It was a memorable day. Everyone was there. From the neighborhood grocer to the pesky aunty who lived across. It was the apple of everyone’s eyes. No one could take their eyes off it as it glided through the maze of windows. Singing songs along the way as it went past the windows. Then in one shot everything stopped. The show was over. My brother had shutdown the computer.

It was a workhorse of a machine. Imagine this, Intel 486 with 66Mhz of processing speed, 4 MB RAM, 350 MB of HDD and the latest Windows 3.1. The year 1992. It was a wonderful innovation. Believe me in those days India had to still graduate from the XT machines. We had a machine that was at least 20 times faster with imagine this: a 14 inch color screen and a CDROM drive at 4x Speed.

I loved my computer. I spent ages in front of the machine late into the nights. My mom considered me a low maintenance kid then. I would be happy with the 3 meals in the day and be buried in the computer after that. Well I used to take baths in between. I was amazed how a contraption like that could do things so fast and still look beautiful. I had fallen in love.

I remember the first program I ever typed in it. It was in QBASIC. All it did was print “Hello! How are you?” infinite number of times. My dad thought I was the next Bill Gates. We soon got a TV tuner card, and our Back and white 12 inch TV was obsolete. I was amazed with what all it could do.

The whole contraption had cost us more than 75 Grand. In those days it was the machine one would not even dream of!

I don’t think many would be aware how the windows 3.1 was. I was fortunate enough to have used it. It made life so simple. It was a world apart. It had what we called a cascaded window system. I miss that. Everything you ever wanted was in front of you all the time. You could access with a double-click. It also let me multi-task. I remember DOS on my Mamaji’s old XT. I could not even see colour.

My next computer was even better, Pentium II at 266 MHz. It had 8GB of HDD, 32 MB RAM and a 24X CDROM Drive. It ran windows 98. That was the time I discovered the infamous Internet Explorer soon to realize it was nowhere near to Netscape Communicator. I made my own we

b page. I was about 11 then. My dad by now started hoping that I would use the computer to become something more than a demigod. I don’t blame him. The only thing he thought a computer could be used for was perhaps playing solitaire.

The new machine lasted for more than 6 years. I was a power user of sorts and I ensured that I ran well above expected limits. I had managed to over clock the processor to 350 MHz by then.

The year 2002, when I came to

college. I managed to last without a computer. In the year 2003 I bought a PC and it still gives me wonderful service. I am using it to type this very piece. It came with 2.4 GHz Pentium IV processor with 512 MB RAM and 40GB HDD. I have upgraded it since then. I now have 160 GB HDD among other enhancements. After changing so many computers, the thirst still remains. Like the human mind, enough is never a frontier.

My teenage years were not marked by sweethearts soon to be forgotten. My yesteryears were marked with computers. Each one taught me so many new things. They are wonderful little machines that sit quietly on your desktop and crank up when you power them up. My love affair with computers would never end, not anytime in the future. Never. It has become too much a part of me to be let alone somewhere.

Back then, we could imagine

a life without a computer. But not now. I eternally thank my parents everyday for getting me the 486. It put me in the super league. I had the world on my finger tips. It’s very important to have a computer in one’s life.

It taught me great many things. Computers cross all boundaries and they let you do anything you wish to imagine. It’s also very important to know your machine. It’s more like your girlfriend. You make an effort to know it well; it will do great many things for you that are more satisfying. Like I make it a point to set the page file of my operating system (Linux or Windows) to an optimum level depending on the RAM. It greatly improves my system performance.

There is more to a computer than just IE and PPTs. I suggest one should take that step to explore the PC. It could start with a simple check of the PC. Do I have Service packs installed? Are my antivirus definitions up to date? Does my BIOS need an update? Would defragging the registry help? Or for than matter, where are what is the registry?

I am not saying that it can be done all in one go. You wouldn’t, nor would I. But these are things if one knows it greatly helps in keeping the PC/Laptop running fine. How many of us even bother to close all the applications sitting in the system tray? They not only eat up system resources they actually make you go and buy new RAM chips. Why?

For the kind of work that we do, do we really need such powerful machines? The answer is NO. It’s all about intelligent computing. If you are a little intelligent in your approach, the computer would do a great many things for you. If all goes well, you would even end up naming your computer!

Anyway, I got to be going now. Need to give some rest to my ‘Black Beauty’. Ciao and keep computing.

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