Personal Computing

Long ago I worked for a Bellevue, Washington company called Automix Keyboards, as Publications Supervisor. I wrote technical manuals and supervised three or four others who did the same. I thought I had my future wired. Then, just a week after buying a used pickup truck through the company-affiliated credit union, about 30 percent of the company was laid off (a prelude to the company going under). I got my two weeks termination pay, minus what I owed for the truck. The check was for $26.00.

When I told my wife, she said, "There's only one thing you can do with $26. Let's go out to dinner." The unflappable Janet Kay. At dinner we planned my new career; freelance technical writing. Janet Kay got a secretarial job, and I started working the phones. Somehow it all worked out, and within a year I was making more than she was. Thank God for that, for secretaries don't earn all that much.

So what does this have to do with computers? Plenty. I needed an edge. All freelancers had typewriters. I needed something better than that. I needed -- drum roll, please -- a word processor. But personal computers hadn't been invented yet. So I bought a used Itel word processor. This was an IBM Selectric typewriter with a paper tape reader on one side and a paper tape perforator on the other. As you typed the perforator punched tape. To edit, you ran the tape through the reader with the perforator duplicating it. When you came to the part you wanted to edit, you stopped the reader and typed in the new stuff. Then you ran the reader without the perforator until you came to the end of the stuff you wanted to delete. Then you turned the perforator on again. It was high tech for 1975, and it gave me an edge in production.

Then in 1977 I came across the Radio Shack TRS-80 (aptly nicknamed the "Trash-80"). This was intriguing, but it was so slow! And the Chicklet keyboard was practically useless for typing. I passed, but kept looking. Soon I found the Apple II, 10 times the quality of the Trash-80, for just a little more money. There was no word processing software for it, but I knew that would come. So I bought it.

I bought a 19" black and white TV to use as a monitor. Floppy disks were not yet available; you loaded programs and saved data with a tape recorder. There was no lower-case capability on the video, but letters typed as capital letters were underlined, and caps/lower case came out right on the printer. It was a 4k machine, which I soon upgraded to 16k. That's 16 kilobytes, not megabytes, not gigabytes. About the same time, floppy disk drives (the 5-1/4" versions) came on the market, and I soon bought two -- one for the software and one for data.

Shortly thereafter, along came a word processor -- Word Weaver, a really fine program written in Basic by Bob Huelsdonk, a Boeing engineer. I don't remember how much I paid for the program, but it wasn't much. I was so impressed with this program that I purchased a Diablo, about 50 pounds of daisy-wheel printer. Configured the way I had it, it cost about $4,000. It paid for itself in three months in increased production and increased sales. I was the only freelancer in town using his own personal computer for tech writing. Therefore, I was a computer whiz, and just the one to hire for writing manuals on high-tech products. The picture shows my office about that time.

Soon in my spare time I was writing articles for Kilobaud Micro-Computing and other hobby computing magazines. The first one paid only $15, but soon I was getting $350-$400 per article, and magazines were coming to me -- a real plus for the ego as well as the pocketbook.

Then I wrote a book -- Apple II Basic -- for Tab Books, 1982. Most first books lose money, I'm told, and often the author must return a portion of his advance. This book (through no fault of my own) did very well, and earned me more than $5,000. Although the reviews were good, I suspect the real reason it did well was the fact that this was new and wildly popular technology, and people were starved for information.

The book used a program I wrote, "Client File/Billing" to show how various features of that programming language can be used. I learned Basic by writing the program and the book, and I sweated blood over it.

Tab later marketed the program, but it did not do all that well. Even so, it brought in lunch money for a while.

And then I wrote another -- The Osborne Primer -- again for Tab. I submitted that manuscript the same day Osborne went bankrupt, and Tab gave it back. They told me it wasn't my fault they couldn't use it, so they let me keep the $500 advance. Again, Janet Kay to the rescue. "Look," she said, "There are thousands of Osborne owners out there who are now orphans. They need that book. Publish it yourself." So I did. I had a thousand printed of my Diablo-created manuscript. My wife, daughter and I spent a few days collating and binding it, and I advertised it on The Source, a primitive version of America Online. The advertising was free, and I sold 998 of them at $12 each plus $2 postage and handling. I kept the last two copies for my own files.

As before, I thought I had things wired. The best laid plans, etc.

Then Apple came out with the Macintosh, and a little later Microsoft introduced Windows. Dos was dead, and the graphical user interface (GUI) was so far over my head that I had nothing to write about. Back to tech manuals. But it was fun while it lasted!

So now I'm pretty much like most computer users. It's a great tool, but that's all it is. I know more about it than most casual users, but not much more.

Somewhere along the line I bought a Macintosh, and spent $5,800 on an Apple LaserWriter. Like the Apple II, it paid for itself in just a few months, for now I could print camera-ready manuals, eliminating the need for professional typesetters to make my manuals ready for printing.

When industry went to PCs I had to go along, to keep my files compatible with my customers' equipment. But I think we'd all be better off if the Mac had come out on top.

So what do I use now? A PC with Windows 2000, God only knows how many Gigabytes of memory, a 3-1/2" floppy disk drive, a read/write CD ROM and a DVD player, a 21-inch flat-screen pivotable color monitor and a color ink-jet printer/scanner/copier/fax machine, with broad-band access to the internet -- and all of it together cost less than my first Apple II. Well, almost. The monitor was not cheap. But they will be, and maybe they are, by now.