As a member of the “boomer” or (pre-boomer) generation, I have never considered myself a a tech person.  Technologically challenged, is how I describe myself.  In my world, there are basically 3 types of computer people: Those under 30, who know all about computers and iphones and imacs and all that; those who maybe know how to turn on a PC and send email, but maybe don’t want to; and everyone in between, which includes me.  I was required to learn the pc in my last job, and with much help from my (under-30) daughter, I have learned how to email, internet, ebay, develop photos, create websites, work with tax software, and other good stuff.  Sometimes I just wing it.

As always happens, my ol’ Dell desktop just became obsolete after 5 or 6 years.  Memory lapses, freezeups, the dread blue screen showed up almost every day.  (I love it when you get a pop-up like: “Your hard drive is about to be erased!” and your only option is a little box that says “ok”.)  Anyway, my daughter advised me to move up to Apple, but I am a senior on a limited budget and the Mac costs about 3 times the price of a Dell, plus I reasoned that buying a Apple would mean replacing all my windows programs like quickbooks and photoshop and Dreamweaver that are not compatible.  Little did I know!  Introducing Vista!

So I tuned in to the Dell website.  Dell has more deals that the local used car dealer-you just have to pick one and go.  But there oughta be a law: nobody mentions that if you order a shiny new desktop with Windows Vista, most of your programs over a year old will NOT be compatible!  Quickbooks?  Forget it.  Photoshop?  No way.  Earthlink’s email program?  Not for a few years.  Would Apple have been any worse?  I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was able to update my old MS Office software, and it works better that ever. Saved a couple hundred bucks there.  I am still running into bugs with Vista-popups with “runtime error”, IDE driver problems, and other mysteries.  Had to dispose of some favorite software that would not even load.  Had to replace some others-much as I would have done with a new Apple.  Live and learn.  And I have yet to find anything new and improved with Vista-maybe if I were a “Gamer”?

So my advice to you all is to put off replacing your pc for a couple of years until all these software writers catch up with windows, or, as with Dell, there is an option to order your new computer with the old XP operating system, I think at an added cost.  Not sure that this is progress.  Be warned: It is costly, and very frustrating, to be on the cutting edge of technology!