I am
doing my best to sort of stay in this century technologically. It
seems that those of us who still actually sit at a desktop computer
to answer our emails are fast becoming dinosaurs. Now days you must
have a smart phone or a tablet to answer email, use apps, check
Facebook & surf the web. Although my guess is that it is no
longer cool to say “surf the web”.
How is
it that my granddaughter, Charley, seemed to be born knowing how to
work a smart phone? At one year old, she instinctively knew how to
swipe her finger across the touch screen to change it. She holds the
phone with both hands & “texts” gibberish with her thumbs - &
she is not even two yet! At a baseball game on TV, a father caught a
foul ball for his small child. The boy took out a smart phone &
started texting. The announcer said, “He's texting Mom. He's six
years old & can work a smart phone better than me.”
Several
months ago I decided to take the leap & bought a smart phone.
After a long lunch with my son, Darrin, who taught me the basics of
using “apps”, & downloading a 200 page user manual, I was
ready to learn. I wasn't going to let this 63 year old brain get the
better of me. But what the hell? Two hundred pages to work a phone?
Come on.
Now
about six months later, I really do see the benefits of this device.
I can check & send email almost anywhere, see who's posting what
on Facebook, & I even know how to work the GPS. I can just speak
my destination & it finds it – how cool is that? If Lou says,
“I wonder if Ronnie Lott is in the Football Hall of Fame?”, I can
pull out my phone & tell him “yes” in a matter of minutes. I
am able to text at maybe ¼ the speed of the average teenager BUT I
rarely use abbreviations or shortcuts or eliminate vowels, just an
old lady thing I guess.
About
the only thing these phones don't do really well is make a telephone
call. I've had more dropped calls & poor sound quality with this
one than I ever did with my old flip phone.
Since I
have learned to work my cheapy Android phone to my satisfaction (even
though I probably use 1/100th
of its capabilities), I started thinking about upgrading to a newer
computer operating system. I've been using Windows XP for a zillion
years & really would love to keep it since it's familiar &
does everything that I need it to do. But Bill Gates & company,
in their infinite wisdom, have decided that we all have to move on. I
recently discovered that XP will no longer be supported by Microsoft
in a few months. Sigh...
My
reasoning for upgrading was similar to getting the smart phone – if
I don't learn it now, I may never learn it. And I don't want to end
up like my dad who at 84 years old can barely work a cordless touch
tone phone with a built in phonebook.
I can
maneuver my way around a computer pretty well but apparently I got a
little cocky when I ordered a new mini laptop with Windows 8. Yikes!
Windows 8 is nothing like my tried & trusted Windows XP. Windows
8 is “app based” but I was determined to learn it & not drive
my son crazy in the process. I found tutorials online, joined a forum
to ask questions & downloaded another 200 page user manual. Isn't
there anything technology-wise that can be explained in 50 pages or
less???
Every
day for about a week, I put my new hot pink netbook (that's what they
call a mini laptop these days) on a TV tray beside my desktop. That
way I could read things online or in the manual then turn my chair 90
degrees & try them on my laptop. My brain could only handle about
an hour before it turned to mush but I was learning a fair amount.
Unfortunately, I also learned that very little between Windows 8 &
Windows XP is compatible.
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