Peer Pressure

It's hard to remember a day when there was not a computer in my life but there was a today and it really wasn't all that long ago. My first exposure to the concept that a person can actually have a computer in their life must have been around 1972 or 74. I was in college and the husband in a married couple who were our friends , the was quite a little computer head for the day. His name was Tom. Thomas was all into theTime/ Sinclair personal computer, a very small system one of the first of its kind. Normal people could not get a monitor to speak of so you had to give up a television in your house to interface with the little Sinclair. It was eight years later when I was working at a sheltered workshop in Blackfoot Idaho. My supervisor David was also one of the first few folk that was playing with the first computers at home. There were no computers in our office David talked the director of our workshop into purchasing a system. This early systems of course were DOS systems. I learned a little bit of the language in fact I tried to purchase a computer system While I Was in Blackfoot. Some one let me use a fairly advanced RadioShack system for a couple days to see if I use the system which I could not so I gave the whole thing back.

It was still a couple years later when I had transition to Salt Lake City Utah and working with the independent living center that one of my friends at this job was very much a computer nerd who was very much DOS oriented. My friends name was Kim and soon found a way to bring four computers in the office. There were cute little “suitcase” computers, the very first portable systems. This is my first real access to computing. I loved wordprocessing on the little computer and of course playing games but that was as far as I got. I knew bits and pieces of basic and other early languages but not enough to do any thing productive. This is about the same time that Apple is making the scene, Apple computers. Kim thought Apple computers were for the lightweight user. I of course agreed with everything Kim did and said. You operated your Apple Computer with a series of cartoons . But Apple sold itself as the computer for the people and definitely was. One didn't have to worry about another language DOS and later when the Internet became available to users Apple users did not worry about viruses nearly as much as DOS users.

I've been away from independent living for now nearly 20 years and Kim's influence or at least his direct influence. However I've been true to my commitment to DOS until, yesterday went for the first time I began to falter, really falter. At the Salt Lake community college bookstore going past the display of Apple products. Apple systems is all they carry. I was completely enamored by some of the notebooks which are offered students. One of the notebooks was so light and thin it would easily slip into my backpack. They cannot believe I was actually desiring Apple. I wish I could bring myself to lay that kind of money down thousand some odd dollars – – and I can do it if I wanted to – – but I can't justify the purchase like that. I slightly new cell phone before a laptop. I love to write but only write on my home computer pretty much. I would like to think if I had a laptop I could write a library, in coffee shops all that stuff but I can do that with my tablet. And I have tablet. Tablet have is not a nice big tablet like I lost but the little tablet does speech to text very well.

So there you have it, true confession, I weakened. I would do it, now in a heartbeat I would do it if I had the money I would get an Apple notebook just so I'd look cool like the other kids.