I had a booth at a small event to represent my business. I had prepared a web-based game for people to play to win a prize. I had it running on a PC mirrored on a TV so I could do my work on my Mac separately between visitors.

During a speaker’s presentation, someone bored with it came up to my booth and I introduced her to the game. She started playing it but the sound was up too loud and drew attention to her. I quickly used volume key on the top row, but nothing happened. So I thought the fn key needed to be pressed and held to change the volume. Nope. Then I thought I’ll just use the volume control in the dock. But the browser was full screen, and when I tried to quickly change that, some other unknown thing happened and some other stupid MS configuration screen filled the screen. She gave up trying to play at that point and I felt super stupid.

When did it become so hard to use Windows machines and software? I’ve been on a Mac for about 8 years now and using this Windows laptop just feels ridiculous to me. Like some broken toy that came from a bargain bin at a dollar store. The whole thing feels cheap and like it’ll break in half if I twist it accidentally. Other Windows laptops I look at in the stores occasionally just don’t measure up in build quality. Like the companies know you’ll get max 2 years useful life and throw it away.