I have a Web site client who needed some computer work. She has a small business selling sage and herbal products, and she just got a new MacBook. Oh boy!
Setting up her email and giving her a short tutorial was easy and fun. Then came the horrible part. I learned that she’s been making all her labels in Clarisworks on an old Performa 6400, I kid you not. The machine has been upgraded over the years, maxed out as it were, with a big 80 MB of RAM and a 1.5 GB IDE hard drive and a USB card. We’re talking OS 9.1 as well. The problem was that the new HP printer she had hooked up to it was giving her lots of error messages about insufficient memory whenever she tried to print, so I took a deep breath and dove back into OS 9 arcana. Holy freaking extensions, Batman!
Now, this is a long story, but you’re only going to get a teaser today.
Hoo boy.
To continue for a while, the first thing I did was start up the Performa, so I could see what was what. I swear it took more than five minutes to boot, and then the desktop was frozen. (Or was it? For God’s sake, what was the Launcher doing there? I never used the Launcher when I had an old Mac.) After a while, I was able to move a few windows around after all. What the hey??? My God. I’d forgotten that you can’t do two things at once on the old machines, and I’d been clicking all over the place, while the poor widdle Performa tried gamely to catch up.
“Do you think I can print soon?” asked my client’s assistant.
“Um… well, I’m still trying to get into the Extensions Manager so I can turn off a few things, but right now I can’t even do that,” I replied. She gave me a blank, uncomprehending stare. “Are you a Mac person?” I asked, knowing already that not only was the answer no, but she also knew next to nothing about the Windows PC on the other side of the room.
“No. And that machine is giving me a real pain,” she said.
Hah, I’ll bet, I thought, but I wasn’t much better off myself. In fact, I had to leave after an hour and a half, having accomplished absolutely nothing except to render the Performa completely inoperable. I promised to return the next day with a dusty CD of Norton Utilities, a bag full of Zip drives and CD burners, plus a temporary replacement computer, assuming I could find one.
There was one, of course, buried in the back corner of our storage unit. And here’s where things get interesting…
[Stay tuned for Part II. In the meantime, go visit my newly repurposed FarrFeed blog and read about the man who looked at his own skull! — JHF]
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