The Column

Saturday, January 10, 2009

New toys make me miss C:\

I got my first home computer in the early 1990s, and it took me at least a couple of weeks to get past C:\.

It wasn't like I was a total newbie. I'd used computers at work, but all of them were set to boot up directly into the program we used. Never had to start from a cold start before.

While my then wife threatened to put my picture on a milk carton, I swore I was going to break down this whole mystery. And of course I had to do this the hard way, true to my nature. No way was I going to ask anyone for help. That's a guy thing, and of course I don't ask for road directions at gas stations either.

Eventually, in a fit of madness, I typed in my first command:

C:\Bite me.

Back to the drawing board.

As I write this, a consumer electronics expo is going on in Las Vegas, with all the latest and greatest toys on the market. If there's a special section in Heaven for geeks, it's probably something like this expo. Needless to say, my technical knowledge has grown considerably, and I would feel right at home there.

One of the real gee-whiz products at the expo is a Sony Vaio mini-notebook weighing in at a little more than a pound. With all the trimmings. It has Bluetooth, GPS, and your standard wireless Internet package. I'm drooling.

Of course, I'm cheap. For me, the ultimate computer is a few steps behind the top of the line. What you'd call a bare-bones package, and of course I'll wipe that hard drive clean and install my own operating system anyway. And tweak it to my specs.

Meanwhile, my first home computer is in a landfill somewhere. I don't understand such wastefulness. It had serious power -- a screaming 512K (not megabytes) of RAM, and a 42-megabyte (not gigabyte) hard drive. With a Hercules graphics card and 2400-baud modem that made a whole bunch of noise when you dialed with it. The rig had DOS 5 under the hood, and was enough to get me on line when I discovered the Internet in 1995.

It took me a long time to get to Windows when it came out, and for a long time I kept going back to alt-F4, which put me back to the DOS prompt. And when I saw someone wearing a shirt reading, "C:\Real men use DOS," I wanted one.

The computer I have now is a golden oldie. A puny 1.3-gigabyte processor, 256 megabytes of RAM, and an 80-gigabyte hard drive. And a gigantic monitor, not one of those thin LCD jobs. It had Windows XP, which I removed in favor of my own system. The hardware is old. The software is very up to date -- much of it is in beta.

I've come to love my electronic toys. The computer is a must-have, and it even drives my stereo. I have about 250 albums (yes, I still call them that) in .mp3 format on the hard drive, so the computer acts as one beast of a jukebox. It's always on, because with the Linux system I can get away with rebooting once a month or so.

Oh, yes. I have my other electronic gadgets. A thumb drive, eight gigabytes, with my favorite programs loaded on it so I can use them on anyone's computer. My mp3 player (two gigabytes, carrying about 25 albums, and it doubles as a voice recorder. My cell phone -- a basic version, but most of the Twitter dispatches you see in this blog are sent from that. And an old Sony Clie PDA, which needs a sync cable but makes a nice quick-and-dirty laptop when I can get all the parts. I'm loving the wired life.

My Dad is in his 80s and Mom will be there this year. They both have their toys, a lot more so than you'd expect for folks their age. Both have cell phones and their own email addresses. When they travel they swear by their GPS. They're the type that would rather send a letter than talk on the phone, so we keep track of each other (not often enough) via email.

But thinking about that electronics expo for a moment: It doesn't really matter how bad the economy is, we must have our toys. Folks are holding on to what little job they have left, but they have their smart phones (another toy that intrigues me; the a PDA, cell phone, and Internet rolled into one). They have their mp3 players. They have all that good stuff. I can understand that. I dare say I may take bread out of my own mouth just to buy some new gadget, and it sure looks like I'm not alone there.

Even in my 50s, I have a myspace page, though I haven't maintained it in a while. As I mentioned, I have Twitter. And linkedIn. I use instant messaging, and I do send text messages.

I could say "I text," but I refuse to turn a noun into a half-breed verb. I do have my scruples. My IM's and texts also stand out because I use complete sentences, proper spelling and punctuation, and none of those LOL or ROTFL abbreviations. My texts and IM's are in English.

All of these toys are fun, they're great tools, but they're no substitute for real life. Virtual reality can not touch the real thing. You can probably go on line and simulate any experience you want, but I'll take the real thing.

And while text messages and instant messages are a great tool, they don't beat real conversation. I've seen folks sitting in the same room, not making a sound, but sending texts to one another. They're still having a conversation. Allegedly.

I'll take eyeball-to-eyeball contact any day, with real voices being used. So call me a Neanderthal.

Although I have a decent digital library, I'd rather read a real book than download the e-text version.

OK, I miss my old Underwood typewriter.

And vinyl records.

And clocks with hands.

And TVs that run with rabbit ears, and don't require the use of remote control to change the channel.

I miss C:\.

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