Ask Paul: June 30 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here's a rare fifth Ask Paul in a given month, and the last installment before we head to Mexico City next week. But let's get the weekend started early with some great reader questions...
Photo meta-data
AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Do you recommend any software for changing the data on photos? I am doing a scanning project on our old photos and would love a way to change the data on date taken and a few other fields.

This question was from last week. Apologies: I forgot to "close" the thread as I normally do, so I missed it initially.

It's been a while since I did this work, but it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. My big thing is getting the correct date on each photo, and if it's a scan and I don't know the exact date a photo was taken, I'll just use the 1st or 15th of the month or whatever so it's in there as well as it can be. The point behind this is cloud services like Google Photos where my folder structures are ignored: you need the date to be there. Otherwise, you'll have a scan from 1973, or whatever, appearing with photos from 2023.

If it's just the date, I would just use File Explorer to change the "Date taken" field in the file properties for the image files. You can do multiple files at once, which is nice when you have an event or whatever with multiple photos. Just right-click the file(s), choose "Properties," navigate to the Details pane, and locate and edit the Date taken field. You can't edit the time this way, I don't think, but again, it's just about the date for me.

If you would like to edit other meta-data associated with the scans, you may actually need a third-party utility. I don't believe I ever used such a thing, but I can't recall. Perhaps someone else has a tool they can recommend.

How did the Epson scanner you used to handle photos with glue residue from photo albums?

Poorly. It's important to get all the gummy residue off the back of the photos before you use a high-speed photo scanner like the one I used. It can get jammed up or, as bad, skip photos that are stuck to the back of another photo.
Giving up on Windows
AnOldAmigaUser asks:

What do you think the line will be, that Microsoft will cross at some point, that makes you give up on Windows?

I don't see myself giving up on Windows, but that's mostly because I evaluate alternatives regularly and I just don't like using them as much. That said, it's probably accurate to say that I have never been more frustrated with Windows, as an organization at Microsoft, I guess, than I am right now.

But ... I'm trying to compare this situation in my mind to what happened with Windows under Steven Sinofsky, and I guess it's a toss-up. Sinofsky was malicious but at least he had a strong vision. The current team isn't malicious, they're just inept and they do not appear to actually give a crap about Windows or the people who use it. I could be misreading this, given that they're probably under a similar directive to m...