Tassling

For more years than I care to count, I have lived very happily in the Apple world. I have a MacBook Air that I love, and I know my way around it without having to think very much about what I’m doing.

Then my friend needed help with PowerPoint.

She uses Windows.

This was when I discovered something rather alarming: I no longer knew what I was looking at.

I haven’t always been this way. I used Windows computers for years. There was a time when I could find things, save things, move things around and generally behave like a competent person in front of one. But somewhere along the way I switched to Apple, stayed there, and apparently Windows and I became strangers.

Helping my friend recently with a PowerPoint presentation, and later with her CV in Word, made me realize just how much I had forgotten. Even very simple things could stop me. Where was File Explorer … and the Control Panel? Where had something been saved? Why was the computer doing that?

I could usually figure it out, sometimes with considerable help from ChatGPT, but I didn’t like feeling quite so lost.

So I had an idea.

I could learn Windows again.

At first I thought about buying the absolute cheapest little Windows computer I could find. This was not going to replace my Mac. Heaven forbid. My MacBook—Frosty—is sacred. This would be a computer I could poke at without fear, make mistakes on, learn Microsoft Word and PowerPoint properly, and generally find out what Windows looks like in 2026.

I started calling this hypothetical computer LWB: Little Windows Baby.

The hypothetical part didn’t last very long.

LWB has now been purchased. As I write this, Amazon says it has shipped and will arrive on Thursday.

I’m strangely excited about it.

I don’t need to become a Windows expert. I don’t even particularly want to become a Windows expert. I just want that old feeling back—the feeling that when something appears on a computer screen, I have some idea what to do with it.

And perhaps that’s what makes this interesting to me. I’m 71 years old. I don’t need another computer. Nobody is making me learn Windows again. I simply decided that I can learn it again, so why not?

I have no idea how this will go.

Which is probably why I’m going to write about it.

The LWB journey begins Thursday. 😊