She's lost without her laptop computer

By DIANA DOLECKI

The Commercial Review

My laptop computer at home is deathly ill. My husband may or may not be able to restore it to health. I am having withdrawal symptoms and it isn't pleasant.

It wasn't so long ago that owning a computer was unusual. When I first entered the workforce, oh so many years ago, computers were limited to factories and took up entire rooms.

Then they shrunk and started popping up in classrooms. Now they are as ubiquitous as television sets. They are everywhere and our children and our children's children have never known a world without them.

I have gotten used to having information at my fingertips. I don't remember the last time I hiked over to the library to gather facts about one subject or another. It is so much easier to just type in a word and have thousands of sources right in front of me.

The realization that all of that information floating around in cyberspace is not always accurate is somehow irrelevant. That is why I still rely on printed newspapers. They haven't abandoned their responsibility to present reliable data.

Plus there is the one thing that most of us use our computers for more than anything - entertainment. Games of all types and skill levels are there for the asking. It is so much easier to play solitaire on the computer. One doesn't have to worry about the cat messing up the cards. Of course, it is harder to cheat but there are drawbacks to everything.

I am considering going over to the library to get my daily dose of computer time. I feel the urge to look up old relatives, check out botanical gardens and piddle around looking up miscellaneous and totally useless trivia such as what people do with Peeps chicks. Hint: they put them in the microwave! Poor Peeps.

Easter is over for another year and the remaining Peeps are safe for the time being.

In addition to not being able to check on trivial information, I am also unable to open one of my files. I had done a great deal of genealogy research and backed up the file onto a flash drive. The computer refuses to open it. Bad computer.

Computers are part of modern life. Sometimes they make things so much easier. For instance, I would much rather type on a computer than on a typewriter because mistakes are easier to fix. I wonder if kids still have to take typing classes. I took two years of typing and barely passed either one. So what do I do for a living? Yeah. I type.

Computers also lull us into a false sense of security as when we back up files then the computer decides to keep them for itself.

Spell-check is another way computers get their revenge on humans. They will insist that a certain word is misspelled then demand to be allowed to substitute a word that has a completely different meaning. Plus it doesn't catch word usage problems. For most computers, to, two and too are acceptable in any sentence.

But for all their problems I find them to be appealing and addicting. I just wish mine would stay on without me having to hold onto the plug!

Oh, well. Maybe tomorrow.[[In-content Ad]]