Why Computers Are Evil
BY MARY WOLBACH LOPERT
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Acknowledgment: I would like to credit the Courier’s resident computer guru Donna Currie with the actual phrase “Computers are evil.” She should know, she fixes them for a living.

If your computer were an actual human employee you’d fire it. Seriously, there is no way any sane employer would put up with the cost and time that are expended on these devices.

I’m certainly not anti-technology. While I can hardly handle the features of my ancient two-year-old phone, I can’t wait for 3D TV. Of course, I’ll hold off a few years to make sure that the technology catches on, the price falls and 3D glasses with progressive lenses are available.

Meanwhile, most of us are stuck dealing with 2D real-life issues that are more likely to send us to a psychiatrist than an ophthalmologist.

Computers Steal Your Time

I’m not talking about lost productivity at work caused by playing spider solitaire, online shopping, or betting on March Madness. I’m talking about what happens when you buy a new computer.

Once you get over the euphoria from the cute commercials about how your new computer can kick the competition’s computer in the old CD slot, and that your keyboard isn’t stained with coffee, there is the sobering learning curve that accompanies any new operating system and/or program upgrades.

Suddenly, the reliable programs you understood don’t work. And unlike the “olden” days, you can’t buy a manual. The best you can do is type a keyword into the help box, with crossed fingers that your idea of a keyword matches the operating system’s understanding of a keyword, or you’ll be left with the dreaded “No Match Found” screen leaving you to search an online thesaurus trying to find a corresponding term in the new operating system’s vocabulary. All the while your deadlines are being blown to smithereens and you’re attempting to reboot your old computer, just to get one more report done.

Computers Do Not Play Well With Others

Suppose you are silly enough to take a computer with a perfectly good operating system and upgrade it. And yes, you’ve backed up all your data. Think you’re out of the woods? Think again, because you probably have some hardware, a printer or a scanner, or some software, like an email program upon which you depend, that now won’t work.

And there are multiple issues keeping the old from playing well with the new. The scanner won’t work because even though its “only” five years old, in tech time it’s ancient so it’s not worth the effort to develop new drivers. Besides, as your friends tell you, a new scanner is only $75 and what’s another 75 bucks on top of a mortgage, college tuition, gas and groceries?

At least you can buy a new scanner. If it’s the software, you are at the mercy of the infamous technical support. After upgrading my operating system, it took two weeks, with calls to two different ISPs and tears on both ends, to get my email program running.

I’m not sure which was the more miraculous: that I had actually talked to real English-speaking people at both companies or that I was on the phone so long with one woman that we are now Facebook friends.

Computers Can Reverse Time

When I say reverse time, I’m not talking about the “Back To The Future” flux capacitor-space/time continuum where you can go back and dump your high school boyfriend before he dumps you or fix the big shoulder and bigger hair fiasco from that wedding you went to in the mid-80s. I’m talking about the downloaded upgrade.

I was recently informed by a jumping icon that my browser needed upgrading. No problem, and I clicked the Upgrade Now button. Little did I know that even with the Super-Duper High Speed Connection (at $15 extra a month) it would still take 57 minutes to download. After stepping away for a few minutes, when I checked, the counter told me it was now 63 minutes to completion.

Between the six minutes created at the beginning of the process and the extra three and a half minutes created by the “10 seconds remaining” screen, I figured that I had created enough time to go back and cancel the whole download process.

This said, I’m sure that most of you are drooling over a Droid or apeing after an Apple 4. But consider this: Do you really want an employee who steals your time, doesn’t work well with others and snickers behind your back?

And besides that, no matter how cool the TV, you still look like a dork in those 3D glasses.