The built-in Windows games are a cultural phenomenon, and while the lineup has varied over the years, one game above all has come to define workplace boredom and Windows' ability to be there for you when you have nothing better to do: Solitaire.
sol.exe was first included with Windows in 1990's release of Windows 3.0. Since its introduction, its distinctive green baize has been the hallmark of the bored white-collar employee. Gaze across a sea of cubicles, and the presence of Solitaire, immediately visible even at a distance, will instantly reveal workspace slacking. The distracting time waster has probably single-handedly offset all the productivity gains that computers have enabled.
May 22 will be Windows 3.0's 25th birthday, and to celebrate Microsoft is running a Solitaire tournament. It's not immediately clear to me how you run a tournament for a single-player, non-competitive, randomized game where only around 80 percent of games are even theoretically winnable, but why not. Currently Redmond is running an internal competition, and on June 5 it'll be made public. The company promises that its best Solitaire experts will go "head-to-head" with the public.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:16PM
Solitaire teaches the uses of "double click", "drag and drop" with a familiar game most be know.
Mind Sweeper teaches "left-right click" and "multi-right click" to make the game play faster. Largest standard board, I could clear in under 2 minutes.
I pointed this out to my mother's CPA group, that was looking to remove the "games" from the PC, since IRS ruling at time was "games == personal use". Then showed the ticks to learn in each of the games to improve mouse-hand-eye coronation. IRS signed off on it.
My mother, who typed over 80 words a minute, got every good at using the mouse too. She fought the mouse originally, relaying on tab and control keys. She then had both skills and started to better understand for "typing a document" then "edit it", versus the older typewriter base of correction as you go.
Now, if I could do what I preached.
(Score: 1) by mechanicjay on Tuesday May 19 2015, @11:30PM
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @12:22AM
D and E are so close and the same finger presses them.
See, I am learning to to just type. Edit phase is still failing.