Computer Wimp

Sinclair User

EVEN WIMPS CAN BE WISE Price: £6.95 Publisher: Hutchinson If you want to know what you should have known before you went out and bought your computer then Computer Wimp, by John Bear, is for you. Although it is an American import the book has more than a slight bearing on the British scene with its list of "166 things I wish I had known before I bought my first computer!" Each item is shown in bold type in the margin. The main body of the text, opposite the numbered item, explains the various factors involved in the solution of any problems which might arise from it. The problems include buying a computer, operating the machine and dealing with any difficulties that may arise from its use. Each of the points is clear and concise in its terminology but hints of the author's irreverent attitude towards the computer scene peep through on nearly every page. The text is peppered with Victorian and Edwardian engravings suitably doctored for at least minimal relevance. African porters shoulder printers and camel-borne Tuaregs carry PCs, to illustrate computer mobility. You will either love or hate this, but there is no denying that it is an extremely cheap method of illustrating a book. As a reference book Computer Wimp is useful and amusing. It has some drawbacks, for instance all the prices are in dollars and not in sterling, but these are easily forgotten when you look at all the practical information which can serve both American and British markets alike. The publishers make no apologies for the American bias, explaining that to change the text would be "to alter the flavour without adding anything to the quality."

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Personal Computer News

Peter Worlock

'Computer Wimp' by John Bear, published by Hutchinson at £6.95 (paperback, 280 pages). These are dark days for the computer illiterate - those who feel life is passing them by because they feel unable to buy a computer, those who blanch in the face of a storm of technobabble, those who reach for a sledgehammer when the words RAM and baud crop up in polite company. Now help is at hand. Computer Wimp - subtitled 166 Things I Wish I had Known Before I Bought my First Computer - contains a great deal of comfort for the Wimp. Wimpishness takes on a heroic nature, a sort of red badge of cowardice. However, there is a great deal contained within its covers that will delight, provoke, teach and outrage the rest of us, from the 'normal' enthusiast to the downright weird, plugged-in junky. Mr Bear is the perfect guide to the new technology - a true gadget freak whose steely enthusiasm has been forged in the proverbial white heat. He has lived, worked and wept with everything from a DEC mini to a Tandy desktop machine, wrestled with Apple plug-in cards and sweated blood over printer interfaces. The text is accompanied by countless funny illustrations, and witty, clever or simply pertinent quotes from techno-watchers down the ages. Like this one from an IBM spokesman in 1946: 'Our machines are so complicated, the human element doesn't enter into them.' Under chapter titles like 'The emperor's new computer...', 'Never buy anything you can't lift' and 'What to do when they start technobabbling...' Mr Bear considers every aspect of thinking about buying, after buying, using and not using computers. And about programming ('Stand up for your right not to be a programmer'), the jargon ('baud rhymes with fraud, stands for Big Al's Universal Delivery, or possibly something else') and what to do when things go wrong (heard the one about the accounts program that deleted the figure 7 at random from data files?) All in all Computer Wimp is a splendid book. If you're a satisfied, dissatisfied or potential computer masochist, it lets you know what's in store. And when things go wrong, there's Mr Bear's Computer Consumer Karate guide. This may be the funniest; most entertaining and most useful guide to computers ever.