not much out of ten

So after much travail I have a new computer. I still don't have access to my e-mail files, apparently because Outlook Express, my old client which no longer exists, made it essentially impossible to export files into any other format, something I would have thought would have been illegal, or - more to the point - immoral by the time that program was created. But apparently not.

During my enforced downtime I had been reading an old story in which young people sit around complaining about how romantic relationships never work. It isn't that anyone wants them to dysfunction, they just do. I never felt that way about romantic relationships, but it sure does sound familiar regarding my relationships with computers. Why are they so difficult and why, whenever I get a new version of something, is it so hard to find my way around? I spent far more time than I should have trying to find the desktop button in Windows 10, or, for that matter, the bookmarks pulldown window in my new copy of Firefox.

Worst of all is that about a third of the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen is now taken up by a box reading "Ask me anything." I investigated this and it didn't take long to recognize. Oh, the stupid icon is gone, and it's not chasing you around the screen any more. But it's the paper clip come back again. I knew it of old. You can't fool me. I can't figure out where in it to type my question, but that would be my first question, and my second would be, How can I make you go away?

And a lot of other things, and I've barely started. This is why I put off getting a new computer for so long, because the process of transferring your life is so tiring and time-consuming; and why I went for the latest version of Windows even though I'm told Windows 7 (which yes, they still sell) might suit my style better: to put off for as long as possible the next time I have to do this.