a few months ago Eric’s mother had given me the impression that she
wouldn’t use the computer for a long time if at all. But now Gene had
nearly finished his Maryland book—freeing up the Kaypro for her to
practice on. “I use it for personal correspondence and for the fliers
for the weaving classes I teach—anything that requires good, clean
copy,” she said. The Meyers, in fact, didn’t even have a working
typewriter in the house. Well, I thought, so much for all my blather
about mandolin players and electric guitars.
To be sure, computerization would rarely be as worry-free and blissful
as the advertisements depicted it. There would be computer crime, disk
crashes, all the other high-tech woes. Few people would take to
computers as naturally as had Charlie Bowie, with his playful,
Hawkeye-Pierce attitude toward his little Zenith.
And how many could save their companies $200,000 a year like Alan
Scharf? Or experience the exhilaration of Peter Hyams when Arthur
Clarke’s letters flashed across his green screen? Or the satisfaction
that Rob Barnaby received by writing a software classic like WordStar?
But if computer users not only chose their machines and software well
but _used_ them well, if they formed users groups rather than trust
peripatetic sales reps, if they avoided technobullies and hired
consultants carefully, if they trained employees in a nonintimidating
way, if they computerized humanely as well as efficiently, if they
safeguarded their data security, if they prepared for the future through
telecommuting when appropriate, if they showed persistence and sense,
enough rewards were there, and they’d find the Silicon Jungle to be not
only survivable but friendly.
❑ Afterword
It’s November 1984 now, and I’ve sold my Kaypro.
Business computers are production tools, not family heirlooms; when I
found that the Kaypro’s screen and storage capacity were becoming
inadequate for my needs, I unsentimentally ran want ads. The new owner—a
church magazine using the Kaypro for lighter-duty work such as letter
writing—couldn’t be happier.
The Kaypro’s replacement was a sleek Victor 9000. I was growing
accustomed to it when a writer friend, Stephen Banker, called with news
of an auction at a shut-down computer store a few miles from my
apartment. A year and one-half ago the store’s managers and I had argued
about the Kaypro’s merits versus the Osborne’s. They’d gambled on the
wrong machine, the Osborne. Micro sales in general were growing, but
this business had perished in the Silicon Jungle.
Now I returned to the store and saw the debris of the micro revolution.
Spread out haphazardly on long tables, treated like dead fish, were the
computers that I’d seen glamorized on the covers of the micro magazines
just months before.
The auction had begun on a Thursday and would last over the Labor Day
weekend through Monday. The first day the prices were reduced 30
percent, and they would keep declining, until on Monday you could buy
most of the machines for 80 percent off. It was now Friday.
The machine I wanted, a hard-disk version of my Victor 9000, would be
$2,400 Sunday—40 percent of the original list price of $6,000.
“Don’t buy it Sunday,” said Steve. “If God intends you to have a hard
disk, He’ll let you get it for $1,200 Monday.”
There were two hard-disk Victors, one new, one used, both selling for
the same. So far only one other person seemed to be showing the amount
of interest that I did, a husky, gray-haired man in a T-shirt. He was
trying the used machine. I wondered if he’d seen the new one and was
trying to distract me from it. This could be the stuff of nightmares:
_A whistle blows that Monday. T-shirt pushes a frail young auction
staffer aside and races toward the new Victor. I overtake him,
however. Just as I’m about to lay hands on the machine, T-shirt throws
a punch toward me. I duck. T-shirt grabs the Victor monitor._
_“Listen,” I say, “that computer isn’t yours unless you get the main
part. The monitor won’t do.”_
_An auction staffer nods._
_I unplug the main machine from an AC extension cord. T-shirt,
however, sets the monitor down and moves closer, as if to grab the
part with the disk drives and the central processing unit._
_“Look,” I tell the auction staffer, “it’s my machine.”_
_“First come, first serve,” he says. “First to the counter gets the
computer.”_
_T-shirt flexes his biceps. “You and me got some fighting to do.”_
_“Hell, no,” I say. “I already have my computer.”_
“My _computer,” T-shirt growls. I hug the Victor more tightly. My back
is aching. T-shirt laughs at my discomfort._ “My _computer,” he
repeats. “Gimme!” The auction staffer watches calmly. I don’t. That’s
$6,000 worth of machinery we’re fighting over. Suppose I drop—_
_T-shirt rushes in. The computer’s plastic case smacks against the
floor and shatters. Simultaneously, one of us brushes against the
monitor. It, too, falls; and the CRT makes a horrible sound as the air
rushes into the vacuum. The Victor, however well built, isn’t a
machine to be fought over, barroom-brawl fashion. On the floor I see
tiny computer chips and spaghettilike clumps of wire. God knows how,
but the hard disk has spilled out of the Victor and is rolling down
the aisle of the store._
_The auction staffer makes clucking noises. I glare at T-shirt. “You
saw it all,” I tell the staffer. “He’s the one who’s going to have to
make good.”_
_“Hey, boss,” the staffer yells toward the counter, “we got ourselves
a little accident here.”_
_The chief auctioneer rushes over and looks over the Victor’s
remains._
_“He smashed it,” I say, frowning again at T-shirt._
_“But you let it drop,” T-shirt snaps._
_“The price was only $1,200 on the last day,” I remind everyone. A
lump is forming in my throat. Inflation notwithstanding, I’ll never
feel right putting “only” in front of “$1,200.”_
_“Well, it was still worth six thou,” says the head auctioneer. “See
you both in court.”_
_“Both?” T-shirt and I ask at the same time._
_“Both,” says the auctioneer, “unless you want to pay now. That’ll be
$3,000 each. Cash or certified check?”_
Hoping that T-shirt wouldn’t notice me, I put the new Victor through its
paces as much as I could. It wasn’t set up to run WordStar, the program
I wanted to test it with. I’d be taking a chance. Still, if I bought the
Victor for $1,200, I’d have enough money left over for even massive
repairs—assuming someone didn’t beat me to the machine.
“Maybe I’ll buy it myself,” said a sales rep, out of either cruelty or a
desire to increase my interest still more, assuming that was possible.
“Maybe I’ll sell it for scrap.”
He himself was a good six foot four inches, perhaps three hundred
pounds, but some Victor enthusiasts might have thrown a few punches,
anyway, at the source of such sacrilege.
The Victor, unlike most of the other micros there, wasn’t the computer
equivalent of a dead fish.
With the built-in hard disk I could keep every syllable of _The Silicon
Jungle_ ready for editing without jockeying around the floppies. I
silently thanked “Big Blue” IBM for the bargain that might await me.
Through its normal marketing muscle, including a massive ad campaign
featuring a Charlie Chaplin look-alike, IBM had overwhelmed the
competition. People shunned “obscure” brands, especially if they
couldn’t use IBM PC-DOS IBM software. The Victor didn’t have Charlie on
its side. Some bozos at the company even _charged_ dealers for
promotional literature.[97] But what a micro! The Victor was a 16-bit,
MS-DOS machine and ran WordStar 3.3 and the CrossTalk communications
program, the software I used in my work. The screen was noticeably
sharper than the IBM’s; the keyboard was closer to a Selectric’s; the
light brown plastic cabinet was sleeker, and it didn’t take up as much
desk space as an IBM PC would. And the floppies could store an amazing
1.2 megabytes of information or three times as much space as the usual
IBM disk. How lamentable that IBM rather than Victor had set the
standard for the personal computer industry. Victor had gone into
chapter 11, but subject to court approval, would be bought by a Swedish
company—and even if the sale doesn’t go through, there would be 100,000
Victor owners, enough to guarantee a market for replacement-part
manufacturers. IBM might have the brand name. But the Victor right now
was best for _my_ needs.
Footnote 97:
A former Victor employee tells me that charging dealers for
promotional material isn’t that uncommon a practice. I realize that
some dealers may waste literature, but I still think the practice is
dumb.
“When’s a safe time to get here before anyone else gets the Victor?” I
asked the sales rep.
“We open at nine o’clock,” he said.
“Won’t do me any good to come several hours earlier?” I asked out of
curiosity—I’d show up regardless of the answer.
He shook his head.
That night I called Steve, just to overcome last-minute doubts. The
better the bargain, the more suspicious I should be. “You think I should
go ahead?”
“Why not? The biggest problem you’ll have is selling your present
Victor.”
I’d paid $1,750 for it new, through the mail. It, too, had been a risk.
I’d taken out a maintenance agreement with a local company in case the
new arrival turned out to be a lemon. It hadn’t been. But could I
recover the money selling a supposedly “has-been” machine?
Monday, I arose at five in the morning. If the Victor was still there
and if I got to it before anyone else did, I’d save more than $4,000 off
the normal price. For four hours of waiting? I’d have to be a regular on
all the best-seller lists for my time to be worth $1,000 an hour.
When I pulled into the shopping center, I saw no one else there except
for a police car passing through. An old van wheezed into the parking
lot a few minutes later. A bearded man and a boy of perhaps ten got out
and set up a canvas chair; veteran auction goers? They’d have advice on
the best way to fight the crowd and claim my prize.
The man, however, just gestured and grunted. The boy couldn’t speak,
either. They were apparently deaf mutes. I pulled out pen and paper and
learned they were after Atari-games software.
Maybe an hour later a few others straggled in, one of them a
psychologist, with whom I began discussing the great issues of the day.
“You’re not interested in the Victor, are you?” I asked.
“I’m looking for Osborne software,” said the psychologist.
“What about detachable keyboards and monitors?” I asked, remembering my
nightmare over the criteria for laying claim to a machine.
We decided that proper auction etiquette required you to defer to the
person who carried away the main part of the computer to the counter; an
auctioneer later agreed.
Miraculously, a small, orderly line was forming even now, with fifty
people in front of the store by eight. Over the next hour a mob came,
some in old jalopies like the van, others in Cadillacs and BMWs. There
was both excitement and desperation. Many people, like me, simply would
forego buying a new computer if someone else beat them to a suitably
priced machine. Should I lose out on the Victor, I’d just spend another
year or so juggling floppy disks around. Others, however, might have
been hoping to be able to afford a serious business computer, period.
No, it wasn’t like the Depression, but I couldn’t help thinking of the
dance marathons of the 1930s where the hardiest carried off the prizes.
I was the first in line—of all the hundreds of people—but I certainly
didn’t boast the strongest back. Just a few feet down the line I saw ...
T-shirt.
An auction staffer picked up a bullhorn. He said only fifty people could
come into the store at once. I heard sighs. Relatively few people,
however, left that line. Maybe, just maybe, the others wouldn’t
appreciate the merits of the bargain machines that they themselves
wanted. I hoped that to most in the crowd the new Victor would be just
another dead fish of a micro.
Finally, it was nine. The salespeople—as if at a fire—urged the crowd to
stay calm. If the mob lost discipline, the other early comers and I
might be crushed against the glass.
As the doors opened, I glanced back at T-shirt. If he was worried about
me, he wasn’t letting on. At a pace between a jog and a sprint I entered
the store; I tried momentarily to excise the image of T-shirt from my
mind.
Oh, look! A friendly sales assistant. I’d offered him advice on
electronic mail and—
“Do you think you could help me with the Victor?” I asked.
Suppose he couldn’t. His job might be at stake if he did even a small
favor in this every-man-for-himself struggle.
“Sure,” he said. And I’d like to think this was another demonstration of
the value of befriending others in The Jungle and sharing knowledge,
user to user. With the sales assistant watching guard over the main
machine, I picked up the monitor and pushed through the crowd to the
counter. I still couldn’t believe the Victor would soon be mine. What if
the sales assistant had suddenly developed a fondness for Victors and
had himself decided to claim the main machine? T-shirt all this time may
have been in the other part of the room; perhaps he was a gracious,
mannerly fellow who, having seen me first in line, was decent enough to
relinquish the new Victor to me. I don’t know how T-shirt fared at the
auction but hope that his own patience was rewarded through the
acquisition of the used Victor.
Within half an hour after taking the new Victor home, I had WordStar
running on it. There was some tinkering to do with the software so the
computer would start up without my having to stick a floppy disk in it,
but otherwise it was a perfect machine, save for a little crack in the
front of the case, which I discovered after I peeled away the price
tape. For $40 or so I could buy a replacement front. The hard disk, at
any rate, has been just as handy as I expected for editing this book.
My old Victor is in the hands of Gabriel Heilig, an aspiring
screenwriter, who saw my want ad and bought the machine for $1,750,
exactly what I’d paid. Gabe is no dummy; indeed, he used to sell
cars—Mercedes—and he insisted that his purchase price include plenty of
advice and several hours of instruction in WordStar, my favorite word
processor. And then what does Gabe do? He goes out and buys a copy of
Word Perfect, a new program that he swears is easier to use. I say,
“Great if it helps you do your work.” It must. Gabe tells me that the
Victor helps him revise five times as fast as he can on his electronic
typewriter. “You constantly have a fresh copy in front of you,” he says,
“whereas if you’re using a typewriter, you must retype the whole page
even if you change just once sentence.” A producer is interested in a
proposal for a TV series, and Gabe says: “I did it in three days—it
would have taken two weeks with a typewriter.”
Having sold the old Victor to Gabe for $550 more than the price tag on
the hard-disk one, I invested $230 in a 1,200-baud modem. I remain a
computer communications junky. A draft of this afterword, in fact,
reached my technical editor up in New York via the phone lines.
■ ■ ■
My afterword could cover a number of topics, but I’ll resist. Still, you
might be interested to learn that the Great Modeming continues between
the United States and Sri Lanka.
Because of problems with the Sri Lankan phone service, the link over the
past year hasn’t been 100 percent reliable—monsoons can wreak havoc on
cables between Arthur Clarke and the satellite station. But Steve
Jongeward, who is now an assistant both to Clarke and Peter Hyams, the
_2010_ director-writer, reports that the struggles have been worthwhile.
The movie will be out in December 1984 (remember: I’m writing this in
November 1984), and if a reporter has questions for Clarke in Sri Lanka,
Steve will just type them out on the Kaypro in California, and the
novelist will typically respond within a day or so. Sometimes the
reporters even visit the office with the Kaypro and interview Clarke via
modem and get instant replies.
■ ■ ■
The Great Modeming has produced a wonderful outgrowth: an attempt to
start an Electronic Peace Corps (EPC) to pipe U.S. technical savvy into
the Third World via computers links. (See Backup XIII, “Why Not An
Electronic Peace Corps?”)
The idea—in the form of an agency working within or alongside the
existing Peace Corps—has won support from people ranging from Clarke to
William F. Buckley, Jr., and Chicago _Sun-Times_ editorial writers.
Two established foreign-aid groups, Partnership for Productivity and
Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), hope to develop an informal
EPC-style project with the Sri Lankans.[98] If successful, it could
complement an existing VITA plan for an earth satellite to relay
electronic mail to and from the Third World. Ideally, a permanent EPC
would develop. Then it could recruit volunteers, help fund projects like
the satellite and the Clarke Centre, and otherwise encourage computer
communications in vital fields such as public health and agriculture.
—Alexandria, Va.
Nov. 15, 1984
Footnote 98:
Kaypro has donated five machines for the project and expects to send
five more. Special thanks here to David Kay and Tom Peifer, a Kaypro
staffer in charge of the company’s Third World donations program.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BACKUP:
More Tips and
Tales from the
Jungle
BACKUP I ❑ Twenty-Six Questions to Ask at (and About) the Computer Store
The _very worst_ computer stores are like amusement-park arcades. Expect
to be clipped. Just aim for the bull’s-eye and keep your losses low.
Better still, go to the good stores.
Reading my list of twenty-six before-you-buy questions, please remember
that the quality of computer stores can vary tremendously. The
proportion of lemons to good ones is higher than in the case of ordinary
retailers. That’s because of the complexity of the product. In fact,
there’s an old joke about the difference between a car salesman and a
computer one: the former knows when he’s lying.[99]
Footnote 99:
The salesman joke is from _InfoWorld_, October 22, 1984, p. 27.
One of the main tricks of the crooked computer hustlers is nothing more
than the retail-store version of leaving town ahead of the sheriff.
“The average computer salesman has a half-life of two months,” said my
friend the systems analyst. “Then he loses his credibility with his
supposed ‘clients’ and goes back to selling shoes or automobiles. If
you’re relying on any salesman for expert knowledge, you might be in for
a rude awakening. That’s why users groups formed. People got ticked off
with this world of hucksterism and created their own little world.”
One of the problems is that many good, honest sales reps will soon leave
for more lucrative work as consultants or for manufacturers or others.
Of course, the customer himself may be as impossible as some of the
sales reps. He might expect a quick, accurate, lucid answer to his
question from a rep working for little more than a department-store
clerk’s earnings. Computer stores can be full of ignorance on both sides
of the counter. Moreover, even if the sales rep knows his subject
forward and backward, many computer problems just defy easy answers.
Imagine the frustration of a sales rep working on commission. He can ill
afford time to educate complete novices. So do your homework or at least
make an appointment when the sales rep isn’t going to be jammed up with
lunchtime traffic. That’s the nature of the Silicon Jungle, not simply a
series of ripoffs. Cherish the good sales reps.
Perhaps the ultimate bad customer is a middle-aged Missouri man accused
of the first-degree murder of a computer-store owner with whom he
disputed a $180 bill.
Neither men nor machines “interfaced” well here. Although the customer
had bought a printer elsewhere, he was under the impression that no one
would charge him for making it compatible with a computer purchased from
the store. The owner wouldn’t yield. Allegedly—I didn’t know the verdict
at the time of this writing—the man then fired two .38-caliber
slugs.[100]
Footnote 100:
_InfoWorld_, June 20, 1983, p. 1, reported the shooting incident.
Short of killing the store owner, how do you protect yourself?
Start by realizing that even at honest stores, your interests and the
firms’ won’t be the same. I know of a Washington store that planned to
drop the Kaypro. Despite the computer’s generally good technical
reputation, the store seems to have been stuck with more than its share
of lemons with disk-drive problems. But that wasn’t the real reason,
apparently.
“We’re moving out of the lower-priced equipment into systems where we
can make a bigger profit,” explained a store employee. “We’re not in
this for charity. We’ve got to make a living.”
Understandable. But don’t count on a store like that to sell you the
least expensive machine for your needs.
You can also protect yourself by considering the right questions—_some_
of which appear below:
ONE
Do you need a computer? Are you prepared to fire the humans the machine
might replace? Remember, a computer can’t make coffee or lie about your
whereabouts when _you_ may face an angry customer. Of course, your
business may be expanding so that this isn’t an issue.
TWO
Do you have the temperament for the device? A willingness to struggle
with mechanical and human frailty—including your own?
THREE
Are you prepared to do your homework? You can’t avoid some preparation.
It’s dangerous to dump the whole chore in the lap of a consultant who,
however good, doesn’t know your business as well as you do.
Use a consultant if need be. But help him and yourself by knowing what’s
going on. If you don’t have time, at least be certain that a trusted
employee does—ideally, someone on whom you can bestow a fat raise if
computerization goes smoothly.
FOUR
What magazines and reading material should you buy at the computer store
and elsewhere?
_The Silicon Jungle_ is just a start. Neither it nor other books can
keep you informed about new products as quickly as a weekly magazine
like _InfoWorld_ can. I’ve written for _InfoWorld_ and may be
prejudiced, but I think it covers the industry well. Some micro
magazines, especially those oriented toward specific brands, are
namby-pamby in their coverage of the industry or their pet machines.
A good general book is fine for acquiring broad perspective; but now
move on to a guide focused on computers for your kind of business. Shop
for magazines and books as carefully as you would for the machines. See
if the magazines’ articles are as up to date as their ads; I know of one
that reviewed the Osborne more than a year after its introduction.
Timeliness isn’t as important with books if they discuss principles as
well as specific products. Whatever you read, make sure it’s in English,
not gibberish.
FIVE
How do you want to buy your computer and the trimmings? At a store or
through the mail?
Unless you have a consultant or otherwise enjoy plenty of technical
backup, you should buy your entire system locally, at one store.
Many manufacturers discourage mail-order sales. That’s partly because of
price cutting but also because they need local stores to guide customers
who are new to computers.
But if advice _is_ available to you from a consultant or friend? Then
mail-order software might be a terrific buy, especially since most
computer stores can’t supply much software expertise, anyway.
SIX
Do you want an independent store or a chain store?
My own preference is an independent that has been in business several
years. Computer sales reps may come and go. The owner, however, should
still be in the store and in town when your warranty expires!
If you insist on buying from a chain, well, fine. But learn how long the
manager has been around—and how long he intends to stay. He may lie
through his teeth. But at least you’re trying.
Also, ask the manager how long his predecessors lasted? How fast does
the revolving door spin?
SEVEN
Are the sales reps knowledgeable and understandable?
One of the best ways to find out is for them to demonstrate a program of
the kind that you want. Ideally, sales reps or consultants won’t just
know a lot about computers. They’ll also know—or learn—something about
your business.