It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
~Clive James
Nothing could put the fear of technology in me as much as the loss of it. Besides a power outage, there are two things that will cause that loss: a highly damaging virus and an operating system or bios upgrade. I have done both kinds of upgrades over the years with as much dread as anticipation.
The best case: everything goes smoothly and there are absolutely no problems...period. Life goes on and I just have to learn my way around with the new changes.
The worse case: everything crashes. My life is then completely focused on what I cannot do with my computer and finding what I need to do to fix it for however long that takes. I know how bad that worse case can go. Once, about 25 years, ago my husband locked up the computer so badly, we could not get it to do anything, even in DOS; I put the DOS manual in front of me that afternoon and got it to something more than he had so that he could fix it, because the rest was beyond me at the time. (If DOS loses you, then you either are younger than I am or you have always had other people fix your computer...or both.)
My husband has taken courses on operating systems and networking and more. I did not, but I have taken computers apart and put them back together. I have fixed computer infected with viruses, especially when he was working and did not have the time to devote to it. I also learned on my own how to create websites from the backside, meaning I learned the codes you do not see that makes the website work as they do before there was WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Just think of it as the DOS of Internet...if you can.
When I talk to friends of mine, who are about 20 years or so younger
than I—yes, I actually have quite a few—they often talk about the things
they did in school with a computer. I laugh, because when I was in
school computers were something that only NASA and a few large companies
had. The closest thing to a personal computer was a pocket sized
calculator and a few electronic learning toys like a Speak & Spell
and Little Professor for learning math.
Microsoft Windows has changed so much since we bought our first computer in 1995. It is difficult to believe that it was only 20 years ago! Just two decades and we went from a clunky Minecraft presentation, slow operation, and counting the kilobytes to the beautiful blending of digital graphics, sleek operations, and counting how many gigabytes are in a terabyte.
Yesterday I broke one of my personal rules: never upgrade to the newest Windows version until it has been out for at least a year so that all the serious kinks have been ironed out. In my defense, we had already upgraded my daughter's laptop computer and it was running great but then hers has a touch screen and mine does not, for which Windows 10 was made but it is certainly better than Windows 8 was. Anyway, I while I was running errands, I let my computer do some running on its own. It downloaded the free Windows 10 and when I got home I accepted the terms for the installation and then took my daughter and her friend to the Christmas party for the youth at church.
When I came home, there was my new Windows 10 computer, up and running. All my setting are still there, including the backgrounds on my desktop screen! All is well...so far. The only thing I have noticed with both computers since the upgrade is that when I switch to the touch pad to move the cursor there is a lag of a second or two that was not there before. It is annoying, but actually that is fixable in the settings, I just found out so all is good. Very, very good!
The best case: everything goes smoothly and there are absolutely no problems...period. Life goes on and I just have to learn my way around with the new changes.
The worse case: everything crashes. My life is then completely focused on what I cannot do with my computer and finding what I need to do to fix it for however long that takes. I know how bad that worse case can go. Once, about 25 years, ago my husband locked up the computer so badly, we could not get it to do anything, even in DOS; I put the DOS manual in front of me that afternoon and got it to something more than he had so that he could fix it, because the rest was beyond me at the time. (If DOS loses you, then you either are younger than I am or you have always had other people fix your computer...or both.)
My husband has taken courses on operating systems and networking and more. I did not, but I have taken computers apart and put them back together. I have fixed computer infected with viruses, especially when he was working and did not have the time to devote to it. I also learned on my own how to create websites from the backside, meaning I learned the codes you do not see that makes the website work as they do before there was WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Just think of it as the DOS of Internet...if you can.
When I talk to friends of mine, who are about 20 years or so younger
than I—yes, I actually have quite a few—they often talk about the things
they did in school with a computer. I laugh, because when I was in
school computers were something that only NASA and a few large companies
had. The closest thing to a personal computer was a pocket sized
calculator and a few electronic learning toys like a Speak & Spell
and Little Professor for learning math.Microsoft Windows has changed so much since we bought our first computer in 1995. It is difficult to believe that it was only 20 years ago! Just two decades and we went from a clunky Minecraft presentation, slow operation, and counting the kilobytes to the beautiful blending of digital graphics, sleek operations, and counting how many gigabytes are in a terabyte. Yesterday I broke one of my personal rules: never upgrade to the newest Windows version until it has been out for at least a year so that all the serious kinks have been ironed out. In my defense, we had already upgraded my daughter's laptop computer and it was running great but then hers has a touch screen and mine does not, for which Windows 10 was made but it is certainly better than Windows 8 was. Anyway, I while I was running errands, I let my computer do some running on its own. It downloaded the free Windows 10 and when I got home I accepted the terms for the installation and then took my daughter and her friend to the Christmas party for the youth at church.
When I came home, there was my new Windows 10 computer, up and running. All my setting are still there, including the backgrounds on my desktop screen! All is well...so far. The only thing I have noticed with both computers since the upgrade is that when I switch to the touch pad to move the cursor there is a lag of a second or two that was not there before. It is annoying, but actually that is fixable in the settings, I just found out so all is good. Very, very good!
Thank you, my Lord, for technology. We really do not know how much we use it until we do not have it.
