I went to a car rental company the other day. I looked across the counter. “Is that a dot-matrix printer?” I asked. “Yep. This system here—” and she tapped th

I went to a car rental company the other day. I looked across the counter. “Is that a dot-matrix printer?” I asked. “Yep. This system here—” and she tapped the monitor “— runs DOS.” “Any downtime on Friday?” “Nope. Solid as a rock.” And I wonder do we really need all this complexity to run our every day stuff? I mean, yeah if you're running Photoshop or something, but basically moving numbers and demographics through a system, what the heck do you really need an ad-riddled privacy-invading behemoth like Microsoft Windows for?