The winner of the Orange Computer Giveaway is...

Announcing the July winner

Read on. Winner is revealed below.

Laptop Recommendation for Students

For most students, I recommend a business class laptop, such as a Dell Latitude or ThinkPad, with a 14 inch screen. These kinds of laptops are durable and the screen size is a good fit for students.

If you know a student who will be needing a laptop soon, contact me to talk about options.

CrowdStrike Windows Outage: My Take

Over the last two weeks, you likely have seen news about business computers coming to a halt with blue screens. The outage was caused by an update pushed out by the company CrowdStrike. It likely caused more than eight million computers to be temporarily unusable.

Thankfully, none of my customers were affected by this outage, as they were unlikely to be using CrowdStrike software.

However, it is a good time to think about what you would do if your computer became unusable due to a software update flaw.

Do you have more than one device? If you primarily use a laptop, do you also have a desktop computer you could fall back on to use?

Do you use Windows on all your computers, or do you have a device with another operating system, such as macOS, Android or Linux?

My opinion on this outage is that it was caused by several things, but that a fundamental design flaw in Microsoft Windows operating system is the primary reason this happened.

It was also so widespread because of the mono-culture of Windows dependence on business desktop computers.

This should be a wake up call. If all your work relies on Microsoft Windows, this kind of outage could really have set you back.

For nearly twenty years, I have been using and professionally supporting a good alternative to Windows: Linux. It is not perfect, but it does have significant security and reliability advantages over Windows.

I’m happy to talk about Linux. I firmly believe in using the right tool for the job. Sometimes that right tool is Windows… but not always. If you’d like to chat about Linux, don’t hesitate to contact me by email or phone.

The winner of the July Orange Computer giveaway is:

hunter.g****@stjosephequipment.com

Some characters hidden with asterisks to not reveal the exact email address.

If that’s you, just reply by email and let me know your choice between the laptop or desktop computer and between Windows or Linux for the operating system.

If you didn’t win this month, you are still in the drawing to win in upcoming months. All you have to do is remain subscribed and check your emails from me to see if you won the giveaway drawing and reply to claim.

People from outside the La Crosse area are eligible to win. If you have a United States mailing address, I can ship the computer to you. If you are in the general La Crosse or Viroqua, Wisconsin, areas I can schedule to deliver the computer right to you.

Here are the two computers that the winner can choose from:

• Laptop: Lenovo ThinkPad T470

• Desktop: Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny

You can take a look at what else is available:

• Orange Computer: Currently Available Laptops & Desktops

Thanks for reading!

I appreciate your business and referrals.

Until next time,

— Matthew from Orange Computer