Computer graphic

Originally published 23 February 1998

Dear Mr. Computer,

When I bought my first Mac­in­tosh com­put­er a dozen years ago, it was a piece of cake to use. Now even basic word pro­cess­ing soft­ware has so many bells and whis­tles I’m total­ly bam­boo­zled. What­ev­er hap­pened to “user friendly”?

Arthur F., Charlestown

Dear Arthur,

“User friend­ly” is not the same as “mar­keter friend­ly.” All those bells and whis­tles are to make you think you can’t do with­out the newest ver­sion of the soft­ware. And in case you don’t get the mes­sage, the old soft­ware won’t run on new machines.

Dear Mr. Computer,

Every­one seems to be talk­ing about speech recog­ni­tion late­ly, so I thought I’d give it a try. The soft­ware pack­age I bought, how­ev­er, can’t seem to get around my accent. Every time I say “Har­vard”, it types “hah-vud.” What can I do?

Muffy P., Cam­bridge

Dear Muffy,

Most speech recog­ni­tion soft­ware comes from Cal­i­for­nia. How­ev­er, a pack­age called BosTalk from Yan­kee Soft­ware should sort out your problem.

Dear Mr. Computer,

I recent­ly down­loaded Microsoft­’s new ver­sion of Inter­net Explor­er. But once installed, it has tak­en over my whole com­put­er. I’m swamped with new win­dows and but­ton bars. All I want to do is surf the net.

Jack J., Stoughton

Dear Jack,

Trash that suck­er quick — if it’s not too late. Every minute it is on your machine you become more inex­tri­ca­bly hostage to Bill Gates. It’s cyberkudzu.

Dear Mr. Computer,

I have heard from a friend that a com­put­er virus is going round that lays dor­mant in your machine for a while, then kicks in and starts con­vert­ing typed S’s into $‘s. Should I worry?

Angela M., Tewks­bury

Dear Angela,

You can avoid DTDs (dig­i­tal­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases) by avoid­ing casu­al elec­tron­ic con­tact with strangers and stay­ing out of dis­rep­utable sec­tions of cyberspace.

Dear Mr. Computer,

After a lot of trou­ble, I man­aged to con­struct my own home­page on the web, with a list of my favorite songs, a pic­ture of my cat, favorite links, lit­tle “Under Con­struc­tion” signs, and every­thing. But so far, I haven’t had a hit. What can I do to make my site more attractive?

Saman­tha T., Fram­ing­ham

Dear Saman­tha,

There are now almost as many per­son­al home-pages on the World­WideWeb as homes on our streets. It’s unre­al­is­tic to expect a lot of unin­vit­ed vis­i­tors. Be patient, soon­er or lat­er you’ll get a hit from the Jeho­vah Witnesses.

Dear Mr. Computer,

My wife and daugh­ter think I’m crazy because I own four com­put­ers. I’m think­ing about buy­ing a fifth. Am I crazy? Or does­n’t my fam­i­ly under­stand me?

Don­ald D., Chelms­ford

Dear Don­ald,

You may be a tri­fle impetu­ous, but you are not crazy. Clear­ly, you are try­ing to stay at the cut­ting edge of a fast-mov­ing tech­nol­o­gy. A good rule of thumb is this: If your com­put­er is out of the box, it’s already obsolete.

Dear Mr. Computer,

I recent­ly pur­chased some anti-porn soft­ware called Cyber­Mary­Pop­pins to con­trol what my 12-year-old son sees on the net. The trou­ble is, he’s the only one in the fam­i­ly who knows how to install it. Can I trust him to do it properly?

Vivian W., Hing­ham

Dear Vivian,

There is no soft­ware on Earth that can deflect the curios­i­ty of a Net Gen­er­a­tion 12-year-old boy.

Dear Mr. Computer,

We keep hear­ing about how com­put­ers increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, but my employ­ees spend half of their work­ing hours exchang­ing e‑mail with friends. Any suggestions?

Everett K., Malden

Dear Everett,

I can rec­om­mend an e‑mail-con­trol soft­ware pack­age called Cyber­Si­mon­Le­gree. But don’t expect your employ­ees to love you.

Dear Mr. Computer,

My 8‑year-old daugh­ter goes to a pri­vate school that has put a com­put­er on every desk. The school’s cat­a­log promis­es to “make learn­ing fun.” Maybe I’m old fash­ioned, but I always thought learn­ing was sup­posed to be hard work. Am I get­ting my mon­ey’s worth?

Mary Q., West­on

Dear Mary,

Depends on what you want for your daugh­ter. If you want her to become a pro­fi­cient mem­ber of the clickerati, she’s in the right place. On the oth­er hand, if you want a child who will curl up in a cozy chair with a good book, put bow to vio­lin, run bare­foot in a sum­mer mead­ow, and inter­act with oth­er humans in a social­ly artic­u­late way, then you might want to recon­sid­er your choice.

Dear Mr. Computer,

The Inter­net would appear to be the most impor­tant tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion of our cen­tu­ry, pro­vid­ing instant access to a world of infor­ma­tion and speedy per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion across time zones and nation­al bound­aries. Yet I can not find any­one who can tell me who runs it, who owns it, how it’s financed, or how it works. It just seems to be there. Can you answer my questions?

Ralph P., South­bridge

Dear Ralph,

Well, you see…uh…it’s like…uh…that is…uh… Mr. Com­put­er is tired now. Maybe he’ll…an$wer your ques­tion$ later.