General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Step away from the smartphone... Shhh it'll be ok. [View all]sibelian
(7,804 posts)Lol
What's the point of having a machine that takes 5+ minutes to START, crashes constantly, needs a dedicated helpline in case things go wrong with it, makes bizarre decisions for you about where you want the text, what it's supposed to look like, can't handle you starting a numbered list without freaking out... introducing all sorts of totally unnecessary things that you need training in to understand if you want to make them stop, etc, etc, etc when all you need to do is type something?
There is possibly one major advantage over typewriters in that you can store data electronically but even that is a very *fragile* advantage because the storage is frequently not backed up! So we've saved some trees and end up accepting an attrition rate for data. Not good! Fine if you're running your own business, no use if you're running a hospital! Training people to back up results in a small percentage of them backing up sometimes and then just giving up.
Don't get me wrong, computers are cool. Spreadsheets! Now you're talking. Word processors, in the workplace, on the other hand, are a pain in the arse. I've completely lost count of the number of times my colleagues have had to interrupt me to ask me for the fuckteenth time what the *insert* button does!