Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”

In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times! as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single “This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation” warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask “Are you sure?” before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You’d have to press the “Start” button to turn the engine off.

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3. Top 10 Windows Mobile Applications

• Web browsing
• Social networking
• Email (client)
• Music player
• Video/movie player
• Text editing (a biggie!)
• Document editing (different from text editing, this includes formatting)
• Desktop publishing tools
• Animation tools
• Graphic design tools
• Sound editing tools
• Instant messaging and chatting
• Diagram / scientific model editing.
• Games
• VoIP (with or without webcam use)
• Revision tools
• CD burning
• File transfer protocols (eg: SSH or FTP)
• Webservers (or mailservers)
• Web radio server
• MOCAP
• DJ-ing
• eBooks and related media.
• Video editing
• Programming
• Robotics
• Recording (sound)
• PIM management
• Databases
• Specialised document editing (eg: LaTeX, markup languages, music notation)
• E-Commerce
• Hacking (as in, illegal activity)
• Finances
• Scientific use / data measurement / simulations
• Operating system tweaking
• Security systems
• Filesharing (mass downloading, torrenting, etc)
• Stock markets
• GPS/maps/navigation
• Paperweight
• Peripheral management (eg: interacting with phones/scanners/printers/cameras)

So, how many did you get out of 41? My personal score is 26.

Let me know your score!

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Before suggesting what you can do to your computer or to yourself to discover what you’re missing out on, I want you to consider what you actually use your computer for. In general, users fall into the following categories:

• Usage due to environmental requirement.
• Usage due to environmental pressure.
• usage due to personal interest.

The first, “Environmental Requirement” – means that your computer usage is due to your inability to survive without it. This can be due to your workplace forcing you to use a computer, your school requiring you to learn how to use a computer, or you have to visit a website to help a friend check something. The people most likely to fall into this category are satisfied with the ability to check and send email, browse the web, edit documents and store files. If you fall into this category, I would like to ask you who, in their right mind, would make it mandatory for you to read this post in the first place.

The second reason, “Environmental Pressure“, describes the computer usage that has derived from the environment around you using the computer. For example, everybody has an email account, or everybody also uses social networking websites (such as Facebook or MySpace), or even blogging is a way of life. This environment spurs a general need to participate in these activities. Users that fall into this category include the majority of computer users. Such examples would be students who blog, use facebook and surf the web, and computer gamers (Yes, gamers are not a seperate category).

The third reason, “Personal Interest“, is very often ignored by computer users that fall into the Environmental Pressure category or actually populated by people who think they fall into this category but actually do not. Therefore, I deem it important to differentiate the people in this category. People in this category actually make an effort to utilise their computers to their maximum potential. Such examples would be computer programmers (No, HTML is not a programming language – such an excuse is common for somebody to call themselves a programmer), and any individual who feels the urge to tweak their computer (in ways I will describe later and in future parts to this series).

Once you have identified which category you are in, the next step would be to find out what you use your computer for. Most common answers would be for web browsing, email, document editing, instant messaging, and file storage. Some of the less common answers would be for programming, digital graphics, servers, and PIM usage. I plan to go through each of these usages little by little in future parts to this series.

Before I click “Publish This Post”, I would like to emphasize the (well, my) general rule of computer usage: There is always more than one way of doing things, and most of the time, if you didn’t know there were alternatives, you’re using the worst one.

*cough*InternetExplorer*cough*

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