Coping with Windows via AWS

For a training class, I needed to address The Windows Problem™. TWP is the my summary of all the non-standard features of Windows in its various inconsistent incarnations.

Any training class that involves "install Python" inevitably involves at least one Windows user who can't get their PATH set correctly. It's an eternal mystery to me, since the installers all seem to take care of this, but, some people are able to click the wrong thing somewhere in a simple installation.

The uninstall and start again sometimes helps. Having a Windows expert in the room sometimes helps.

(The hapless flailing I sometimes observe is my personal problem to deal with. I should not let myself get short-tempered with people who try things exactly once and then stop, unable to discern a single branch in the path they chose. It's as if the sequence of dialog boxes with different choices never existed for them, and I need to respect the fact that they did not read the messages and did not think of themselves as actively making choices.)

I have to say that being able to get a Windows machine in free tier of AWS is a wonderful resource.

I can screen capture the installation on Windows. 

I can narrate the sequence of choices I made. I'm hoping this prevents TWP from side-tracking a person who's struggling with Windows.

I haven't used the movies yet. But it's so handy to be able to spin up a Windows machine in the cloud and run the Conda install. It's a whole lot nicer than buying a throw-away Windows machine to do screen shots on.