The other day Microsoft sent me a love letter notifying me of the end of their "support" of Windows 7 in January of 2020. Does that mean I should stop using my Windows 7 computer at that time?
Running to the Google empire is not such an attractive alternative. Google's original scheme with its Chromebooks was to get the user paying them annual rent for cloud storage, but more importantly, running algorithms on your data to find out how to target advertisments at every aspect of your life. Presumably, all of your data would be turned over to Washington DC spy and police agencies.
Why would anyone need cloud storage? Have you seen how cheap storage is? You can carry it around in your pocket in the form of a thumbdrive or SD card. (Of course there are people who hoard terabytes of photos and videos. Presumably, they don't read this blog.)
And you would need an unlimited data wireless (cellphone) plan if you were doing everything in the cloud.
So I'm not sure what to do. But at the very least it is time to convert the music on my Windows 7 computer to a format used by the Android/Chromebook/GoogleEmpire. That means converting all those (Windows) WMA music files to MP3 format, using a wonderful program called, MediaHuman Audio Converter. It is free, but I will donate to them when the project has finished successfully.
Once the music has been converted to mp3 format, where can you use it, store it, and back it up? Can an Android smartphone be an acceptable "bucket" for your music files? How would back up the music files, without going to the Cloud? After all, Google has cleverly avoided putting a USB port on smartphones so you would be forced to become a rent-paying serf of theirs, on the Cloud. Fortunately there is a new alternative.
Sandisk Connect Wireless Stick is a thumbdrive that contains memory (of course) as well as a battery and a Wi-Fi transmitter/receiver. So the stick can transfer your music files from an Android phone to the memory in the stick.
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Perhaps the reader thinks I am making too big a deal of a few dollars a year of rent in the Cloud. But what I am really ranting about is personal property. Data, photos, music, and thoughts are a form of personal property that is important to me. It degrades that notion to turn my property over to institutions that I dislike.
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Postscript: It took two days of work, but I have now finished converting all of my music from WMA to mp3, using MediaHuman. In January 2020, it will be easier to abandon Windows if it seems necessary.
Running to the Google empire is not such an attractive alternative. Google's original scheme with its Chromebooks was to get the user paying them annual rent for cloud storage, but more importantly, running algorithms on your data to find out how to target advertisments at every aspect of your life. Presumably, all of your data would be turned over to Washington DC spy and police agencies.
Why would anyone need cloud storage? Have you seen how cheap storage is? You can carry it around in your pocket in the form of a thumbdrive or SD card. (Of course there are people who hoard terabytes of photos and videos. Presumably, they don't read this blog.)
And you would need an unlimited data wireless (cellphone) plan if you were doing everything in the cloud.
So I'm not sure what to do. But at the very least it is time to convert the music on my Windows 7 computer to a format used by the Android/Chromebook/GoogleEmpire. That means converting all those (Windows) WMA music files to MP3 format, using a wonderful program called, MediaHuman Audio Converter. It is free, but I will donate to them when the project has finished successfully.
Once the music has been converted to mp3 format, where can you use it, store it, and back it up? Can an Android smartphone be an acceptable "bucket" for your music files? How would back up the music files, without going to the Cloud? After all, Google has cleverly avoided putting a USB port on smartphones so you would be forced to become a rent-paying serf of theirs, on the Cloud. Fortunately there is a new alternative.
Sandisk Connect Wireless Stick is a thumbdrive that contains memory (of course) as well as a battery and a Wi-Fi transmitter/receiver. So the stick can transfer your music files from an Android phone to the memory in the stick.
_____________________________________
Perhaps the reader thinks I am making too big a deal of a few dollars a year of rent in the Cloud. But what I am really ranting about is personal property. Data, photos, music, and thoughts are a form of personal property that is important to me. It degrades that notion to turn my property over to institutions that I dislike.
_______________________________________
Postscript: It took two days of work, but I have now finished converting all of my music from WMA to mp3, using MediaHuman. In January 2020, it will be easier to abandon Windows if it seems necessary.
Comments
I also back up non-media important files to the cloud using free space. It's only about a gigabyte and I think I've garnered aroung 10 GB for free on Microsoft's OneDrive.
I don't use computer programs except once a year (Turbotax). If the functions of a Chromebook work for you, KB, I read of another paranoid person who just uses a Cromebook in Guest Mode.
Good luck in adapting to the world as it is (not how we want it to be!)
I managed to do everything that I wanted to do using a Chromebook and the Google Drive 'cloud' with 6GB/Month for over a year. I added a dumb phone and the only plan I could get for it and a MIFI was for 8GB/Month. I have done well with that for about a year now. The new plan carries over unused data to the following month so there are many months that I have more than 8GB available. I have nothing on the 'cloud' that Google has not picked up someplace else so that does not worry me.
MediaHuman is also free, but it was a pleasure to use.
Equifax hasn't been held accountable for the loss of our data from July 2017 and I don't think they ever will be and that exposure puts you at risk for identity theft for the rest of your life. There were 101 data breaches in the month of Feb 2019. A good bit of that was related to medical records. That's what makes me mad not storing stuff in the cloud. That said, I don't store music or photos in the cloud. I back it up on local storage.
While I really liked Windows 7 I'm happier with 10 and still running it on a laptop from 2014 quite well with no concern about it expiring.
As they say, YMMV.
Jim
The oldest is a 2014 Dell followed by a Lenovo and an Asus. I probably would not buy a Lenovo again given the problems I've had with it. We wouldn't have the Lenovo had not one of the hinges on the Dell failed and I assumed it was going to fail completely soon. Three years later and it still works fine.
The Lenovo has had issues and I'm unimpressed with their customer service. The Dell had some issues and their service was good to excellent. I bought the Asus based on claims that they are less trouble prone and that has proven to be true so I have no experience with their service. We had a Microsoft Surface which had a critical failure just over 2 months in and their service was some of the worst I've ever experienced and that's saying something. I would never own another piece of their hardware again. Luckily we were able to return it to Costco just a couple of days prior to the 90 day window.
Jim