Overall, it was a very unhappy time. I wasn't very good at even these very basic tasks - after all they weren't very uplifting or motivating, and most of my days were spent getting bossed around by people on a major power trip. No, it wasn't the Partners, it was the Legal Secretaries and Articled Clerks! Some of the grief I got caused much cursing, eye rolling, and sighing at the time, but to be fair in those days I had a large sense of misplaced entitlement mixed with an overall lazy and uncooperative streak (haven't changed much have I)! So I probably deserved it I guess.
Anyhow, it was around this time that I got my very first Home PC. I had never had a computer of any sort before so I wouldn't have even known how to switch one on. A friend of my Dads was quite computer literate and helped us get started. He recommended a good place to buy a PC and we took his advice. Shortly afterwards a shiny new IBM Compatible 486 DX/66 was connected up in my bedroom at my parents house on my similarly new computer desk. Being 1993, this thing was big and white! It had 4mb of memory, and a 130mb hard disk. Not only did it have a 3.5 inch floppy drive, it also had a 5.25 inch one as well! Although I don't have a picture of it, it looked very much like this one;
The pre-installed Operating System was MS-DOS 6.22 with Windows 3.1. When you powered on the machine, this is what you saw;
From the DOS prompt, you had to change to the Windows directory by typing cd windows. Then, you typed win to start up Windows 3.1. Here's what it looked like;
To those of you who were born in the 90s (and now bizarrely are grown ups), yes folks - this is what Windows used to look like. And it was absolutely great. To quote Kid Rock, "We didn't have no internet", but it didn't matter. We knew no different. We could play Solitaire or Minesweeper;
So it's fair to say that I took to Computer Technology pretty quickly. At the same time, PC's were starting to emerge in businesses and this worked out really well for me as finally there was something at work that interested me. Our newly appointed I.T. Manager obviously picked up on my enthusiasm for the subject. The I.T. Infrastructure developed so rapidly that it was soon too much for one person to manage, so she asked if I wanted to join the I.T. Department. Well, I was never going to say no was I. After what seemed like 100 years, I was no longer an Office Junior, and a proper career path began (although the Legal Secretaries still bossed me around)!
To this day though, I remain grateful for the opportunity, and the fact that I was in the right place at the right time. I've seen a lot of unbelievable changes in Technology in the years that followed. Windows has changed many times. 3.1 was replaced by the very good Windows 95. The average 98 and ME versions briefly followed.
Windows 2000 and Windows XP became Microsofts Work horses for many years. XP is arguably their biggest success as people still want to use it right now.
Vista was a low point, but Windows 7 put things back on track.
and now we have Windows 8 on the horizon.
When all's said and done though, no matter how exciting or amazing all the new technologies are becoming, I still feel nostalgic for that very first PC (even though the motherboard had to be replaced on it after about a week). Windows 3.1 was truly amazing at the time - it made the impossible possible, and the Tech world has really never looked back since. I wonder where we'll be in another 20 or so years. I can't wait to find out!
Peter
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