As part of this Thanksgiving Day, I’ve been in an ongoing discussion with my sister-in-law and her friend about purchasing a computer. They spent about an hour flipping through today’s paper looking for an affordable computer for around $500—with a screen!
They looked at the Dells, the HPs, and the Compaqs—anything that seemed cheap. Like me, a little over five years ago, they don’t know anything about hard drives, RAM, or the purpose of an OS system. “I just want something that will get me on the internet. What computers will do that?” my sister-in-law asks. Mind you, she’s the same 42 year-old whom my daughter showed how how to drag a photo off a website and onto the desktop.
My sister-in-law now uses my computer. She has her Hotmail account and has done some word processing documents for her tech school assignments. But her use of computers has been minimal. She hasn’t discovered what can be done with one. She doesn’t understand why I get excited when Apple updates OS X or when I tell her iTunes 6 now comes the ability to download movies. Like my other family members, she sits back and enjoys the iMovie family movies I’ve produced over the years. (Really basic stuff.) She’s amazed at the iPhoto books I’ve produced, and she even emails her cousin when I post new photos to my family .mac account. But she’s not impressed enough to do these types of basic multimedia projects herself.
She was flat out not interested in the MacMini. “It’s too expensive. …I’ll have to buy a screen too!” she complained.
“But there’s so much more you can do with a computer besides going on the internet,” I tried to convince her and her friend. She should want to discover the joys of digital photography, digital music, and desktop publishing. She should want to develop her own website one day. She should want a computer and an OS system that is almost free of viruses. She should want one that has intuitive and integrated software programs. She should want a computer that looks, well, like more than a computer. Like a piece elegant furniture that you would be proud to display in your office or den, and not in the corner of your bedroom or in the closet. One that makes a statement about who you are.
“Bakari, I could care less about all that. I can come to you for all that stuff,” she said. I just need something affordable.
So after explaining to her what a hard drive and OS system is (she saw one ad for a $400 computer that didn’t come with one), I finally realized the difference in people who effectively use computers and those who don’t.
She doesn’t want a Mac because she simply can’t appreciate, yet, what a computer designed for creative pursuits can do. She has yet to understand the power of the digital revolution and how you can use it as a powerful form of self-expression and communication.
So even after I told her about how Microsoft is more acceptable to viruses, she turned to yet another ad and asked me about the HP Pavilion Desktop PC that comes with a rebate. “Do those rebates actually work?” I sighed and commenced to plugging up my iPod to my television for a family slide show presentation.
She just doesn’t get it.
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