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Opinion
Strained Relations: Reconciling Software Incompatibilities
9/27/2007
Strained Relations
Firefox (my Web browser) is kind of like a lover. She's always there for me, rarely talks back, and waits on me hand and foot. She's also a very intelligent lover, who brings me useful and interesting things to read, look at, and think about. And she stokes my ego by finding for me the places I get recognition on the Internet.
AIM (instant messenger) is like a pushy, blowhard second cousin who provides some kind of useful service for me, but is always getting in my face wanting more recognition for it and always trying to find some way to get paid for how he helps me out. I need what he does, but he's obnoxious.
Thunderbird (e-mail client) is like a male secretary who is, on the face of it, a tough, strong guy, with bulging muscles, and he really knows how to collect the mail for me and sort it out. But he has a low tolerance for stress. Load up that in box with more than 10,000 messages, and he falls apart, gets sick, and takes up a day or two, and I end up losing stuff. (Happened today, actually)
Excel is like a work colleague whose perspective on the things we have to do together is so different from mine that I actually avoid working with him if at all possible. I know he can do great stuff, but I simply don't know what I have to do in order to get it out of him.
For years I have felt like I am unhappily married to Word. I simply have to live with Word, even though she seems to not care very much about me. We are a couple, socially, to so many people, that I can't live without her--even though I think from time to time about getting a divorce. Sometimes I think fondly about my first two wives, Dedicated Word Processor and WordStar.
I really got worried recently, when Word went out and had some plastic surgery and got a personal trainer. It was getting pretty difficult to interact with her because she was talking to another man at the same time, and seemed to only want to communicate in ".docx"--which I can't even begin to understand.
Then I discovered that, by receiving a little counseling from Microsoft, she could learn how to shape her communications with me to be more easily understood--turn on compatibility mode--and I could rework the way I receive her communications so that they made more sense to me--compatibility pack.
My laptop is like a personal servant. Wherever I go, he goes, and he carries around everything digital I need to use my IT functionalities. He is ego-free and totally dedicated to whatever I want done. Unfortunately, he's moving on to someone else, and my new manservant, OS X, is from the Apple clan. He comes highly recommended, but we don't even speak the same language!
I sure hope we get along.
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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