2 - About 12 years ago we were at a 19th century restoration village at a candlelight event with niece, aged about 8, and nephew, about 5. Nephew was fascinated with the bonfire and he and DH were left and niece and I walked about. Niece, who’s dad is high up in IT for corporations, comments to me “They didn’t have computers then.” I agree and go on “No, but they did have computer cards.” (Punch cards were invented for a late 19th century census when they figured out it would take more than 10 years to count the census. They were and are the same size as an 1880’s dollar bill.) Niece replied, as many of you might “What is a computer card?” If you don’t know, in the olden days of main frames we would use a machine to punch holes in a card, one card per line of program. These cards would be feed into an office desk sized machine called a compiler (now done by software) which would produce another stack of cards which we would take to and feed into the actual computer, another desk size machine.

3 - Flashing lights on early computers as shown in movies, had no purpose other than that the first computers shown to the public had lights flashing so people would know they were doing something. (And early computer calculations were in “woman hours” as the computers replaced women (cheaper to employ) in doing extended calculations over long periods of time.

4 - My dad gave me a pen with a calculator and the time in it and explained that it had more computer power than the NASA computers that went to the moon.

5 - Lastly, if you are still with me, in “Take the Money and Run” Woody Allen is trying to get a job and lying to get it. He is asked if he has ever used a “high speed digital computer” He replies that he has and is asked where he did so, “my aunt has one”. This was hilarious at the time, now his aunt would have one.

The hardest family members to support over the phone are those who have friends who are “good with computers”. Well, those who have kids who are “good with computers” are worse. OK, worst of all are those who let my uncle touch their computers.

Besides, there are much quicker ways to find out hard drive and RAM capacity than by looking up the model number.

There are plenty of situations where calling hard drive space “memory” can waste time. For example, your aunt calls and says a friend of hers who knows something about computer says she needs to add memory. You ask her why she needs it, and she isn’t sure, but her friend knows a lot about computers and says she needs it. Can you help or not?

She doesn’t know how much she has, so you walk her through checking it out. Then you have her read you the model number of the computer, which takes a while, because it’s under the desk, where it’s dark, and the print is very small, and she keeps reading the wrong numbers, but she finally finds it after ten frustrating minutes.

So you look up that model and find what the maximum memory is, and you compare that to what she has, and you give her the part number and tell her where to buy it.

Two weeks later she calls and says it has arrive, so you walk her through installing the memory in the computer. This takes an even more frustrating thirty minutes, but it’s done, and it tests fine.

Then she calls back the next day and says that she still can’t copy all the pictures off her camera because there still isn’t enough memory.