Computers
Until a couple of years ago, I avoided computers like the plague. I hated the things. Now....? Well, I don't know what I'd do without ours.
I first got one to use as a word processer as I'd just got my first freelance writing assignment. I then found lots of other uses for it. I prepare a lot of guitar music on it, use it as a photocopier now that I've got a scanner, communicate with newsgroups and e-mail, download information from the www, and keep my business records on it.
The rest of my family use it, too. My wife uses it to prepare records and worksheets to use in the school where she teaches and my children use it for school work and net surfing.
After innumerable upgrades of my original Apricot, I now have a home-built PC with 64Mb of RAM, a 233MMX CPU and two hard disc drives - one of 4.3 gigs and another of 6.4 gigs. I also bought a 17 inch monitor very recently. The bigger screen was well worth the money. Various peripherals include a scanner, a CD writer - a Hewlett Packard 7100e, and the ubiquitous printer. Whoever said that computers cut down on paperwork needs their head testing........ I recently installed Windows98 and I have to say that it's a great improvement over the 95 version. My latest acquisition is a TV card which I'm finding lots of exciting uses for.
Here's a still captured from video of my system.
One of the aspects of having a PC that I most enjoy, is being able to communicate with others and find information via the Net.
Some
of the newsgroups to which I subscribe are alt.music.byrds,
alt.fan.frank-zappa, and alt.guitar.tab. I find Usenet informative and entertaining.
Sometimes I get involved in minor flame wars, but I haven't been too badly scorched. So
far………….
I use
e-mail a lot to write to friends I've found on the newsgroups. At first, I found it
strange to communicate through a keyboard, but I've got used to it now. It also comes in
handy to contact my students.
Just lately,
I've got into IRC in a big way. It's a lot of fun, the software available is very good (I
use virc98) and you can meet a lot of interesting people. Sometimes, they're almost too
interesting............
I don't
really browse the web much these days. I find that I only use the www if I'm after
something specific. For one thing, it keeps the phone bills down a bit!