You can just call it a tale of two 'puters
LORI CLINCH Are We There Yet?
We have two computers at our house. One is young and rebellious, and the other is like a little old woman - relishing in her golden years.

The rebel holds its own if it's left alone. It enjoys searching the Web, looking for friends, and occasionally freezing up on its favorite Web sites. It likes to entertain with pop-ups, run applications at all hours, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that it has its own blog.

It has always been a bad seed.

The Old Gal is a different matter altogether. She was the créme of the crop when we purchased her back in 1999. She had style, she had grace and sported 384 megabytes of RAM. She had a shapely motherboard, looked sleek in her tower, and responded to shift-F7 faster than you could say thesaurus.

Today the poor old soul has only 1.04 of her 12.6 gigabytes of memory remaining. To put that into simple terms that we can understand, she can reach her destination, she just can't remember how to get back home.

In her lifetime, she has survived two crashes, three Trojan horses, and the Pretty Park virus. She's forgotten more about fatal errors than most people will ever know. She lived through 1999 and laughed in the face of Y2K. Her massive monitor and stately stature occupy a large corner in the office, and she makes no apologies for her size.

She doesn't come right out and call us "Honey," but I like to feel that it's implied.

Meanwhile, the Rebel is younger, tougher and upbeat. Still, getting it to take you from one Web site to another is one hard drive.

These PC problems are exacerbated at times when the whole family needs a computer. Take last night, for instance, when I sat down at the Old Gal to pay bills online. I had just entered my user name when I was interrupted by a child who wanted to type a 500-word paper and yet another who needed to surf the Web.

Quite frankly, it was enough to make me want to mash my modem.

No one, but no one, wanted to use the Rebel. Everyone knows that using that brat requires patience, time and fortitude. It doesn't follow the rules, refuses to listen to commands, and sometimes I could swear that it is holding its breath.

"I can't stand that computer," one of the kids exclaimed as I tried to tell him that the Rebel would be his link to the World Wide Web for the evening. "It doesn't pay attention to anything that I tell it to do."

"Rubbish," I responded, "you just need to know how to work it."

The Rebel seemed to be happy enough when I started it up. It opened Windows, played some music and even welcomed me to its world. The music was a bit too loud, and I'm not sure that the welcome was heartfelt, but I wasn't going to complain. It then took its sweet time doing anything else. It seemed to want to run on its own schedule and all but implied that I didn't understand what computers of its era are going through.

Yet, I remained patient. We were finally moving along gracefully and had even completed a task or two when the dang thing froze up. I couldn't tell if it was thinking about the things that I had asked it to do or if it was having a full-blown fit.

Suddenly it started beeping and honking and told me that I had, and I quote, "Performed an illegal function." I'm sure that if it could have sprouted legs, it would have turned on its heel and stomped away.

"Let's let it stew in its own juices," I said as I shut the Rebel down. It became painfully obvious that we, as a family, were going to have to turn to the Old Gal.

"Why can't we just get a new computer?" asked Huey as we pulled a chair up in front of her.

"Because she can still get us by."

'"No sir!" exclaimed another child. "She has a mind of her own and her breath smells."

"Nonsense. She does as we ask. She's just a little sluggish."

"A little sluggish? She's still contemplating a command that I gave her last week!"

"Yeah," echoed his brother, "as if I didn't have enough homework, she wanted me to send an error report."

"Did you do it?"

"No. I refused and the next thing I knew she had translated my entire document into Navajo."

I couldn't help but smile. That's what they get for not listening to the Old Gal. She may be slow, but once in a while she can still put the little bytes in their place.

Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book "Are We There Yet?" You can reach her at www.loriclinch. com.