My Dot Com

My First Computer in 1999

Well the year was 1992..Computer was the buzz word. I read that those who would not learn computers would lag behind. The new world was going to belong to the computer savvy and so I got myself enrolled in the first available course to get acquainted with the new monster.

The first lesson on MS-DOS was to type my name and I wrote "STUPID" for fun.  It wrote back "Nice to meet you, Stupid".. I was laughing..amused. I was completely at ease with the Monster..from the word GO.

It costed me 69 thousand for Wipro Computer n Printer, in the year 1999

Sold it as scrap on March 10, 2014 for a whooping sum of Rs. 500/=

The Original Packing

It was a certificate course that familiarized me with the computer jargon..MS DOS the operating system, Wordstar to type my articles, DBase to keep address books, Lotus123 to do calculations n graphs. It was kind of very empowering. I could identify the news about computers, web n all that.  In 1993 I had my first email account on usa.net. The tech world was evolving at a very very fast pace,. Andhra Pradesh was the first tech savvy state. Chander Babu Naidu had changed the way Government was functioning. So, I did a refresher course for a month to keep abreast with technology. The Windows to the world had arrived. The young Andhraites had begun an exodus to US of the A dotting Silicon Valley n every computer business abroad.

It was an opportunity for future. A friend came home and discussed about his new Software venture at Amritsar in Punjab. My mom tried to convince him that Ludhiana was a better place for his choice of business. We were bewildered at her new tech analysis. So she explained how she could get him contacts to manufacture soft wear.  After all one of her relatives was manufacturing tee-shirts. (Superior soft wear types). We had a LOL session that night. I even got a middle piece published about that anecdote. My articles were hand written n hand delivered to Deccan Chronicle n Times of India Hyderabad. (Those were the days my friend... makes me feel ancient.)

In 1994 I hired a computer for rupees 3K a month and kept it for 3 months and extracted full worth out of it. I explored every application loaded on it and experimented with every damn lock n key. So it crashed once and was replaced. I realized it was a very smart decision until the replaced computer opened a 'dirty picture' of a model on the desktop. That day, I learnt how to delete it and forever. :)

Y2K was the talk of the computer world in the year 1999. Another confusion filled year. I was made to believe that it would a wise decision to buy a machine before 2000. So I bought a Pentium 3 with the latest configuration of speed and 10 GB HD. Wow!! A loan of Rs 68 thousand 7 Hundred something. :( It had two crashes and well within the warranty period and free replacements were given for HD, I was so happy for Paisa Vasool service and forgot about all the reminder calls I had made to WIPRO n its lazy staff in Chandigarh)

It was my proud possession and I wrote my articles on it. There was no internet but I printed out stuff and sent to publishers. When my daughter arrived I made posters, a monthly newsletter about her to share with my family n her pop who was posted in the field. Printed out invites, letters, posters, greeting cards and many cute things. By 2001 my little daughter too found it very interesting as I got floppy discs with Rhymes and cartoons for her. By 2003 n 2004 I was an expert and became a prolific writer getting published at least 3 times a week. Despite the paltry sum that I got for every article, I had a big cheque at the end of one year to buy a decent Golf Set (full) for gifting my husband. Of course it was an incredible journey through various places of posting and I was the first one to get a broadband and explore SKYPE, all thanks to my tech savvy globe trotting younger brothers.

2009 my brothers helped me graduate to an all new Macbook Pro that was brought from US. Mom too got one for herself for she could now very well differentiate between softwear n software n already had a desktop to herself and a couple of short courses to catch up with the changing times. She learned computer basics at the age of 60. So with Apple Inc. my world changed. Initially I had hated Steve Jobs, for Mac is so different from Windows... Hahaha...and my daughters had already grabbed my desktop. They did not let me touch that ever again.

My younger daughter is a budding writer and a gadget freak so she became the master of the machine. She did pretty interesting work on the machine. But with years my old friend began developing aging sickness. It will hang or black out suddenly and the speakers n sound were the first ones to go. One day, I saw my daughter watching a movie on it. I said what are you watching without  a speaker. She had a big grin on her impish face...she said, "BARFI".. Crazy, that's what she is.

Sadly one fine day this old friend went into COMA. My daughters love woke it one day and it was back to life but not for too long. It stayed dead on her desk and gathered dust. It was time to say goodbye to it. So I dug out the packing too(all original as we service people always preserve packing material for postings n transfers) to dispose. I packed my old companion with dignity and bid it a farewell... Where ever it has gone... the memories are with me and they are sweet.