexes.
One day, as you get older and slower, you’ll be tempted to apologize for what happened in 2015, but when someone irrelevant tries to apologize in order to remain relevant it’s just another expression of arrogance. Now that you’ve got another championship, and as MotoGP heads to Sepang again, it’s time to take on another dimension as champion and speak for the championship itself. Perhaps you can direct other misguided young men away from disrespecting the thing you’re all fighting for. We’d all thank you for it.”
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| Commitment to your craft means more than just making time on the track. I wonder how a championship feels when you’ve just spent a year diminishing it. |
Since having the dream of a stable of bikes mangled thanks to the cruel calculus of insurance companies, I’ve been thinking about putting my eggs all in one basket. In looking over this year’s offerings one really stands out for me as a bike I could develop a long term relationship with.
What I’m looking for is a bike that offers a standard riding position so it’ll take to a variety of riding tasks. I like the look of a naked bike and I’m a fan of efficiency, so light weight is a must. So, an all-round naked bike that’s light on the scales, fits a big guy well and is dependable so I can make some miles on it.
Fortunately Yamaha has come out with the FZ-09, and it checks a lot of boxes. At a light-weight 414lbs and with a strong three cylinder engine, it’s a step up in power from the Ninja without heading into litre-bike territory. It’s standard riding position offers much less lean and deeper pegs for my too-long legs.
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| While the 650R is a sport-tourer, it sill puts me into much more of a crouched riding position. I enjoy the bike, but creak when I get off after a long ride. If I’m carving up corners, it’s a beast. If I’m trying to make some miles? Not so much. |
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| An almost 1 inch taller seat, barely any forward lean (11° less than the Ninja), 4% less bent knees, and 14% less crouch. An all purpose bike that fits nicely? I hope the FZ feels as good as it should. |
That 414 lbs means the FZ-09 comes in 26lbs lighter than the Ninja, and it manages to do it while carrying one more cylinder and an additional 200ccs. The FZ is even 16 lbs lighter than a KLR, which makes me wonder what a scrambler FZ might look like. With some knobbly tires, wire wheels, longer suspension and guard, there aren’t too many places it couldn’t go. RTW on an FZ? Perhaps!
Is there such a thing as a universal bike, maybe the FZ is it…
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| And it even comes in orange! |
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| There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for an athletic red-head… |
I’ve had an opportunity to use a Motorola Xoom tablet this week and respond to my board about how it might be used in class rooms. I’ve been crushing on the idea of getting a tablet for a while now. After using netbooks in class last semester, I love the idea of a rotatable screen that lets you read without over-scrolling, the super battery life, instant on functionality and the super small form factor.
Tablets are like high heels PART DEUX! (complete with awesome geeky high heels!)
I’m going to build this one in stages. Putting together the research in order to eventually build a map of my grandfather’s path through 1940s France will take some time.
The goal is to work out how my granddad, William Morris, worked his way through France as the British Expeditionary Force and the French military collapsed under the weight of the German Blitzkrieg during the Battle of France.
What I know so far:
Bill was already a member of the RAF when the war began. He was able to operate everything from heavy trucks to motorbikes and found himself supplying Hurricane squadrons in France as a heavy lorry operator. Being stationed in France as a part of the British Expeditionary force in 1939/40, when the Blitzkrieg began he started to make his way to the coast. He got close to Dunkirk at the end of May but the chaos made it look like a bad idea, so he kept pushing south, avoiding the fast moving German Panzer divisions that were pushing into France in huge leaps.
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| Sinking of the Lancastria in the National Maritime Museum |
He got down to St Nazaire by mid-June and witnessed the sinking of the Lancastria – where more people were killed in a single sinking than in the combined losses of the Titanic and the Lusitania; it’s the largest single maritime loss of life in British history.
By this point it must have seemed like the world was ending. Here’s a quote from the man himself:
“When Paris was made a free city (June 11th) the British Expeditionary Force had to evacuate and make for St. Nazaire. The roads were clogged with retreating troops and equipment. What couldn’t be carried was destroyed. We arrived in St. Nazaire in the afternoon just in time to see the ship that was to carry us out destroyed by dive bombers. An officer directing traffic suggested we try to make for Brest. We arrived there two days later just as the last ship was preparing to leave, I had to leave my German Shepherd behind on the docks as there was no room for her on the boat.”
Bill got out of France through Brest on June 13th, 1940 – over two weeks after Dunkirk. From May to June, 1940, Granddad saw more of France than he probably intended. His unit was disbanded due to losses, but I’m not sure which squadron he was attached to. A number of them were decimated trying to battle BF109s with biplanes. The few Hurricane squadrons could stand up to the Messerschmidts but were badly out numbered and inexperienced. If the documents I’ve got are accurate and he was providing support to a Hurricane squadron east of Paris, then there are a number of candidate RAF squadrons who were based around Reims.
At some point the planes and air crews must have taken off and left the support people, including Bill, to try and find their own way out. He had been missing for so long and so many British soldiers were lost in the Battle of France, that he was declared missing or dead. When he got back on British soil and was given leave, Bill headed straight home to Sheringham in Norfolk where he waited on the street for my grandmother to walk by on her way to work. She must have been stunned to see that ghost standing there. Bill always had a flare for the dramatic.
This is the opening chapter in a war story Bill never talked about, but I’ve been trying to piece back together from existing details. A couple of interesting things could come out of this…
1) Build up a map of Bill’s route through France in 1940. Put together a collection of World War 2 era British bikes and ride them from the air field he was stationed at and follow the meandering route he may have followed, stopping at the places we have evidence he was, eventually ending where he escaped the continent. I’ve got two brothers and several cousins, all direct relatives of Bill’s, who could do this ride with me.
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| Films like Chris Nolan’s Dunkirk shine a light on the often ignored early moments of World War 2. There is more work to be done. |
We could do it on the 80th anniversary of the Battle of France in May and June of 2020. It’s a forgotten moment in the war that is often misunderstood and mocked historically. The French didn’t surrender (in fact they bloodied the nose of an otherwise technically superior German force and vitally weakened it prior to the Battle of Britain. There would have been hundreds more German planes and thousands more personnel available for the Battle of Britain had the French military and British Expeditionary Force not fought as they had in France. Bill’s journey would be an opportunity to highlight a lot of that forgotten and misunderstood history.
2) This is the first part of William Morris’s rather astonishing path through World War 2. His improbably survival (he was the member of multiple units that got disbanded due being decimated in battle) is the only reason I’m here today, so I find it fascinating. Had Granddad not survived the war he would never have fathered my mum in 1946. Our family exists as it does today because of his survival. A longer term goal would be to put together a based on true events story of Bill’s experiences during the war, from his time in occupied France, to his work retrieving wrecks during the Battle of Britain, to his years in the desert in the later half of the war, his story sheds light on a working man’s experience in the military. So often the attention has been on the wealthier officer class of pilots and commanders, but this is a look at World War Two from the trenches (so to speak).
3) If the book got written, it’d make for one heck of a TV or film series!
Meanwhile, the research continues…
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| The Norton 16H in RAF blue (once the war began they just churned out army green ones). The TV show would have myself and my cousins – all the current descendents of Bill Morris, following his trek through 1940s France. |
https://www.nortonownersclub.org/history/1936-1945-wd
http://www.classic-british-motorcycles.com/bsa-m20.html
The WW2 soldiers France has forgotten
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32956736
Aircrafts and bases of the Royal Air Force on May 10, 1940
https://ww2-weapons.com/raf-squadrons-in-may-1940/
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Berry-au-Bac (France)
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Merville (France)
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Douai (France)
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Poix (France)
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Rosieres-en-Saneterre (France)
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Reims (France)
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Lille (France)
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Betheniville (France)
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Villeneuve-les-Vertus (France)
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Conde-Vraux (France)
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Berry-au-Bac (France)
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Reims (France)
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Vintry-en-Artois (France)
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Abbeville (France)
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RAF in France 1940, (Fighting against Odds)
“British losses in the Battle for France: 68,111 killed in action, wounded or captured. Some 64,000 vehicles destroyed or abandoned and 2,472 guns destroyed or abandoned.”
http://amrvraux.com/
OTHER RELATED RESEARCH:
Moto-raids into occupied France (from a January 1941 article): might be good as a chapter piece between the BoF, the Battle of Britain and heading off to the desert…
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The snow is slowly receeding. This week I was down in the city and saw someone buzz by on a bike and got all revved up. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve put the Ninja back together. It’s about where I want it now in terms of looks. It’s gone from a debranded, flat black angry young man’s bike to a colourful machine that knows what it is.
I went for black Kawasaki logo writing for the lower fairing and 650r stickers for the front. I picked up a Triumph sticker for the toolbox and the Japanese kanji for shinobi (Ninja). Instead of on the toolbox the kanji ended up on the bike on the ‘interesting’ side (the side with the shock). The metallic silver sticker looks great on the flat black leading into the exhaust port on the fairing.
The stickers went on well and seem to have bonded perfectly. The site says you can clearcoat over them, so I’ll do that as a final step and it’ll be done. I recommend The Sportbike Sticker Shop – you get your order quickly, it’s very competitively priced and the stickers are quality pieces that look great when you get them on, just don’t be surprised if you get what looks like a letter from a relative only to find it full of awesome stickers.
With any luck we’ll have some heavy rain and then a 10+°C day and I’ll be off on the kingfisher coloured Ninja.
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| What thirty bucks gets you from The Sportsbike Sticker Shop |
This is another go at the Tyranny of Paper, with a sprinkling of teacher psychology…
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| Trying to balance photocopy budgets. |
I recently got my photocopying costs for the computer department for the first half of the spring semester. Every class we teach in computers has a 1:1 student:computer ratio. You’d think there wouldn’t be any photocopying costs.
The one teacher we have teaching computers full time did $273 in photocopying from February to April this semester. I happen to be teaching an English so I get to see their copying costs too. The most expansive copier in English where they have to kill to get computer access and have to actually teach letters on paper? $217. Most of the others were less than half that.
This made me angry. If you have computers in front of every student, why in heaven’s name wouldn’t you use them to communicate with your students? How would teaching computer programming be easier on paper? With a limited budget that requires very specific (and expensive) hardware and software, why would I want to spend 1/5 of my budget so a single teacher can produce thousands of sheets of paper?
A recent analysis of photocopying costs (one of the single largest costs in our school and I imagine most others), was that a typical student collects an entire tree worth of handouts in their k-12 career…
each…
student…
The ecological costs are staggering. Billions a year and entire forests are consumed so students around the world can get handouts. I’m not convinced the return on investment balances the educational advantages with the ecological costs, but education is a conservative beast, and getting it to change industrial era habits isn’t easy.
| Teacher preparing for class |
The ecological disaster aside, I’ve always been curious about this photocopying habit in teachers. In teacher’s college I asked myself why I was lining up for photocopiers all the time. When you’re new, you are terrified that what you’re doing will not take the whole period, so you structure it on a photocopy to slow students from tearing through the work. It also takes the attention off you and puts it on the desk, so you don’t feel like you’re madly tap dancing for the whole lesson. It also means you’ve done much of the organization for students who seem increasingly incapable of organizing themselves. Lastly, it allows you face the students while giving them information, something a new teacher is conscious of every time they turn their back to write on the board.
After using the photocopier crutch for the first couple of years I put an end to it. I use the board if I need to display visually or help students organize information. I trust in my ears and the relationship I’ve developed with my class (which can often involve a Snape like, direct approach to inappropriate action early in the semester) when it comes to helping them learn with my back turned. Watching some of our senior teachers, I get the sense that they never put the photocopying crutch away, in fact, they’ve developed their entire career around it.
I also had the benefit of not being particularly beholden to 20th Century habits around institutional teaching, and leapt at the opportunity to get into elearning and digitally based education early on, further removing me from the pulp and paper teachers. One of the big cultural divides in our school is between the paper teacher and the digital teacher.
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| Media Arts Course webpage (NING) |
I still occasionally have to make copies, typically for tests and such, but I try and minimize that too. When compared to department averages, I typically produce about 1/10th the copies. When I’m given a computer lab, I typically produce no copies at all. Course webpages, wikis and shared documents are the means of information transmission. In media arts I’ve had students submitting shared docs (google or skydrive) and prezis when they need to show a presentation. The entire course takes place on a private social network (Ning).
The past couple of months we’ve had a Canadian copyright foundation watchdog asking people to write down what they’re copying to ensure fair distribution of copyright funds. How very 20th Century of them, but I guess a modern high school is just the place to monitor people still doing what they were doing twenty years ago.
Between questions of how student data is being used and technology monopolists pushing for standardization in edtech, I’m left with an uneasy feeling. As we reach a tipping point in digital educational technology we simplify and standardize to the point where the people doing the teaching don’t know or care what happens behind the curtain. What is happening behind that curtain is being decided in closed rooms between multi-national corporations and governments. The bait is a ‘free’ digital learning system for education. The payoff is habituated users and data mining on a level unprecedented in history, and we’re happy to sell our students and ourselves into it in order to get the freebies.
If this were all happening in the light of day I’d be a lot happier about it. That it’s happening behind closed doors and shouldn’t be publicized is something that should concern everyone.
If you’re not paying for it you’re the product being sold. Corporations may state that they do no evil but they aren’t after what education is after, they are after profit. That student information is being brokered well beyond the reach of educational institutions by these information merchants should be a cause of concern, but instead I see public educators increasingly branding themselves with corporate logos and shouting their evangelism from the social media rooftops.
Technology is exciting, and digital technology is such an intimate thing because it nestles up to our minds. Our habit of elastically coupling with our technology suggests that digital-tech is going to become an intrinsic part of how we see ourselves. People are already describing unplugging as feeling like an amputism, it’s only going to become more entwined, especially as we begin to wear our digital selves.
I’m reminded of Kenneth Clark‘s unsettling end to what many consider to be the best documentary series ever created, Civilisation…
That one of the most intelligent observers of human society was pondering this in the year I was born lurks in the back of my mind. Machines that make decisions for us, many educators seem thrilled with this idea. You may be all gungho over the latest shiny i-thing or googly-eyed over that app that will revolutionize your teaching, but the true costs of these things are a carefully kept secret. At the very least, when we adopt a single digital ecosystem (no matter how free it is), we’re selling our students (and our own) habitual technology use into a closed environment.
As educators it should be a goal to recognize tools in terms of what they can do rather than how easy they are and how well integrated they come. And we should never be deciding on a tool that inserts itself into the learning process based on how little we’re expected to learn about it. Technology and the internet aren’t Google, and tablets aren’t Apple. Computers aren’t Microsoft. Only by offering students access to all of these things and more are we approaching the teaching of technology in as complete and well rounded a way as possible.
Over the past ten years I’ve watched education stagger into digitization always hesitant to change old ways, and I’ve pushed as hard as I can to encourage that change. Only by catching up to this revolution can we hope to prepare students for the strange world that awaits them. Now that we’re at a tipping point I’m watching what could be a powerful new fluency being boiled down into canned access to technology, always under a single brand. Instead of teaching technology like it’s becoming an intimate part of our lives (which it is), we pass it off with idiotic notions like ‘digital native‘ that allow people who have no interest in learning technology to also off-load the responsibility of teaching our children about technology. Into that ignorance vacuum corporations have crept, offering you an easy solution, and most people are more than happy to take it even if it means being walled in to a monopoly.
I wrote last on the idea of being a tech-ronin, a digital samurai without a master. That works for me but I come from a time before data dictated who I am. I’m worried about my students. In a world where we’ve sold them into digital servitude as data sheep (call them digital natives if that makes you feel better), the only way out is to know the system well enough to circumvent it. Instead of teaching a closed, monopoly limited mindset in technology that serves everyone except my students, I want them to develop a broad understanding of digital tools and how they work. In a broad edtech learning environment my students will develop a meta-cognitive view of both technology and how they are represented by it. In a time where we are increasingly defined by our data the only free people will be the ones who have a sense of themselves beyond their student record in the LMS.
My department logo has ‘learn how to build the future’ on it, but perhaps I need to make a change just to give my students a chance to self-realize beyond whatever data metric they are being sold into.
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| Rage against the machine |
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| The digital house of mirrors we all live in. |
It’s early days, ECOO isn’t until next October, and I’m reticent to say what I’m going to present on months ahead of time. The digital learning landscape can change quite significantly in eight months.
My previous ECOO presentations have followed an interesting arc, from philosophy to specific action. My first go with Dancing in the Datasphere talked about fundamental changes happening to us as we transition to a data driven world. The mini-lab followed a year later, the idea there being that we diversify technology in order to develop true digital fluency in students. Last year the final step was to work toward a digital skills continuum. Only by integrating a developing skill set into curriculum will we begin producing students who have the technical skills necessary to survive and thrive in the digital age.
That trajectory, no doubt pushed by my transition to computer studies from English, had me looking at developing greater student familiarity with computing tools because I see a great deal of ignorance in the ‘digital natives‘ I’m teaching every day, but that focus was technically biased.
For those of us who have lived as adults through the last twenty years of technological revolution, we sometimes forget where we’ve come from because we’re so engrossed with where we are. For ECOO this time round I’m thinking about what technology is demanding of us as people. Our selves are being stretched and amplified in ways they never have before. Nick Carr’s The Shallows puts us on a pretty stark trajectory towards idiocy with what is happening to us. The digitization of the self stretches us flat, making continuity of thought impossible and turning us all into distracted, simplistic cogs in a consumerist machine designed to turn us all into the lowest common denominator; none of us any smarter than our smartphones.
With the advent of social media we suddenly find ourselves existing in multiple places at once. Our self is no longer geographically focused. Our influence spreads across the internet. We are able to affect change in people and places formerly unconnected to us. The people we communicate with (albeit in a minimalist way) are far flung and many. The people we spend deep, attentive time with are fewer and diminished.
Our digital selves are perceived in many different ways. The aforementioned digital native tends to not differentiate between online and real world action. They often consider social media as just another conversation they are having, and are then shocked when something said publicly is responded to by the public. The generation of kids (our students) growing up in this ongoing social experiment never look at privacy settings, have little idea of the differences between social networks and tend to broadcast online what is on their minds in much the same way they would while hanging out with friends. The veil between the physical and the digital, between public and private is all but non existent to them.
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| Digital Footprints & Always On Teacher Faces |
A more professional approach to managing the online self is to adopt marketing theory and develop your online brand. Companies and celebrities approach social media in this manner, often using marketing firms to manage and run their social media presence. I can’t help but think that this lack of genuine presence games the system and ultimately fails. It’s exhausting to maintain if you can’t hire marketing monkeys to run it for you, and ultimately, it’s fake. I’d much rather read my favourite author’s tweets from his own fingers than follow what someone trying to sell me something thinks I should be seeing. Many teachers fall into this trap when tentatively stepping into online presences. Spending your weeknights and weekends being mister or missus Teacher is nothing more than working all the time, forever.
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| The Cult of Done |
If there is a positive future to a digitally enhanced self I’d hope it is through a genuine sense of self expression. We should be aware of what the tools are and how they work, and then we should use them to empower our access to information, our ability to mine deeply into details, to collaborate and develop community, to share our own creativity, interests and sense of discovery. The technology should not only allow us to do these things, it should be pushing us to maximize our effectiveness as thinkers and doers. Any technology that produces distracted idiots will doom the people using it. Evolution should still be eliminating the irrelevant, even in the digital realm.
It’s early days in this sea change of how we deal with a digitally enhanced self. In the future the hybrid intelligence of a digitized human will evolve toward a higher order of effectiveness. Those made useless by digital tools will, much like those weakened by an inability to read, become marginalized. Those able to harness information literacy will enjoy those advantages. Those who ignore it will find themselves increasingly unable to compete.
What that effective digital self looks like in students, in teachers, in people in general is where I’m currently thinking about pushing my research this year. How we adapt to these changes now will establish effective habits as the technology rapidly spins out of its infancy and into maturity. There is no better time to consider what a digitally enhanced human being should look like than now, when we’re in the process of inventing the very idea.
The idea of Web3.0, or intelligent/self organizing information suggests that the future of digitized humanity will inherently push toward greater effectiveness. The opportunity to be passive or stupid in a digital context will actually work against what the data wants to do for you; you’ll learn in spite of yourself, you’ll know what you need to know when you need to know it – the data itself will ensure this. It would be interesting to show the evolution of digital humanity over the past three decades, and where it might be going in the next twenty years.
The era of stupid/passive information is ending. The people that it has created will have to adapt to technology that demands more of them, or risk being made irrelevant by it.
The teacher PC in our school computer lab, like every other PC in the room, is a free-range machine. The whole lab runs on the newest Windows we can get (beta if it’s out) and are open to allow students to install and test various software in order to stay current with technology. We extensively use Microsoft’s Developer tools to test software and hardware.
On the teacher PC I purchased Windows 7. Then I purchased a Windows 8.1 Pro upgrade key a year later in order to keep up with student machines using Windows 8. The next year I was led into Windows 10 by Microsoft’s persistent upgrade messages. The lab was migrating to Windows 10 beta at that point so it made sense that I’d be seeing the same software as my students.
All was good until yesterday. My old motherboard only had 4 usb ports and couldn’t handle the number of peripherals I was needing plugged in. I installed a new motherboard, everything else stayed the same. The old motherboard got pressed into lab work and no longer had Windows on it.
Suddenly Windows 10 was plastered with activate warnings, so I contacted Microsoft. Here is the transcript.
I’m still waiting, they aren’t going to contact me.
After purchasing Windows 7, and purchasing 8.1 Pro, I’m told that they don’t hand out free Windows 10 keys? I’m not asking for a free key, I’m asking Microsoft to honour the multiple keys I’ve already purchased. I’m not purchasing another one, especially not at nearly $300 Canadian! It feels like extortion.
I’ve updated hardware before. It was a quick matter of the Microsoft admin updating the new hardware to match the old key. Apparently this is no longer possible. Windows 10 (a much needed improvement after getting me to buy the awkward Windows 8), will not let you migrate with hardware updates, something PC users do quite a lot. The PC that had Windows on it has been wiped and is no longer using it, so this isn’t a matter of getting ‘free’ Windows – it’s the same install on the same hard drive. Migration shouldn’t be difficult, but then why do it if you can force people into buying something they’ve already purchased (twice) over again?
If I’d purchased a Microsoft car and then had a new transmission installed, they’d tell me they no longer acknowledge the car and that I have to buy a new one. Were I running the old motherboard on the old hard drive with Windows and demanding a new key for a new machine, I’d agree that they shouldn’t give free licenses, but this isn’t that.
I’m a fan of Microsoft. I’ve been buying Windows since it was single digits and Microsoft OSes since they were DOS, but this whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. I expected better, especially from a company so committed to supporting education.
Unfortunately, this is turning into a teachable moment for the dozens of students I’m teaching I.T. to. That Microsoft’s support thinks the best solution is to simply walk away from a long time customer is pretty baffling too.
Followup: I’ve got Windows 10 reinstalled on that PC. I had to wipe the disk, reinstall Windows 7 (and download several gigs of downloads from Microsoft) before I updated to Windows 8.1 (followed by several more gigs of downloads), followed by the WIndows 10 update.
The Microsoft roadmap is this: we’ll give you Windows 10 ‘for free’, but we won’t let you reinstall it. If you make any hardware changes or need to reinstall, we’ll make it such a pain that we can then force you to re-buy Windows even though you already have.
The problem is that this process requires Microsoft to maintain drivers and support for two stale OSes (Win7, Win8+8.1), and pay for the bandwidth to allow owners of their software to reinstall and update what they own (even though they’ll never use it because they’re heading for 10). It’s like Microsoft is cutting off its nose to spite its face.
Anyone who has updated to Windows 10 should have a Windows 10 key that allows them to reinstall it. Their previous Windows keys should then go stale. Keeping everyone on the most current OS means better security for everyone and less overhead for Microsoft (who can then focus on making Windows 10 as bullet proof as possible).
I’m not sure which MBA wizard convinced them that their current approach is the best one. I can tell you that the engineers who have to make it happen wouldn’t be thrilled with it.
