My experiments with a computer

"Well begun is half done!!!” A good beginning . . . that’s what I have been trying to get for the past 30 minutes. I have some ideas, but I am failing to phrase it. I want you to know that I had ‘Information Technology’ as a subject from my 5th grade onwards and that was when I first saw a computer.

A ‘black & white TV’ which displayed letters instead of movies (this later turned out to be a monochrome monitor). This was my first impression of a computer. The computer worked if we typed some small words which my teacher called commands.

I was in my seventh grade when I owned a computer. I expected the same interface in my new computer too. But to my astonishment my monitor showed a color screen and WOW! It worked with simple mouse clicks than complex commands (not that I knew complex ones at that time – ‘dir’ & ‘copy con’ were more than enough for a boy of 11).

Unsolved problems really bothered me at that time. After a lot of research (which included only asking my vendor), I found out that for a computer to work, it needed something called an Operating System. I was glad when I learned that my computer was more advanced than the ones used at my school & it used Windows 98. my school computers worked on MSDOS. Now I knew why there was a change.

I quickly adapted myself to the then cool environment of windows 98. I had strong suspicion that my computer could play movies. Where ever computers were mentioned, they were connected to multimedia, and I knew, multimedia included movies. I learned that it could play movies, but only those that came in video CDs which were hard to get. You may wonder if I am out of my mind to say something like that. True, I can’t walk straight in my room because I happen to stumble upon CDs, but that was a time when video cassettes were more popular.

I went out rented a Tamil film, not because I liked it, but because I wanted to test the experience. I inserted the CD in the drive. It took me 45 minutes…not to play it, but to realize that I needed external help. Well, help came immediately as one of my neighbours worked in a software firm.

Games interested me as it would do to any child. Coming to think of it, ‘dave’ was my favorite. We were allowed to play games once in a while in our school computer lab, and dave was the only one us students managed to start when the teacher was looking the other way. I never got past the third level from my lab mainly because the teacher came our way whenever my dave was leaping towards the door using his ‘jet pack’. I remember leaping with joy when I completed all ten levels of the game. But that was before I came to know about 3D games. But my interest in games quickly subsided due to some reason. Still I spent hours in front of it. If you ask me what I did all that time, I would be at a loss of words.

If I could talk to the one who said ‘Experience is the best teacher’, I would tell him he quoted something that would be tested true by every living being on earth. I learned more by playing with my computer than I learned from my books.

I upgraded my machine 3 years later when I found that it failed to satisfy my needs with its 4GB hard drive. I upgraded that 3 years later when it too failed to satisfy me with its 40 GB hard drive.

I confess, all these years I used windows, different versions of it – 98,Me, XP…..hmmmmmm… I was a true Microsoft fan. But all that change when I entered the free world. The world of open source. I use ubuntu now. That’s a long story . . .

About me

me = Aswin

im a student of Govt. Engg. College Thrissur, doing my second year in B.Tech CSE.
an ex-student of Silver Hills Hr. Sec. School, Calicut.

im a 'die hard' Harry Potter fan. and that doesnt mean i have watched 'die hard' umpteen times.
yup!! u shud hav guessed by now, i have a habit of making really terrible jokes.