Back in 1983 my life changed when a shiny, very high-tekky, computer showed up on my doorstep. Well, I admit someone must have put it there, but for me… sigh… love at first sight!
It was a KayproII, a one-piece wonder that had its keyboard tucked up and buckled in against the monitor. There were two 5 1/4″ floppy disk drives: A and B. The A drive held the operating system, mysteriously known as CP/M, which took up part of the disk which also held what we would now call “content”; the B drive was for disk files. There were several manuals, mostly written in some completely foreign dialect resembling English but with words I had never seen before. To be fair, there were a few sections of one of the manuals that hinted at how to operate the computer. Very few. There was also a collection of programs, (soft wear) including a word-processing program called WordStar.
Speaking of word processing… every time one system becomes familiar, they change it. WordStar was quickly nudged out by WordPerfect, as that became the “industry standard” for huge businesses. For me WordPerfect 4.5 was my first, back in the day when WP was the standard before Microsoft introduced Word. Which of course as everyone knows, became THE word processing system, quickly insinuating itself (ok, pushing itself) into every office in the world. My Luddite heart remained true to WordPerfect all the way up to version 11, when we had to part ways because my computer operating system moved on.
The point of all this is to alibi the reason why my posting to blogging101 has been so spotty. I was going to complain about my printer, but it isn’t really that…it’s more to do with the operating system, i.e. Windows8.1. Yikes! It so happened that the last computer I bought was on the very day that the new Windows 8 had come out. Really…the very day! Amd Windows 8 was the first new system to be completely alien to the previous version…Windows 7, and (sob) the revered WindowsXP.
Well yes, I admit that it would have been better had I let the Geek Squad set up the new computer for me, but I–always in a hurry–insisted on setting it up myself, installing everything. Since that has always been the way I did it, why think this time would be any different? Well, I found out why, apparently I did something wrong. To be fair, no one else that I know has had problems with the new operating system…so maybe its me. Huh!
Oh…now they are saying that Microsoft is going to provide their NEW system, Windows 9, free for us hysterical souls who need it. I can hardly wait, although by then I will have probably figured out what the problem is and have to start all over.
A State of Mind 
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