Embrace Change (Premium)

This old dog is regularly learning new tricks, even though I find change as difficult as just anyone, I bet.

Part of it is the job: I feel like I can't legitimately claim that "x is better than y" if I don't keep checking in on "y" to make sure things haven't changed. So one of the thing I do regularly is to continually reevaluate, well, just about everything. The hardware platforms I use. The apps. The services. My work flow and daily work habits. Whatever. I've literally been doing this for over 20 years.

But part of it just a personal defect: Whether I'm never happy or comfortable or whatever, I just like noodling around. I like to poke a stick in the wheel and see what happens. It usually ends badly. But that's how you learn.

Writing about this is a little difficult, but even casual readers of this site will notice the side-effects. There are small changes like switching music services or testing whether online services can replace cable TV. Bigger changes like switching from Microsoft Word to a plain text Markdown editor. And life changes like moving to a new house in a new state, even though we had no plans to do so until just a few months prior.

This habit of constantly testing and reevaluating would go mostly unnoticed if I didn't mention it, because it happens largely outside of the normal content I write for the site. But based on some of the comments my articles receive, it's clear that some people don't understand me at all. Some believe me to be "biased" either to or away from Microsoft, or Google, or whatever company is the subject at the time. As if bias was a bad word, or as if they were using the term correctly in the first place.

Folks, we're all biased. Bias is just the natural effect of experience.

One obvious example. Earlier this year, I spent weeks trying to adapt to Windows 10 S and, more recently, I've been using this system regularly in updating Windows 10 Field Guide for the Fall Creators Update. (I updated two chapters over the weekend.) Then, as I now, I've found that a Google Chromebook makes a lot more sense than a PC running Windows 10 S. In general. For most people.

That should be alarming to Microsoft. It should not be alarming to readers. And yet. For some, it is incredibly alarming.

But these things did not, and do not, happen in isolation. I also spent much of 2017 evaluating the 10.5-inch iPad Pro with iOS 11, and I've have found that experience to be quite lacking from a productivity standpoint. Meaning, I'm not "biased" against Windows 10 S. I'm "biased" to things that actually work well.

And, to be clear, I've been using Chromebooks for years. I've probably owned at least seven of them, if not more. In fact, I owned the original Google CR-48, the very first Chromebook. I kind of feel like I go back as far as one can with Chromebook. That's not bias. It's experience. (And, on that note, I've also owned many, many iPads. Almost every single version ever made.)

But you kno...

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