PC Woes

I was a bit frustrated with my computer this morning, complaining that it was taking so long to load a webpage. That’s when my husband reminded me that not too long ago, computer technology required a lot more patience than it does today.

COPY [/Y|-Y] [/A][/B] [d:][path]filename [/A][/B] [d:][path][filename] [/V]

MS DOS was the state of the art method of telling your computer what to do when PCs first hit the market. Back in the late 80s when I bought my first computer, I can remember saving information to floppy discs. The floppy discs came in different dimensions and had varying memory capacities. They required formatting before you could use them, and you had to be careful which type you had before trying to save files to the discs. Because the discs only held a small amount of data, home collections of floppy discs could become rather large. My first internet connection was through an external modem which used the one phone line into the apartment; no phone use while on the computer! That computer had one internal speaker which emitted rudimentary sounds at best. My internet service provider required me to sign on each time I wanted access to the internet. The mouse had no roller wheel in the center and came in one color only (off white). The monitor was heavy and cumbersome; it must have extended back two feet from the front screen. Memory sizes were in kilobytes or megabytes, no one had imagined gigabytes. The hard drive had such a limited capacity that programs had to be run from discs instead of being loaded in memory. Digital cameras, HD TV, and cell phones had yet to spring onto the scene.

Back in those days, everything took longer. Even though processing times were exponentially slower, I spent less time on the computer.

Today we take a lot for granted. Stereo sounds are played through external speakers from elaborate play lists stored right on the computer. We can store and view our own photographs on the hard drive or share them with others online. We can send instant messages to friends or total strangers as fast as we can type. Icons access programs with one click where we used to instruct the computer to “run” a desired program. Travel drives allow us to carry amazing quantities of information in something smaller than a pen. We can run several programs and websites simultaneously while talking on the same phone line. The sophistication of the internet now allows us access to information from all over the world. It enables us to pay bills, register for any number of activities, monitor our grades and those of our children, research any subject, and keep up to date with the latest news and weather.

I spend a great deal of time on the computer now, much of it time that could probably be better spent. Would I want to revert back to the Paleolithic days of the computer? No. When I watch my children’s socialization skills center around texting and Facebook however, sometimes I wonder!

I needed this little reminder of how spoiled we are today. We expect information at the speed of mere seconds and when it takes a little longer, we protest. It’s OK to slow down occasionally and be thankful that the dinosaur days of the PC are a thing of the past and technology is improving at lightning speed.