Computers handed out

Today was a big day for 40 of my friends. They all got brand new computer systems for their schools including ups battery backups, printer/scanner/copiers and tons of other goodies. What a great treat to see the smiles on the faces of some, and the look of shear terror on the face of others.

The excited ones could not wait to get back to their schools and set the machines up and start doing all kinds of things (like wasting innumerable hours surfing useless websites, sending emails and downloading virus after virus in the ignorance of how it all works, and playing thousands of games of solitaire or any of the other games that come pre-installed on Windows XP Pro these days.

The terrified ones were trying to figure out how to get me to teach them how to turn the silly thing on, let alone how to use it and get anything productive from it. Many of them were eager to learn, but scared of the new responsibility and expectation put on them as a result of having this computer.

We did our best to show them the very basics and send them on their way with the threat of physical harm to them if they go to websites they should not go to or if they illegally copy the software or install it on other machines illegally or if they destroy their machine with viruses, etc. We also told them that no matter what they do, we will know about it from the monitoring programs we have installed on the machines (the capabilities of which were only slightly exaggerated).

The big question now is how long will it be before one of them contacts us asking to help them fix whatever problem they have created for themselves.