HI-TECH

Feeling rather pleased with myself as my first words appear on the internet, I shall courageously press on - this time to talk about my struggle with the hi-tech world in which we live.

Being in the fiftysomething age group, my life has been turned upside-down in the last 10/15 years, thanks to the technological advances that seem to appear every day. As a child I used to laugh at my grandmother who, when the 'phone rang, would check her hair in the mirror before replying to the call (maybe she was anticipating the videophone), now I wonder what my children laugh at when they see their Mum struggling with stuff that they consider part of ordinary everyday life.

About eight years ago I bought my first mobile 'phone which was basically a waste of time as we couldn't get a signal where we lived; however time went on and the signal got better - after two years the screen died and as my children used to say I was 'telephoning from my telephone box' I took it back to France Telecom to change it - well, of course the lad who served me also said it should be in a museum, and out I come with a new telephone.

A few years later and a few 'phones later, I now have a mobile that seems to do absolutely everything apart from telephone - I'm not a mobile freak and use it only in desperation, but it would appear that a mobile 'phone that is just a 'phone, is now becoming a thing of the past. I do not want a 'phone that takes photos, films my friends, connects me to my email, wakes me up in the morning, plays music and all the other zillion of things that most of them seem to do. I have a camera, a computer, an alarm clock and a CD player in my home - I don't need to have all this stuff on my mobile, and invariably of an inferior quality. The children zip off SMS faster than I can type (and I use all fingers) - I take five minutes to send an SMS of four words.

We have a flat-screen TV that is 'HD Ready' with its zapper, we have a box for the satellite dish with its zapper, we have a machine to watch DVDs with its zapper - to set up the TV to screen a DVD makes me wish our cinema here was open all the year!

Thus saying, I have totally complicated my life by switching from a PC to Mac five years ago! And just to add to the pain, I have bought the new MacBook Pro for myself for Christmas. Us Mac users are apparently 2% of the computer owners of the world - once bitten, there is no return to Microsoft! But for the silly people in the world such as me who only use a fraction of their computer, these machines are the Rolls Royce of the computer world. The only problem is that many downloads aren't Mac friendly which means that one is left puzzling for a goodly number of hours and often giving up in sheer desperation - thus saying I probably have more understanding on how my Mac works than my children, who just press buttons with alacrity and lose patience immediately the computer doesn't work as they want. (I had to change from Safari to Firefox to set up this blog, for example...!).

I have never played a game on the Playstation, or the PSP, and can hardly see the iShuffle, let alone press the button to play music.

But a big thanks to my children who make me keep up with the latest developments even though at times I do ask them to set up the TV so I can watch a DVD!