THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 26, 1995 TAG: 9502220038
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 126 lines
THERE ARE people who use their home computers for everything.
Balancing checkbooks.
Filing recipes.
Researching term papers.
Creating Christmas cards.
Logging oil changes.
Chatting on-screen with friends across the country.
The computer has transformed these people's lives for the better. It's entertained them. It's made their work easier. It's enabled them to claim early membership in the 21st century Information Age.
This story isn't about them.
This story is about everyone else with a computer.
The people whose keyboards have to be dusted between infrequent uses.
The people who pore through manual after manual but still can't get beyond playing Solitaire.
The people for whom WordPerfect isn't, Quicken doesn't and using Prodigy seems to require you to be one.
The people who had high hopes that this super invention would revolutionize their lives but instead wound up with, in the words of one man, a ``$3,000 paperweight.''
People like, say, the Yawin family of Virginia Beach.
``I thought we were going to use it for taxes . . . but it was more work than it was worth. So I just did it with paper,'' said a resigned Laura M. Yarwin.
``Oh, we thought this was going to be great. But we couldn't figure out how to use it. So now we're paying for something we don't use.''
She isn't alone.
The more home computers that get hooked up, the more would-be technophiles that turn into technophobes - disappointed, frustrated, even afraid of their machines.
For many, it requires more time and patience than they have. Many find the instruction manuals to be incomprehensible. And it doesn't help matters when Johnny and Sally come home from their computer-friendly school and jump right on it for homework or games.
In fact, the three children of Claudia R. Mackintosh of Norfolk fight over using their home computer while she frets about loading records into it so she can conduct her real-estate business from home.
She's been fretting since Christmas. Christmas 1993.
``But I haven't been able to figure it out,'' she said. ``I kept swearing I would get this thing, I would learn how to use this business program. By February. Now it's February 1995.''
Patrick and Cheny Stikkel of Virginia Beach have owned their computer for more than a year. He has some computer experience, and they write letters and create monthly appointment calendars on it, but they still haven't gotten around to installing a personal-finances program they recently bought.
``It's kind of sad, but right now there are a lot of games,'' Patrick Stikkel said with a laugh. ``Mahjong - my wife plays mahjong, solitaire.''
Over in Zuni, the Rev. John P. Hartman was typing out his weekly sermon on his 4-year-old Macintosh computer. His wife, a teacher, uses it to type test sheets for her class. But so far, that's about it.
``Our frustration is, it's a very expensive word processor,'' Hartman said. ``It has the capabilities to do a lot of wonderful things. I haven't been able to figure out what those things are yet.''
To help unravel the mysterious ways of computers, he even bought ``Mac for Dummies,'' one of a series of simplified guides.
`` `Mac For Dummies' may be too advanced,'' he said. ``We may need `Mac For Morons.' ''
Over at Lou Stottlemyer's Virginia Beach home, her husband, her grown daughter, her grandchildren, everyone seems to use her computer more than she does. And they got it for her real-estate work.
``Greek'' is how she describes it. Her grown sons showed her a few things, and she learned to play a few games or work up a flyer or greeting card, but she never does those things.
Stottlemyer had plans to keep her household records on the computer - bills, budget, ``all that,'' she said. She would ``just never have to do paperwork again, because everything could go right on the computer. But nothing got put on the computer.
``It's very frustrating for me. I would like to be able to learn this. And I'm the kind of person who has to do it to learn it. . . . It's just that I don't do it. It's time-consuming.''
Many people in her computer-wary boat opt for classes, like the six-hour ones offered by computer-supermarket CompUSA in Norfolk. They range from advanced instruction on specific software to ``The ABC's of Computing,'' said Eric J. Castro at the store.
It's pretty basic stuff.
`` `This is a monitor, this is a keyboard' - that kind of thing,'' Castro said. ``A lot of people already have them, or they got one for Christmas, from their in-laws or something, and they haven't used them.''
Last year, 5.9 million personal computers aimed for private-home use were sold in the United States, almost a third of the entire PC market, according to Dataquest, a San Jose, Calif., research company. Some 2 million home computers went out just during the past Christmas season.
``The PC is fast becoming a staple of the American home,'' said Philippe de Marcillac, a Dataquest analyst. He also called the personal computer ``a cost-effective tool and resource for the home.''
Apparently that depends on the home.
For every, say, Kimberly J. Barnes of Chesapeake or Kathy Stitt of Virginia Beach, who use their home computers for virtually everything from checkbooks to daily journals you have Laura and Michael Yawin.
``My computer came with, like, 30 manuals, and I haven't read any of them, other than how to turn it on,'' Laura Yawin said.
``We didn't want it for games, but we ended up using it for games. My kids hate all the educational games on there. They think it's like being in school.''
Her seventh-grade daughter, Sarah, writes an occasional school paper; her fourth-grade son, Adam, plays the game ``Doom.'' But the family hardly ever uses the fancy printer they bought. They have an on-line communications service they don't use, but can't find the program to get off it.
Laura Yawin bluffs her way through when sales people or friends talk computer talk, so they won't think she's ``stupid.'' Husband Michael takes stabs at the machine but usually winds up frustrated and hollering for her help.
They spent more than $3,000 on the thing last year. So far, they're not having a lot of fun.
Laura's starting to see the computer as a challenge to conquer. Michael says once you do, show me, too.
First, though, she must make herself face the beast. It's been more than a month since she last tried.
``It's like I have to psyche myself up to get up there,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: ADRIANA LIBREROS/Staff illustration
by CNB