People all over the world are holding street parties to celebrate the launch of the latest version of its wonky operating system, apparently, according to Microsoft.
The legendary wonky software giant has prepared party packs for groups of people who are so ecstatic over the launch of Windows 7 that they feel the urge to fling open their doors and dance into the street. Police forces across Britain report that, so far, traffic in residential and business districts appears to be moving normally, unhindered by crowds of enthusiastic PC users - but add that they are monitoring the situation carefully, should the need arise to send in riot squads and mounted crowd-control officers to restore order.
Windows 7 is, of course, the tenth wonky version of the legendary wonky operating system, after Windows 3.0, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows CE, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Claims of even earlier, wonkier versions of Windows have occasionally surfaced, but seem to be based on nothing more than the irrational assumption that - unlike Microsoft - most people start counting with 1.
PC owners are said to be mildly keen, after almost twenty years, to finally have an operating system that does what it's told, doesn't do what it isn't told, starts up in less than five minutes, has some basic level of resistance to malware, is compatible with the software they've spent a fortune on, leaves some CPU resources free to run programs and manages not to crash, hang or forget what JavaScript is.
"Ho ho," chortled Microsoft boss Steve Ballsup at the product launch in New York. "If I had a dollar for every time I've heard some dim user trot out these completely unrealistic expectations, I'd be almost as rich as I am now. And I didn't get rich by selling products that work."
"A personal computer is the most horrendously complicated bastard thing you'll ever have the misfortune of owning," he explained. "If you don't believe me, try installing and configuring Linux on a clean computer. Anyone out there remember trying to get DOS4GW patches to work, and all those IRQ conflicts? Yeah? Well, shut the fuck up, then, and thank me for making your life slightly less hellish."
"On your knees," he added.
Several meaningless new wonky features are being promoted with Windows 7 which were already available, if you were that interested - such as touch-screen compatibility, cloud computing and the ability to recognise and ignore multi-core processors.
"One of the problems that featured prominently in our user feedback - which we look at from time to time, when we feel like a good laugh - was the fact that Vista makes the average PC run so slowly you wish to God you'd kept that old Commodore 64," said Ballsup. "And now that the fashion is to spend a small fortune on a horribly slow PC because it happens to be quite dinky and available in pink, that's more relevant now than ever.
"So, for the discerning customer who values style over functionality, a special cut-down version of Windows 7 will be available which will boot up like shit off a shovel. Then you'll realise that it doesn't actually do anything - but holy crap, you'll tell all your trendy friends, is that sucker fast."
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