When All Else Fails, So Does the Computer

My suspicions are justified by the fact that I have just changed from a Uniblue protection package for virus, spam, etc. that cleans the system every now and then, to a new Norton package which does the same thing but is more expensive. It is likely that my two-year-old grandson Jack would be able to fix the problem in a flash, but at my age it is hopeless. Although I have been using a computer since just a few years after Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, the whole thing is as much a mystery to me as it was apparently to Gates.

Bill and I both understood that providing an operating system has something to do with bytes. What exactly bytes are I have (and had) no idea, but then again--probably--neither did Bill. What Bill knew, and I did not, was that IBM was headed by saps. They thought that the money was to be made by building and selling computers. (If they were right, as Mel Brooks once said about something else, they would have over a hundred dollars today.) In fact, Bill’s great talent turned out to be that he was good in meetings.

One happy day (for Bill and his partner, Paul Allen), IBM asked the partnership to come in and discuss an operating system for the IBM personal computer they were planning to build. In response to the question 'Did the boys have an operating system,' Bill claimed they did. In fact, they had nothing of the kind, but they had seen something owned by another company that they thought would work for IBM. They ran out and bought it, and the rest is Windows and history.

This short and somewhat broad-brushed summary of Micro-soft (later renamed and trademarked Microsoft) is designed to not-so-subtly suggest that Windows may not have been especially well thought out when it first went into operation, and its susceptibility to viruses and other kinds of computer evil-doers is legendary. On the other hand, its chief rival Apple has persuaded itself that it is God’s gift to computers. It is notably more stable than Microsoft’s Windows but--there is always a "but"--the computers sold by Apple, which are the only ones licensed to use the  Apple operating system, are very much more expensive than practically anybody else’s. God, apparently, giveth and then taketh away.

RCN, on the other hand, is the product of David McCourt, a business genius who made a great deal of money at an age rivaling Gates. McCourt formed a capital partnership called Granahan McCourt Capital, LLC, which after some wandering around in the cable television business created RCN, a fiberoptic cable system that offers TV, Internet and telephone services. RCN’s cable system was notably faster than anything around when we first subscribed to it some years ago. Fast is good. Not to recognize your Internet login, however, cannot be considered speedy service, nor is telling you how to reboot your RCN modem much help either. Moreover, its service is somewhat subject to bad weather, but then again, so is DISH network satellite, which we use.

Ah, it is an imperfect world but much advanced, I admit, beyond my capacity to understand it.

Computers these days are so simple that practically every five-year-old can use one and every 10-year-old can fix practically any problem they have. I just wish they would get around to mine soon.