Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 02:07:01 -0800
From: John Halbig <john@garage.com>
Subject: Tidbit - The Prodigal Mother

Keyword: Advocacy, Windows Daymares

This tidbit is from:

J. Michael Tisdel

About two years ago, my mother retired from a 30-year teaching career. In 
her retirement she has taken up competitive Bridge with a vengeance. As a 
result, she has been looking for certain Bridge programs to sharpen her 
skills as she gains gold points.

When she set out looking for the Bridge programs she found that the ones 
she wanted were only available for the PC. She has had an Apple IIgs 
since they were released and had not had a desire to upgrade until now. 
However, she preferred the Mac to a PC.

The last time she came to visit, she was full of questions about the Mac 
and the PC. I worked with her on my Performa 5200CD and re-installed 
SoftWindows 3 to show her that there were ways to run PC software on a 
Mac. I told her that better emulators were now available and that with 
the new G3's the performance was much better than my Performa.

In the end, she decided not to go with the Mac but with a PC clone. Her 
stated reasons were that (1) the Bridge programs were for the PC and (2) 
there was no local support for the Mac. Living in a small town in the 
Texas panhandle, there were only two computer retailers and they sold 
only PC's.

Knowing that once my mother set her mind to something, I couldn't change 
it, I resolved to be a shoulder to cry on when she encountered Windows 
problems. Well, to her credit, she was able to get the machine up and 
running in no time with very little trouble. She even got an internet 
connection and entered the wild and woolly world of the Net and E-mail. 
Needless to say she was very excited.

Well, the inevitable happened. The PC didn't come up one day. She called 
her local support and they forwarded her to the manufacturer's support 
line. After working with tech support (out of Costa Rica) for an hour and 
forty minutes, she discovered that some chips had fried on the 
motherboard.

To their credit, the PC manufacturer offered to replace the motherboard 
at no cost. My mother declined. She boxed up the PC and returned it to 
the dealer.

She is now waiting for the iMac and the next version of Virtual PC.