Task Manager Is Not Responding

Built-in - or planned - obsolescence has been with us since the 1920's; it first took root in the car manufacturing industry in the United States at General Motors, where annual design changes were introduced to convince consumers of the need to buy a new model each year. The idea grew through the 1930's as a means of stimulating a depressed economy, but really took hold in the 1950's, being popularised by an American industrial designer by the name of Brooks Stevens, who defined planned obsolescence as, "Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary."

Brooks Stevens, 1911-1995. Picture: Industrial Designers Society of America

While planned obsolescence is still a feature of the automobile industry - I for one regularly receive emails, texts and phone calls from the dealership I bought my current car from, encouraging me to trade it in for a newer vehicle  - today there is barely anything that we buy that we are not encouraged to replace almost immediately with an upgraded model. Apple launch new iPhones seemingly every month, although in reality it's annually (except for the last three years when there have been - or will be in the case of 2018 - two). And immediately they launch a new device, they sew dissatisfaction among owners of older iPhones, even though those models may be just a year old and the difference between them and the newly launched product is minimal. But the mobile phone industry expects us to upgrade our handsets every two years, hence most contracts run for 24 months, but if you are not upgrading your phone after that time, it still makes sense to change your contract to SIM only to avoid continuing to pay for the handset, which your monthly payments will have made yours after that time; unless you bought it outright in the first place, of course.

Sadly, after two years most people are faced with having to change their handset anyway as degraded battery life means it spends more time plugged into the wall socket than being truly mobile, or the apps you use most often stop working without being upgraded, except you can't upgrade the apps without upgrading the operating system, which you can't upgrade because there is insufficient memory on the handset. Or in slightly sinister fashion, the release of a new model coincides with an abrupt falling off of performance of your handset, prompting much frustration and a burning desire to upgrade.

I've had my current mobile phone - a Samsung Galaxy S7 - for two years now, and have gone SIM only, which is not only cheaper but gives me more data too, and since Android updated the operating system, the phone's battery life seems to have improved by about fifty-percent, which seems counterintuitive but there again, it is Android, not Apple.

With newer phones seeming to have only marginally better functionality, it really is only battery life that would make me want to get a new handset at present, but the same cannot be said for my laptop. I am writing this on a Lenovo machine, which I have had since 2013. When I first bought it, I was quite impressed with it, particularly in comparison with our old desktop computer, but now, not so much. I don't ask much of my laptop, I only really use it for Word, Excel, email and web browsing; all I ask is that it is reliable and responsive. I don't even store much on it, my files and pictures are stored on a flash drive, which I periodically back up to an external hard drive. I don't use it for anything that really ought to impair its performance, yet as it gets older, it gets more and more sluggish and unresponsive.

The Lenovo G580

Surfing the net can be a frustrating experience when pages are slow to load,  and then it's tempting to blame one's internet connection, except the same pages that load at a snail's pace on the laptop seem perfectly normal on other devices we own that use the same connection. Mind you, as this tweet from James Gleave illustrates, there are plenty of annoyances that have nothing to do with either one's machine or connection.

Actually, it is programmes not responding that has become my biggest bugbear. All too often, clicking to open a programme like Word or Excel, or File Explorer is met with the computer equivalent of dumb insolence. Click once; nothing. Click again; still nothing. Click a third time (yes, I know, I should be patient); still nothing. Lose patience and try to invoke Task Manager with Alt+Ctrl+Del; nothing. And then, with what in a human would be excessively bad grace and a smug expression, three instances of the programme open. Meanwhile, where is Task Manager? Nowhere to be seen, that's where. Excel frustrates me with its simple stubbornness to do things in a timely manner. For instance, if I want to format a cell or range of cells, right-clicking and selecting Format Cells inevitably results in that annoying little blue spinning circle appearing and the words 'Not Responding' mocking you from the top of the screen. Then, miraculously, just as you give up hope, the dialog box appears. It happens every time, and it's very, very annoying.

As for Task Manager, that supposedly indispensable tool for closing recalcitrant programmes, it is frankly even more frustrating than the programmes it is there to help you with. Alt+Ctrl+Del eventually calls up a sky-blue screen; 'Preparing Security Options,' it says before grudgingly offering a list of options, one of which is Task Manager, but which invariably opens with the caveat, 'Not Responding.' This to me is the final indignity; Task Manager is supposed to be a help, not a hindrance. More often than not, by the time Task Manager has deigned to make an appearance, the unruly application has started to behave itself...for the time being.

Wait for it...

...finally!

Given my frustration with my laptop, I started Googling the expected lifespan of a laptop. Apparently, assuming no physical damage occurs (like lobbing it out of the window in frustration when Word refuses to open), a mid-range laptop like mine should last three to five years, so on that basis, I have reached the end of this machine's useful existence. But why? As I say, I'm only using it for quite simple and straightforward tasks, I haven't installed any power or memory hungry applications and all I really ask is for it to be reliable and responsive. Five years seems a pitiful amount of time, but I guess we're entering the realms of planned obsolescence here.

I'd prefer not to go to the expense of buying a new machine, especially since these days Microsoft Office - which is pretty much essential - now has to be bought separately, so more cost there, and anyway, I'm happy with the 2007 version I am using. It's taken me enough time to navigate around that, without having to learn how to use the latest incarnation. Eventually, I suppose I'll have to bite the bullet, but in the meantime put up with this increasingly petulant machine.

Postscript: Since I wrote this, the laptop seems to have bucked its ideas up. Whether this is coincidence (perhaps it has read my words and decided to behave better for fear of being junked), or the update for Windows 10, version 1803, I cannot say, but I'm keeping my eye on it; any backsliding and I'm off to PC World.