Within three clicks of using my new laptop I am apoplectic with frustration. Why does technology always get more complicated, not less? When is someone going to make a computer that is easier to use than the last one, not more difficult? And, above all, when will my new laptop stop talking to me?
It has been asking me things constantly since I started it up. This is annoying because I made perfectly clear to Matt, my favourite computer geek at Curry’s, that he must make sure the laptop had everything it wanted before I took it home.
Matt always has a terrible time with me. I ask for things like ‘a very small laptop with a large, square screen’. Then I stand in the middle of all the widescreens and proclaim that a computer hasn’t been made that will improve my life. ‘All these things with their horrid rectangular screens just make my life worse,’ I whine, bitter tears of alienation welling in my eyes. And Matt, shirt hanging out of his trousers, one buttonhole popping open over his expansive stomach, sighs and mutters, ‘Your life, maybe.’ And stares painfully into the middle distance.
It took me three hours to reconcile myself to one of the laptops I didn’t want and couldn’t use and, when he’d finished getting it ready, Matt handed it to me lovingly with its own little bag of stuff: cables, CDs, nappy wipes, that sort of thing. I took it home and put it in the cupboard under the stairs for the first night because I was so frightened of it I daren’t even take it out of its box.
The next day, I unpacked it, laid it carefully on the kitchen table and switched it on. Within seconds it was bleating like a new-born lamb. ‘Java has updates. Do you want to install these updates?’ I don’t blooming know, do I? Java’s a type of coffee to me.
I clicked the internet icon. ‘Do you want to set Mozilla Firefox as your home page?’ Again, no idea. The question of something I don’t understand being made into something else I don’t understand is of no consequence to me one way or the other.
As I sit here now, there’s no question of me actually using the machine to do something I want to do, I’m too busy dealing with what it wants to do. To make matters worse, every time I try to use the mouse pad the slightest twitch of my fingers makes everything on the screen blow up or shrink, or else a message flashes up threatening to delete everything. ‘What did I do now?’ I hear myself screeching. I realise I am locked in a terminal misunderstanding with a strange, hypersensitive creature riddled by neuroses that are triggered by the merest touch of my fingertips. I seriously consider taking a valium in order to make myself still enough to move the mouse without triggering a meltdown.
‘Do you want to reconfigure Java?’ Dear God, if I don’t deal with this Java demand soon I’m going to be without Java, and I don’t even know what it is that I’m going to be without. Another box flashes up with a tune. Bing-bong, it goes. ‘Windows recently installed updates. Do you want to see a summary of which updates were installed?’ No. Or maybe yes. Will looking make things better or worse? Maybe it will make it feel less neglected. So I press Yes on everything and it whirs away happily. Now, please, leave me alone to work for five minutes.
But I only manage to use my email for a second before it’s nagging me again. This time it goes too far: ‘Install missing plug-ins?’ All right, you’ve had your fun. Show’s over. I may be an analogue loser who secretly dreams of digging out the manual typewriter buried under a pile of garden furniture in her parents’ garden shed, but I know a wind-up when I see one. There are no missing plug-ins. Nor do you need any more updates. You’re stuffed full of them. If you have any more updates you won’t have room left for your Java reconfiguration.
‘This computer will restart in three minutes,’ it announces in a final strop. ‘Right, that’s it,’ I shout. ‘I’ve had it with you. If you can’t behave in a civilised fashion you can go back in your box.’ I try to switch it off but the darn thing is already shutting itself down. I don’t even have the power of the on-off switch. Clearly, I can submit to this laptop and let it run my life, or I can show it who’s boss and smash it to pieces. I only wish I could decide which of these options is the bigger lunacy.
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