Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 2, 1993                   TAG: 9306020133
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MENTION DOS, AND YOU'RE DEAD

I hit buttons and screamed and ran around the room a lot.

I don't know if that kind of behavior is acceptable in the computer age, but that's what I did.

There was one thing about writing on old-fashioned typewriters -- those machines died slowly and decently, and you had time to adjust to their loss. And they didn't eat your words.

For a moment I actually thought of talking to the computer like they do on that next generation "Star Trek" show.

I mean, that computer is user-friendly. If you want know where the android is hanging out aboard the Enterprise, you just say:

"Computer, give me the location of Commander Data."

And the computer says:

"Commander Data is in the bar with Whoopie Goldberg and Dr. Crusher and they are all drinking replicated gin and getting a buzz on."

You can cuss my computer, but you can't ask it anything. If this were possible, I'd have asked it why it conked out while I was writing stuff that was marching grandly and eloquently across its monitor screen.

I mean, I was on a roll, and the whole thing disappeared. The world has thus lost some of the finest literature ever written. "Poof," just like that.

When this happens, you can do one of three things.

You can get your Monster Maul out of the basement and break up your computer into little pieces. Luckily, the Monster Maul is on loan to my son.

You can wait until morning and call the people you brought it from -- which you never do because you want to go on to the third option of trying to revive it yourself.

You try to get your computer "up and running," as we computer experts say, by yourself because these people ask all kinds of embarrassing questions you can't answer.

As in: "What's your DOS doing right now?"

So, you sit in front of the thing, pushing buttons and the computer is really trying to come back, although it's feeble, and it's making sounds like death rattles.

It all reminds you of the pitiable way that computer died in "2001" when it was disconnected.

Incidentally, disconnecting your average sick home computer doesn't help get it back on its feet. I know. I tried that 24 times.

I thought I had it back, but in the morning it just made rasping noises, and I took it back to the store.

There was this real nice guy there. He didn't once mention my DOS.