I got involved with computers because I thought anything that had to do with technology was fun; therefore, I figured computers should be fun, too. I have my friend Jack to thank for introducing me to computers and getting me started in my career as a computer repair guy.
When I first met Jack, he was an engineering student at the University of Oklahoma and was, in my estimation, a bona fide genius. Jack and I loved electronics and technology and had great fun talking about pretty much anything that used electricity.
Back in about 1978, Jack and I were driving around Oklahoma City one day and Jack said, “Let’s go into that store, over there,” pointing to a small storefront on NW 10th Street. “I want to show you something.”
Walking into the store was for me like walking onto the set of some futuristic science fiction movie. There were computers everywhere. This was one of Oklahoma’s first computer stores and they sold machines from a company named Commodore. Jack pointed to a Commodore PET computer (which stood for “Personal Electronic Transactor”) and said, “Someday, I’m going to own one of those.”
Those seemed like fanciful words at the time, since the price of the Commodore PET was around $1,000. Still, the idea of having fun with a computer stayed with us and percolated over the years. This was before the days of the IBM PC (Personal Computer) and the full-on home computer “revolution.” A review of the Commodore PET, printed in a 1978 edition of “Electronics Today” magazine stated, “Never before has a company tried to convince the public that a computer is an acceptable, fun, useful, perhaps even an essential thing to have around the house.”
My, how things have changed. Nowadays, almost every home has a computer and, by contrast, a Tickle Me Elmo doll has more processing power than a Commodore PET computer.
As time went on, Jack and I both ended up buying computers, but not the Commodore PET. In the mid-1980s, Jack bought a TI-99, made by Texas Instruments and started to learn programming. I bought a Commodore 64, which was 8 times as powerful as the PET, and started experimenting with programming and music recording. Other geeky friends bought the Apple II or early Macintosh computers. The world of home computing was really starting to gel and we were having a ton of fun.
Home computing stayed fun for a while, but eventually two very dramatic things occurred that began to siphon away some of the fun. First, the IBM PC format became somewhat standardized and competing companies like Dell, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard began selling machines that were more or less the same under the hood and could all run the same operating systems and software. The home computer revolution was ramping up and going mainstream and computers from the likes of Commodore, Atari, Texas Instruments and Radio Shack were being crowded out by the “PC.” Home computing stayed fun, though, as PCs mostly ran on the Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS), which was fairly stable and reliable. The promise of total, across-the-board PC compatibility was never quite fulfilled, though, and computing became a little less fun as computer repair guys and enthusiasts like me tried to figure out how to make things work as advertised.
Soon, though, the world of computing was turned on its head by the second dramatic event that forever changed home computing: the introduction of Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft Windows offered such impressive hope, and the promise of bringing easy computing to the masses proved irresistible. Never mind that Apple was already making superior computers that were loads of fun to use. It’s almost as if the entire world of computing was hypnotized by Bill Gates and Company. Still, because of rapid adoption by the business world, the PC/Windows combination became the dominant force in home computing and the rest is, as they say, history.
Computing was suddenly much less fun. The first version of Windows I owned and used was Windows 3.1. Granted, when Windows worked like it was supposed to, it was fun. It was cool flipping back and forth between multiple programs. Being able to point-and-click with a mouse was definitely more fun than typing in strings of cryptic DOS commands (C:Windows>dir /p).
The problem was that Windows was so full of bugs that you could often spend as much time trying to fix things as you did actually getting anything fun or productive accomplished. Countless hours and dollars have been spent trying to make Windows computers live up to Microsoft’s promises. This made computing much less fun than I had with my old, faithful Commodore 64.
That’s not to say that things haven’t improved over the years. Each version of Windows has brought incremental improvements in reliability, and therefore, fun. While still far from perfect or bullet-proof, Windows 7 is way more reliable and fun to use than Windows 95 ever was.
That said, I think I’ll take a break from telling you how to fix your computer and, instead, look at ways to have fun with these high-dollar devices. Next week: games.