 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group The Perfectionist Ray Beatty raybea@melbpc.org.au |
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Thunk! "Ouch!" I was working at a desk in a back room of my office when my shin made contact with a heavy metal box. I stuck my head under the desk and peered into the blackness. There, dusty and forgotten, lay my old AT clone.
Now this large archaeological relic had once been the pride and joy of the company. It was real fast - 20 times faster than an IBM PC, I seem to recall. After several years of use I could whizz through tasks at high speed. Write articles on my word processor, pop up Tracker if any of my new business calls phoned back, or switch to Lotus if I needed to check some figures, and whizz through routines using well-honed macros tied to my Alt and Ctrl keys. Come to think of it, I could switch tasks quicker and with less movement and strokes than I can now on my Windowed super-duper Pentium. But the screen wasn't as pretty.
However I'm no Luddite, the trade-off has given me more than a pretty screen - let me count the blessings, looking at my workspace now compared to three or four years ago when I consigned the AT to the back room.
Even as I write, Johann Sebastian and a dozen bewigged musicians sit either side of my monitor playing an allegro from the Brandenburg Concertos, thanks to the CD player that also made the installing of this huge word processing program a one-disk operation.
With a few clicks I can also zip this article to the other side of the earth as an Internet file or produce it beautifully printed, out of my desktop laser printer that cost not much more than the screaming dot-matrix I once used.
Another mouse click and I can be in Power Point or Presentations (my hard disk is big enough to hold both!) and preparing not just a colourful slide but a full-blown multimedia presentation with music, animation and (if I wanted it) Humphrey Bogart asking me how come I'd turned up in a joint like this.
Last year I came across some guys who were setting up to import the products of an American company I'd never heard of called Asymetrix. This year we've all heard of them, multimedia is flavour of the month - and of course I've booked them to perform for us at the May meeting.
Internet-working
From this same computer I spend half my nights corresponding with bunch of journalism professors around the world about inverted-pyramid story structures and the validity of Truman Capote's journalistic style. I've also established closer relations with my brother than I've had in years. He's a research don at Bath University and keeps me in touch on progress with my mother's dodgy knee.
Another close friend who lives in Cape Town isn't on the Net yet. No worries - I can fax him from my desktop just as quickly, and the effect's much the same.
Of course the old AT had a hard disk of 20 MB, which was plenty in its time. Now it would not hold any one of the many programs I have loaded on this machine. Now don't tell me you don't marvel at how a box half the size of that old hard disk can now hold a gigabyte of data. I'm certainly amazed every time I contemplate a CD and think that this little plastic disk can hold a multi-volume encyclopaedia.
Getting down to atoms
How much smaller can this miniaturisation go? Well a few months ago at a trade presentation, Intel described the chips it now has on the drawing board for several generations hence. The problem they're facing, we were told, is how to keep the millions of transistors on each chip separated - they are now down to two-atom-thick walls!
You can hear these exciting plans for yourself: Intel will be the other presenters at the May monthly meeting, so you'll be able to see beta versions of some of the new chips which will change the world in the new millenium.
So I'm afraid the old AT will have to see out its years as a boat anchor or toe stubber - events have passed it by. Besides, the damn thing's too heavy to cart around the swap meets in the hope that someone will make me an offer.
The tale of BOB(TM)
A couple of meetings ago I read a spurious Microsoft press release to the monthly meeting crowd, setting down the letter of the law for any poor individual who happened to be known by a diminutive of Robert. I've since had several requests for the story, including teachers who wanted to pass it on to their classes, so I'll now pass it into the public domain. It came to me through the Internet and the author chose (no doubt wisely) to be anonymous.
Microsoft clarified trademark policies
REDMOND, Washington - In response to customer inquiries, Microsoft today clarified the naming policy for Bob™, its new software product designed for computer beginners. Contrary to rumours, Microsoft will not demand that all persons formerly named "Bob" immediately select new first names.
"I don't know where these rumours come from," commented Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Executive Vice President for Worldwide Sales and Support. "It's ridiculous to think Microsoft would force people outside the computer industry to change their names. We won't, and our licensing policies for people within the industry will be so reasonable that the Justice Department could never question them."
Ballmer said employees of other computer companies will be given the opportunity to select new names, and will also be offered a licensing option allowing them to continue using their former names at very low cost.
The new licensing program, called Microsoft TrueName™, offers persons who want to continue being known by the name Bob the option of doing so, with the payment of a small monthly licensing fee and upon signing a release form promising never to use OpenDoc. As an added bonus, Bob name licensees will also be authorised to display the Windows 95 logo on their bodies.
Persons choosing not to license the Bob name will be given a 60-day grace period during which they can select another related name. "We're being very lenient in our enforcement of the Bob trademark," said Bill Newkom, Microsoft's Senior Vice President of Law and Corporate Affairs. "People are still free to call themselves Robert, Robby, or even Rob. Bobby however is derivative of Microsoft's trademark and obviously can't be allowed."
Microsoft also announced today that Bob™ Harbold, its Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, has become the first Microsoft TrueName licensee and will have the Windows 95 logo tattooed on his forehead.
Reprinted from the May 1995 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
