No, the picture is not Drew in Halloween ghoul garb. Rather Windows 11 took a picture of bewildered me pondering my new computer. My desktop computer had been showing signs of dementia. No wonder. At thirteen years old—a millennium in tech years—that operating system isn’t able to handle the requirements of new websites and programs. The battery in Kit’s iPhone, only eight years old, couldn’t hold a charge anymore. We had been proud of just being in the 21^st century. But last week we caught up with 2025 by buying me a new laptop and Kit a new iPhone.

The laptop came with exactly zero instructions how to operate it. Microsoft left me to hunt and click in Windows 11’s 27,000,000,000 byte operating system. Asking the Help function connects you to AI,  which I’ve maligned. AI is taking revenge by cheerfully directing me to apps buried deep in Windows 11’s ones and zeros without revealing their location. How useful would a direction app be if it told you to go to 18 Maple Street without including the town, state or even country? I suspect AI will also widely distribute the photo of bewildered Drew.

Despite the challenge, I’ve managed to get my new laptop to perform the operations I need. If you face the same struggle as me, start with the assumption that Windows 11 has built in apps that can do any operation you might imagine without you buying additional software. That is if you can find the right paths through all the preloaded commercial offers or AI.

My next goal will be trying to figure out how to turn down the camera’s resolution.