Decisions

    Not chess ones, but the past few days have been spent setting up a new laptop that has twice the power and storage as the old one. It had to be cleaned up because Windows 11 features highly annoying built-in ads that promote Microsoft services. 

    Also, I switched to the Firefox browser because Miscrosoft Edge is equally annoying. Unfortunately, Edge cannot be removed because it is tied to the Windows OS shell making it difficult to fully remove. However, Best Buy can disable Edge. The Geek Squad at Best Buy will set a different browser as your default and stop Edge from opening automatically. 

    Then there is the issue of Microsoft Office, or as I think it’s called these days, Microsoft 365. It costs, I think the salesman said, $100 a year. For years I have been using LibreOffice, a free open-source office productivity suite that is much like Microsoft365. 

    There was also the question as to which chess programs I wanted to keep because I do not need all of them: Fritz 12, Fritz 17, Fritz 19, Fritz 20, ChessBase 16 and ChessBase 18. I decided on Fritz 17 only because it uses a whole lot less space and I am not interested in the “fun stuff” and all the training feature on the other Fritz programs. The only real use I have for ChessBase 18 is for those times when I want to manipulate databases. 

    Thankfully, the time consuming correspondence game are over except for one opponent who won’t resign a lost position. It has been a successful event (first place with a projected +3 -0 =5) thanks to a combination of the Stockfish, Swordfish and Reckless engines and a lot of patience.

    Hopefully, things will return to normal next week.