Monthly Archives: October 2014

I haven’t posted in the last week partially because I didn’t have anything I wanted to say, though I do have a couple of drafts that aren’t completed. (That’s kind of a silly statement when you consider that almost all of my posts are, essentially, first drafts quickly scanned for spelling errors. ) Ad another reason I didn’t post was because my computer died. Kaput. Shit the bed. Won’t start! Finished. Washed up. I could go on, but I won’t.

Except for my very first computer, every one I’ve owned has been a Hewlitt -Packard (anyone remember the old Packard cars?) whether a desk top or a notebook. And, by and large, I’ve been happy with them. When using them I would often remember a phone conversation I had back in 1974 when I was working as a head hunter in Chicago. We recruited high-end systems analysts and heads of IT departments. This was back in the days when computers were so huge they took up entire floors of big buildings and were attended by white-coated acolytes.

I really didn’t know squat about computers or what the jobs of the people I was talking to actually entailed. But I knew certain buzz words that we were supposed to ask and that was actually enough.

One day I blind-called a systems analyst at Hewlitt-Packard, and during our conversation I asked what projects he was currently working on. He got real excited and said, “We’re working on building ‘mini computers.'”

“What the hell are those?” I asked.

“They’re computers people will have on their desks.”

“Yeah, right,” I thought. “Call me in a couple of years and let me know how that worked out for ya.”

I came down here to Panama with two HP notebooks. One was on its last legs but I figured it could be a backup if my main one went belly up. About a year later they were both toast and I went into David and bought a third notebook. It, too, was an HP, mainly because it was the only one in three stores that was reasonably priced and also had an English keyboard. Remember, this is a Spanish speaking country so naturally Spanish keyboards predominate. They’re slightly different. For example, on the English keyboard the key with the colon and semi-colon is now the Ñ key. The semi-colon sits to the right of the letter M and the colon key is just to the right of that. There are also three-key acrobatics needed to get the @ symbol up and running instead of simply the Shift and #2 keys.

Everything worked fine until last Saturday. Then it was impossible to get the thing to start. Parts of files somewhere were missing, etc., etc. I’m not going to get into what I tried to do to repair things using the defunct spares.

So, on Sunday morning I went into David looking for a replacement for the replacement that replaced…well you get the picture. However, this time there wasn’t an English keyboard to be found around Plaza Terronal where there are three stores selling computers. Now, I know that if I went to the Pricesmart (Panama’s answer to Wally World) I could probably get one, but the last time I was computer shopping the exact same model I eventually bought at Panafoto was priced over $200 more than the one I bought.

When I made a sad face about the lack of an English keyboard model the computer geek sales robot said that going into a computer’s it was possible to select what language you wanted the Spanish keyboard to resemble. For instance, I could turn the Spanish keyboard into an English one with a couple of clicks.

Cool!

Then there was the problem that all the Windows-based computers were loaded with the universally panned and hated Windows 8 operating system. Funny, the week before I’d read a story about how the world was anxiously awaiting Window 10 (no one said anything about why there was no Windows 9, though).

There were three long shelves full of Toshiba, HP, Sony and other PC notebooks and I played around with the Windows 8 displays and could see why people didn’t like it, and not knowing, and not being able to be computerless for who knows how long before Windows 10 comes out, I started to eye the meager collection of  Apple products. I very much liked the 13″ screen Airbook, especially because it was fairly reasonably priced and I liked that instead of a mechanical hard drive it has a solid state memory. The problem with regular hard drives is that they move and things that move wear out. They also generate a lot of heat because of the whirling discs.

So, I bit the bullet, pulled out my debit card and bought one. I took it home, plugged it in and NOTHING!!! Damned thing wouldn’t start. I figured, okay, the battery needs to be charged before it will start. I left it plugged in for four hours and still nothing.

I was the first civilian through Panafoto’s doors Monday morning. I went around and around with the manager about getting them to swap out the non-working unit with one they had out back. All in Spanish, I might add. No, they had to send the one in my possession to the Apple Store in Panamá as they call the Capitol. They would send it express and I’d have a replacement Wednesday afternoon. Needless to say I was pissed, but had to capitulate after 45 minutes of fruitless arguing.

Wednesday afternoon arrived. Nobody with a computer showed up at my door. I called Panafoto and they apologized, but the torrential downpours currently underway meant it wasn’t going to happen but I was assured that I’d have the replacement “before 12” the next day. Well, almost. I was just ready to call when two guys from Panafoto showed up at 12:15. We opened the box, pushed the button and Voilà, it worked!

So, here I am with four notebook computers:

There is definitely a learning curve moving from the PC platform to the Mac way of doing things. It will take a while, but the Airbook is praised as absolutely the best notebook in existence. We’ll see.