Resolution? Me?
Thu., December 29, 09:38 AM
When the subject is computers, I dragged Bosslawyer, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth century – just in time for the twenty-first. He doesn’t understand computers and absolutely does not trust them. He means well, you understand; when I complained aobut my vision, he asked whether he should buy a bigger monitor.
It’s hard to believe that the office computer was an upgrade. I suppose that you can get used to anything. We were managing somehow with an older machine and older software when the Unreliable Girl came back into the picture. Because she needed cash, she offered to sell her equipment to Bosslawyer. At least it had been produced after 2000, so it was an upgrade to us. It’s not much of a computer, the sort of thing you might buy for home use, or a kid’s homework. It has plenty of disk space, of which we use only about 25 percent, but with only 63M of RAM it runs a little slow.
As I said, you can get used to anything – well, almost anything. I replaced the printer last summer with one that didn’t have little pieces of plastic constantly falling off. Certainly, the old one was not the best printer for a law office – it couldn’t print legal sized documents. If I formatted a 14-inch page, the program automatically put in a three-inch margin at the bottom.
Browsing the net with a 56K dial-up modem is slow, but not impossible. I know because I use the same kind of modem at home. But from time to time I’m forced download large documents on my home computer because when we run out of RAM the whole thing freezes. Printing two documents in queue is out of the question. It really doesn’t matter where I read Bosslawyer’s e-mail; he doesn’t use the computer himself and I print out everything for him. Still I managed.
Until it got slower and slower. I cleaned out cookies, I ran ad-aware, I tried to defrag. (For some reason the defrag couldn’t complete.) I found we had picked up a bit of spyware, and I couldn’t get it out. Under ordinary circumstances, you would simply download a free spyware cleaner (at home, I use Spybot). I’m afraid to download anything because of the lack of RAM. I told Bosslawyer that the problems have gone beyond my expertise. In addition, I can’t just pack up the computer and bring it to Compewters R Us because I can no longer see the ports well enough to put it back together.
I was hoping for permission to call in a professional – because I am not going to ask one of my kids for free service. Well, there are always Boy Scouts in our world, and the one who came in wasn’t too bad. After asking whether we’d like to donate the thing to a museum, he did clean it out. He discovered that part of the problem was an old version of Norton, of all things. It was still trying to do its thing.
I knew that Norton had been installed on the computer; it didn’t work because no one ever renewed it. So I ignored it. I consider it a very valuable tool, but you don’t start asking for money to pay for something the boss doesn’t understand, particularly when you know the business isn’t flush. Had I known then what I know now, I might have considered uninstalling it.
Well, Bosslawyer is feeling affluent these days, and he asked whether we should buy a new computer. We could upgrade the one we have – add memory, maybe have XP installed, upgrade the Norton – but I refuse to advise him on this. I did mention that, while I am accustomed to “walk-arounds,” someday someone will be sitting behind that desk who doesn’t have my patience.
Mr. Otherlawyer, however, being a little more adventurous than Bosslawyer, has learned a good bit about computers in the past five years (he was using a Lanier when I first worked there), and he will be happy to unplug, carry, and hook up the computer again. He doesn’t understand as much about software as I do, but he is making the attempt. At least I’m not the lone voice wailing in the dark.
And here comes the New Year’s resolution, from the woman who doesn’t make them. Once we get that computer working properly, I will set it up so Bosslawyer doesn’t have to type at all. Surely he can learn to point and click. And I am going to teach him to read his own e-mail. Think of the paper we’ll save!
