 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group I Paid for Bill Gates' Holidays Tony Eldred teldred@eldtrain.com.au |
Things are happening fast out there in technology land. I've just
been on a buying spree to equip my business. The equipment and software that is currently available
is mind boggling. As I was configuring the new stuff I pondered the last fifteen years with mixed
emotions.
When I started my business in 1987, I went out and bought one of the early IBM clone models
available featuring an 80286 processor and DOS 1.2. It makes me laugh just to think about it now.
Boy was it slow. The system cost me a bundle - nearly $10,000 all up, and all that got me was a
primitive word processor that recognised only foolscap paper and a rudimentary and very
temperamental dot matrix printer which I nicknamed "the Antichrist".
In an attempt to do the miracle of the loaves and fishes with money (as you do) I bought the system
from a little Asian computer supplier several suburbs away. Po faced, they presented me with half a
dozen boxes and told me the instructions were inside. They were right, they were inside, but they
were written in a bizarre language I hadn't encountered before. Welcome to the wonderful linguistic
world of "Chinglish" - and I had never used a computer before.
I plugged it in and switched it on and not a lot happened. It just sat there with "C:>" sitting
in the top left hand corner of the screen. When I opened it up to see if I could spot the problem
and was quite disturbed to find there wasn't much inside; a circuit board, a couple of silver boxes
and some wiring. Two thirds of the space was empty. I felt that I'd been dudded.
After about a week of rage and despair, with intense fits of wailing and gnashing of teeth (after
consulting the "manuals") I worked out that the machine had no software in it, not even an
operating system. A savvy mate helped me load DOS and a word processor (WordPerfect 2.0 as I
recall) and told me it was "intuitive" to use. If you ever hear this term in connection with
computers, bear in mind that it is similar in concept to the real estate industry's use of the term
"unusual".
After reading a couple of hundred manuals my intuition finally started to kicked-in and I was able
to hack out a basic business letter. Wow! Producing the envelope was another lengthy saga in
itself.
There had to be something better than DOS, I thought, and some time down the track was delighted
and perplexed to find myself in possession of a curious and very rudimentary GUI system called GEM
(a direct forerunner of Windows). Suddenly the hard disk became way too small and the computer
slowed down to the point where I drank so many cups of coffee waiting for the flashing "please
wait..." message to disappear that I might have ended up with caffeine poisoning. It was a portent
of the future.
Anyway, persistence seemed to pay off and the computer slowly became a valuable business tool. I
went on from word processing to database, to spreadsheet, and then into the mind numbing but
fascinating world of computer graphics. It was bizarre; no sooner had I learned to use a piece of
software than the manufacturers would introduce a new version with all the latest bells and
whistles. It's called vertical marketing and it works beautifully. I'm sure I paid for Bill Gates'
annual holidays in regular instalments.
Just when I thought I had it all licked, along came the affordable laser printer. Wonderful...
another seven grand; never mind the cost, throw the cat another canary. It really was needed
and if one wanted an edge on one's competition, it was just the thing. It even allowed me to
produce documents that looked like they'd been professionally typeset and printed, so I could con
the world into believing I was a multinational corpora-tion, rather than a struggling consultant
working from a small home office.
This led to the inevitable and highly expensive (no! don't tell me they planned it?) foray to
purchase desktop publishing software (I first used Ventura before Corel got a hold of it, then
PageMaker - pass the Panadol) - just so that I could use the laser printer to its capacity and
publish slick documents full of graphics and eye catching grey tones. Have you ever used a desktop
publishing program? User friendly is not the term that springs to mind. Have you ever tried to
handle photographs on an 80386? Don't go there.
You'd think I'd learn, wouldn't you? Not this little black duck. I had to have a colour printer
next. Everybody bought laser printers and I started to feel like the world was catching up. More
money. This time they'd introduced a new twist - the financial bend me over the table routine.
The printer, one of the first inkjets, cost a packet and... wait for it - the ink and special paper
worked out to $2 a page! What a clever thing to do. My first journey to replenish stocks cost me
$750, and it didn't even faze me. How sick was I becoming?
By this time I was on my third computer system. Despite expensive interim upgrades, they seem to
last two years before they become obsolete and you have to buy one that will run the latest
software. The heart rending thing to note is that when the time comes to upgrade your old computer,
the one that cost you $5,000 two years ago can now be bought for $1,200. The new one costs you
$5,500 (but it's two hundred times faster, which allows the newest software which is three hundred
times more complicated and requires a hard disk that's five times as large to run at two thirds the
speed you are used to).
I was considering all this while I was loading the latest software on to computer system number
five and mentally sanctifying the person who first put new software onto CD-ROM rather than 24
floppy disks. What has all this angst and expense done for me?
Well, in spite of the traumas I've suffered, I now have virtually all the world's information at my
fingertips; I can type a search request for any subject and up comes the information I'm seeking
for the cost of a local phone call; I can combine text, graphics, images, sound and video on to a
page, or your screen or a CD; I can keep massive customer databases and find something in seconds;
I can produce a plethora of administrative and other documents quickly and easily; I can produce
all my audio visual training aids; I can send email instantly and very cheaply, locally or to any
other part of the world; and as a bonus, I have a mentally challenging hobby.
Fair enough, you might say, but you were running a consulting business and could afford it. So
what? All businesses need to market themselves, do accounting, communicate with the outside world
and keep abreast with the latest developments.
Do I think it's all worth it? Oh, you betcha it is.
About the Author:
Tony Eldred, teldred@eldtrain.com.au, is a Hospitality
Management Consultant.
Reprinted from the May 2001 issue of PC Update,
the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
