Neville was a nerd, a computer nerd that is. Night and day
he would be locked up with his face glued to his computer
screen. His wife had left him years ago to find someone who
would at least say hello now and again. He rather liked the
peace of being left alone and he settled into a life in cyberspace
only returning to the real world to dash out for a takeaway,
go for a leak or to do a bit of work to keep the wolf from
the door. He had managed to find work in an internet café
so even going to work wasn’t too much of a chore.
Neville the Nerd would often visit his friend Andy down the
road. Andy the Anorak was a computer repair man and Neville
would often visit him to get his computer repaired or upgraded
or to sort out some networking problem. Andy made lots of
money out of Neville but he didn’t mind, it was good
to have a like-minded soul to share his passion.
Neville was blissfully happy but then one day his world was
rudely interrupted. There was a knock on the door.
“Neville the Nerd?” the nice man said.
“Yes”
“Remember filling in a raffle ticket at last month’s
computer show?”
“Yes”
“Well you have won a computer, congratulations.”
He handed Neville a small box.
“Where’s the computer?” asked Neville.
“That’s it” said the nice man and left.
Neville felt uneasy, he was holding a box smaller than a shoe
box.
He opened it and pulled out a small flat block about 6 inches
square by 2 inches deep.
He found some cables and an instruction book. All he had to
do was plug his existing monitor, keyboard and mouse into
the back of the thing and switch it on.
As it started a big friendly face came on the screen. “It’s
an Apple Macintosh” he groaned. His heart sank. He had
heard about these things before. “They are expensive,
you can’t get many programs for them, they are slow
and you certainly can’t connect them to other computers”
people had told him.
He thought he’d give it go so he started clicking on
icons and trying to find his way around. He felt uneasy, this
is too simple he thought. It took him a couple of days to
get used to it but he was surprised to find that it came with
lots of programs including all of the standard software from
Microsoft, Adobe, MYOB, Quark, the list went on and on. The
operating system had just about anything he could wish for
such as email, web browser, dictionary and address book and
many things he had never even heard of.
But worryingly there was one important thing missing, there
was no antivirus program!
He went to bed and couldn’t sleep, this machine was
unnerving him.
The next morning he pulled out the manual and found the phone
number of a service agent. He dialled the number.
“I have a new Macintosh and it doesn’t have an
antivirus program.”
“You don’t really need an antivirus program for
a Mac sir” came the friendly reply. “There are
so few viruses no one ever bothers.”
“What about adware?”
“What?”
“Spyware?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about
sir.”
“I want to install network and a video cards but I can’t
get the top off.”
“You don’t need to sir, it comes fully configured
with everything you need”
“What, everything?” said Neville “you mean
I can’t go out and enjoy shopping for the latest sound
or wireless card?”
“Sorry sir”
“How do I install a CD burner?”
“Already In there sir.”
He was starting to get really fed up. Every excuse to tinker
with this thing was being stymied.
“ I understood that these were just toys for trendy
people” he said in frustration.
“Oh no sir, Macintosh is generally accepted as the world
standard for the design, print and publishing industries where
computers have to be fast to handle the graphics. With their
high level of security even intelligence agencies are using
Apple. The Bali Snowboarding Club went over to Apple two years
ago.”
“Oh and how did that go?”
“I don’t know sir, we haven’t heard from
them since.”
“Is this computer I won worth a lot of money?”
“Well no sir, you can buy one for about five and a half
million Rupiah although the savings in maintenance and downtime
can be worth a lot.”
“I don’t want to know” muttered Neville.
One day Neville thought he would try and amuse himself and
bought a new printer. He started looking for the printer driver.
There was no “Mac” driver. “What do I do
now?” he thought. He plugged the printer in anyway.
Suddenly a message came up on the screen “Cannon i255
printer, your printer has been successfully installed.”
“Damn” he thought “won’t this thing
let me do anything for myself?”
Time passed. The days turned into weeks and Neville the Nerd
was bored. Everyday the thing just worked, it never crashed,
there was never a networking problem to sort out even when
opening files on other operating systems. He never needed
to go to Andy to get it repaired and anyway Andy wasn’t
speaking to him anymore. He said he had gone over to “the
dark side” and mumbled something about putting a lot
of people out of work.
Neville was also lonely. Those friendly little messages asking
you to upgrade your software or connect to the internet never
appeared. There were no interesting little boxes saying “file
XN133.dll not found” and he missed the friendly little
dog with the waggy tail and the cute paper clip that says
“I see you are making a list……”.
Finally, one day, he had had enough, there was no challenge
in this frustrating machine.
He unplugged this infernal little box and put it away in the
back of a cupboard. He pulled out his old beige friend that
had accompanied him through many a computing challenge over
the years. They had done a lot together, finding lost files,
seeking out adware and fighting off attacks by worms and Trojans.
He switched it on. “Your virus definitions are out of
date, click here to download the latest version.”
“That’s better” he thought as the familiar
comforting sight of the virus definitions download ran across
the screen.
He connected to the internet. Suddenly a news item popped
up on the screen. He reeled in horror at the words before
him.
“Apple computer sales up 38%” it read.
“Oh no” a voice in his head screamed “the
dark side are taking over!”
Phil Wilson
Phil Wilson a project director for Focus Indonesia and a partner
of MrFixit property maintenance services. Opinions expressed
are those of Phil Wilson. If you have any questions or comments
related to property maintenance he can be contacted at the
office on 0361 288 789 or through the website at www.mrfixitbali.com
Copyright@2007 Fixed Abode
You can read all past articles of Fixed Abode
at www.BaliAdvertiser.biz
