RATS!

I’m caling for a new consumer advocacy group: Rapidly Advancing Technology Sucks! – or RATS!

Approaching a new century and a new millennium, I decided in 1998 to buy my first computer, determined I would not let new technology pass me by!

For six months, I didn’t have a printer, which is like using a typewriter without paper. (Remember typewriters?) Then, for Christmas, my niece gave me a Hewlitt-Packard printer plus a scanner, and I was in business!

Having dodged the Y2K bullet, I marked the special year by publishing a monthly family newsletter throughout 2000. I was learning how expensive anything to do with computers can be.

To save my newsletter pages - large files with graphics and photos - off I went to Office Depot and laid down $170 for an Iomega Zip Drive and storage disks.

All went well until 2001, when a local repairman was holding my computer hostage, prompting my son to send a new Dell for my birthday. I shipped my first computer off to my best friend’s husband, who just wanted a computer “to play with.”

The new computer’s one parallel port meant swapping out the Zip Drive, which I used every day to store files, and the scanner – no easy matter getting to the back of the tower.

In December 2006, after a crash, I got a third computer, only to find out new computers no longer come with parallel ports. (Nor do they come with floppy disk drives, unless you pay extra.)

There go the Zip Drive and the scanner. Thank heavens, my printer was convertible from parallel to USB, but it wouldn’t operate without an “outside power source” - the purchase of a USB hub. Are you following me?

I can either throw the Zip Drive and the HP scanner in the dumpster or decoupage them in some Christo-inspired decorating fit!

Remember those newsletter pages and years of accumulated saved files? All irretrievable on the Zip Disks!

My friend Charlie’s son-in-law volunteered to install the Zip Drive on his computer, which still has a parallel port, and transfer all my filss to CDs.

How wonderful to have my files back!

Everything was fine untll I tried to open a newsletter page and got a message that I would have to install components of Microsoft Word 2002 to read the file. OK, I have Word 2000 and Word 2006. Damn!

The reason I bought the Zip Drive in the first place, I yelled out loud, was to save the family newsletter!

I’m not even going into my home video collection. I read once in Entertainment Weekly there will be whole cities in Arizona built from VHS cassettes. Now, there are DVDs, and my friend Shari mentioned some new “Blu-ray” technology!

And, by the way, are you ready for the transition from analog to digital TV broadcasts?

ENOUGH!

This is a conspiracy to get your money!

RATS!

Postscript:

Anyone with a Microsoft Word 2002 CD, snail mail it - remember snail mail? - and I’ll return it ASAP.