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When I was a kid I read a lot of science fiction. Most of it spoke of a future which shaped my dreams growing up, and helped create a love for technology that is with me today. Somewhere along the line technology has gone in the wrong direction... Where are the flying cars? The talking toasters? Personal robots? Instead, I live in a world of Windows computers that fail for no apparent reason, require weeks or months of training to do slightly advanced tasks, and still can’t understand a doggone word I’m saying. We put a man on the moon in the sixties, but I still can’t tell my computer to shut down. Don’t get me started on the “blue screen of death.” We’ve endured it for far too many years. I’m annoyed because I recently spent hours trying, and failing, to remove a hideous evil from my mother’s computer. Something so horrible that I wish ill upon the friends, family and descendents of the creators of spyware, spam, and viruses. I have had to remove more than 600 different things that decided to infect her computer, and I will probably have to reinstall the operating system to completely clean it. Why? I have to call Microsoft to task on this one. This is not a new problem; in fact, it’s been their problem all along. Windows was not designed to be secure, safe, or able to defend itself from foreign invaders. They’ve known about the problem with viruses for years , and yet still charge me money for updates that have provided incremental stability without additonal security. Yes, Microsoft is now trying to solve this problem, but it’s far too late. If you haven’t, immediately go to www.microsoft.com/protect to learn more, get patched, and get some add-on software to help fight back. I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time doing basic maintenance on my computer, such as scanning for viruses and spyware, installing the latest patches and trying to keep up with the news on what to watch out for. When I read my e-mail for work or home I still have to scan my spam folder, searching for a misplaced, yet important e-mail that was misread by my spam filter. These are hours and days, maybe even weeks per year that I’ve lost. And I’m not alone. I’m also upset because, due to my love of technology, I’m regarded as an “expert.” Like many of you, I do my best to keep up on all of the things that interest me, but I’m not an expert at every possible aspect of computing. In the old days it was easy—you just had to help friends and family put in some additional RAM (back when there were 2 or 3 types, not 25 types of DIMMs or SODIMMS), hook up a printer, or install a program or two. Now it’s the urgent call to help them remove spyware or a virus that has slowed their machine to a crawl or deleted all of their data. I can fix a lot of stuff, but sometimes I spend hours fixing or fighting to recover a system. Alright, so maybe I’m a bit upset about being unpaid technical support for Microsoft, part of an army of people that take pity on their friends and family, helping them get out trouble when Microsoft should be the one fixing the mess they created. This is not working, and it’s making me wonder why this has gone on for this long. Why hasn’t the Macintosh started stealing market share from Windows? You can count the number of Mac viruses on one hand. Spyware is virtually unknown. Are we that afraid of spending a little extra money for a better solution? I own both, so I’m guilty too. We need to let Microsoft know that this has to stop. Maybe Linux and the Mac really do make us more productive. Why doesn’t Windows include a free virus and spyware program? A decent and easy to use backup program (and I don’t mean copy your user folder to CD-RW) to help us recover when we our systems get hijacked? How about a basic word processor, spreadsheet and e-mail program? Why not? OK, enough ranting. I was originally talking about all of the productivity we were supposed to have when we finally got supercomputers on our desks. Where is it? I can’t type a document any faster on a modern computer (or use voice recognition that really works) than on this HP Jornada from 1998 I’m using to type this story on the train (I like it for writing because it has an awesome keyboard and 11 hours of battery life). Sure, some things are faster, but we haven’t seen the true rewards of computing that were predicted. I can go on the Internet and order plane tickets, searching for the best price and selecting my own itinerary. Am I really saving any time or money? I used to call my travel agent, tell them what I wanted to do, and they would do the research. I might have paid a bit more, but I would have invested 10 minutes, not an hour or so, and the tickets were refundable or exchangable. Are we really saving anything or are the lost jobs really expensive? Alright, I can go on Amazon, search a gazillion books, and have it shipped to me overnight, saving the hour or two it would take to go to the bookstore (remember them?). I can compare prices on thousands of products from merchants all over the globe, find incredible bargains on eBay, or even video chat with family in Hong Kong for free. I’m still working 40 hour weeks. Why? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some Luddite living in a cave. I use the Internet every day, and even owned a “dot com.” I’m just wondering where all of those hours we were suppposed to have saved have gone. We were supposed to work less, not more. If you find them, send me an e-mail and let me know where they are. I miss them. |
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