The desktop, which I am given at my work, can be considered a real ‘antique’ by today’s standards. Its an Intel386 machine, with Windows98. I am surprised that the company hasn’t discarded it yet. Or it might only be my ‘wrong’ impression of Japan, that Japanese throw anything after 3-4 years of use. And you also have to pay a ‘not so small’ amount of money to ‘sell’ any old electronic appliance to ‘recycle shops’. It is free though if you go to a riverbank or on a dark night!
Then again, my current work doesn’t involve any hi-tech things (and I am not an expert in any field related to computer). I have made my job as simple as possible and have been completely successful in ‘not getting’ any overtime works so that I can spend my ‘before 8:00 AM’, ‘after 6:00 PM’ and every minute of my holidays with my family.
Recently, after performing some updates, I was unable to use outlook express. There was some problem with a file ‘msoe.dll’. I had encountered this before too and knew the solution was very easy, but I had forgotten it soon after that. So I followed the ‘most modern’ way of doing anything, I googled ‘msoe.dll’ and got some easy steps (it happened to be the Microsoft site! And I felt foolish, why I went to google, instead of going to the Microsoft site directly!).
(I suppose I may not be alone in such thinking) that google and many such sites have made me ‘totally lazy’ to remember anything let alone keeping a written record. Why stress yourself when you can find ‘anything’ in this crazy thing called Internet. And there are many ‘how to----‘ pages too, which I sometimes print and put in my bag and never read!
And there is Wikipedia. I don’t go there for 'everything', but whenever I want to know about some famous/infamous person, I go there direct. It has already become a habit.
It is OK for data, facts, bio-s and ‘how to--- ‘s but I am relying on the Internet for searching meanings of English words too. Coming from a background (school) where ‘English’ was taught in ‘Nepali’ medium, my vocabulary is not big. So I turn to online dictionaries now and then. But I forget too soon. Next time, when the same word comes somewhere else, I have to search again. I don’t know whether it is 100% true or not, but it seems to me that printed information leaves stronger impression than that on monitors. Or it may only be for people like me who got introduced to the digital world around or after their mid-twenties (I read somewhere today that we are called ‘digital immigrants’). ‘Digital natives’ may have different experience/opinion.
Don't say that you are 'not an expert in any field related to computer'.
ReplyDeleteYou are living in Japan and are able to adjust and manage all the modern lifestyle and do your day-to-day work with Intel 386 and win 98 means you are a 'genius'
Five years back I upgraded my machine from win 98 to win xp and several hardware upgrades has been done to my machine.....leaving only the original case and all the stuffs inside 'replaced'.
I also do not have any special stuffs to 'play with my machine' but still sometimes I feel i must consider to upgrade my processor or O.s into win vista.
Great!!! you are a real genius...I really want to learn the clues, tips and tricks to be able to carryout all the works using a 386 box.
Win 98, itself may not be a 'problem' but your 'geniusness'lies in runing win 98 with 386 and yes! you are also able to write blogs in 'unicode'
Namaste Dilip dai and thank you for your comment.
ReplyDeleteBut there is nothing 'genius' here. I have vista in home and do all my personal works (like writing blogs) from home.
But 386 and 98 seem perfectly OK for the kind of job that I have.