Go live: surviving an IT upgrade

Well, enlightened people. Let it be known that I too have joined the digital age.

Having finally realised that the reason my Motorola Brick telephone was strangely quiet because 018 numbers disappeared five years ago, I have now upgraded to the latest in technology.

Hang the expense, I thought, let’s go the full hog. An integrated mobile phone, PDA, GPS, Internet access and my favourite bit — the vibrator. I have a mate with the same system and I’m beginning to think there’s something seriously wrong. He keeps turning the sound down and ringing himself?

Anyway, it is truly a minefield out there for the uninitiated and after collecting two months worth of Harris Technology catalogues from the paper and wondering why setting fire to your DVDs using a burner was anything to boast about, it was time to get help.

Expert advice

Fortunately, we were able to call on the services of ‘Josh’, the IT guru. Josh is also strange and, after meeting him, I decided I shouldn’t ask about his PDA. Let me put it this way, I never heard his phone ring either.

Josh, despite looking like the Wiggles should be his favourite singing group, is 28. Josh, it would appear, is entirely nocturnal and like the Gizmos in the first Gremlins movie apparently hates bright lights. This is patently obvious when you see him because his skin is the colour of Richie Benaud’s jacket.

His mother told me (he still lives at home with his older brother who is 35) that he once saw the sun in 1997. (I joked that it must have been on the way home from the Maternity Hospital — this did not go down well.) This resulted in a freckle near his left eyebrow and if you look carefully, you see a slight stain much like a small coffee mark on the legendary beige jacket. He is considering surgery to remove it.

Josh likes to dress in business clothing, a crisp white shirt, a tie and olive trousers with black shoes and Puma sport socks. Josh is also very skinny, the tie looks more like a bib on Josh and this flies in the face of what I always thought — sedentary people who sit in front of a computer screen get fat. I suggested that he could do with a Byte or two. This also didn’t seem to raise a laugh.

Practice management

Anyway, Josh is good. Very good. At the end of our one hour meeting, he had me convinced that the HAL9000 that you thought had died in 2001: A Space Odyssey had been re-born as Josh. The kid was telling me how, with just a few connecting cables, some new software and ‘clicky here, clicky there’, my entire practice could fit on my new PDA.

Clearly, Josh was getting my practice confused with my bank balance because there was no way that all that information was going to fit on that little thing. When I heard this, a slow, wizened, knowing smile came to my face. Josh asked if I needed to answer my mobile phone.

So we set about installing Windows XP Pro, ActiveSync, Office XP Upgrade, a range of other programs and turned it on, waiting for the big moment.

The big moment became a longish second and the longish second, a substantial minute and then finally the screen came up. I moved the mouse to click my name and the following Thursday, the mouse pointer moved. Clearly, something was not right.

IT meltdown

Hal, sorry Josh, looked perplexed. A pimple appeared. Then his skin colour changed. Now, I know how people who blush hate that fact being drawn to their attention but fear not, Josh turned white.

This seems incredible I know, but suddenly the Benaud jacket became a living Napisan commercial. Whiter than white, we could get rid of the freckle with a dab of liquid paper. Soon after, he turned grey and I began to worry that perhaps Josh’s system was about to crash for the final time.

After a couple of deep breaths, he muttered the words that are sure to send any one who knows anything about computers into knowing nods of agreement and CEOs pouring over the exit clauses of their contracts: “hardware upgrade”.

Clearly, I was a nice guy because over the next few days the guy at the computer shop began to call me by my first name, suggested an invite to their Christmas Party might be forthcoming and knew the numbers of my credit card better than me.

The end result was, I am assured by Josh, that we now have more computing power than was used to send people to the moon. Of course, I can probably achieve the same outcome if I kick Josh hard enough. And interestingly, the cost of sending someone to the moon seems comparable to what I ended up spending. I don’t know who Mr Intel is, but I want to do his financial planning sometime soon.

Go live

Anyway, once again the big moment came. The switch was turned, the moment became a second, the second a minute — you know the drill by now.

Josh went through a mini version of his technicolour routine and then proudly announced that with a few “tweaks” to the system, it would soon be rocketing along. I was tempted to “tweak” him a little and began to look for a weapon when sure enough, the mouse pointer moved.

Dear readers, I’ve left Josh to it for now, he seems to know what he’s doing and by the beginning of December, I should have my e-mails back and in January, I’ll be able to start typing again.

As you read this, I can hear Josh humming away — is that the tune to “big red car”? Maybe I can pay his account with some tickets to see Greg, Murray, Geoff and Anthony live in concert?

Nick Bruining is principal of NC Bruining & Associates and a media commentator.