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Special Report

Windows users are different from you and me. Some of them are quite unaware that certain things can be done on computers, and what's more, this lack of awareness is often buttressed by a solid background of dead certainty about the situation. No wonder Windows has most of the market share: it's not an operating system, it's a belief system ...

I have recently taken on the job of coordinating a summer writers' series here in Taos, New Mexico and visited the sponsoring organization's office today to discuss what was expected of me. At one point in our very informal back-and-forth, someone brought up the issue of pornographic email spam. I mentioned that I regularly received several dozen such messages every day, and my three companions all wanted to know what I did with it. "I just delete it," I said, "but it's a terrible problem that's threatening to bring down the system if unwanted emails keep multiplying so rapidly."

The "just delete it" part was what caught their attention, though. All Windows users, two of the three claimed that it was impossible to delete emails in Outlook Express without opening them first. The third said it was, but was apparently proven wrong in a quick test. Furthermore, one person declared that after receiving, opening, and deleting the spam, she had to go into her address book and erase all traces. I was confused and said so, opining that surely this was an email app configuration issue, but all present assured me that this was so. Apparently on their computers, they couldn't delete emails before opening them, which action also entered the sender's address into their address books. At this point I felt as if I had suddenly landed on the moon. "But, but ..." I stammered, "what about a different email application?"

"Netscape?" they asked.

When one of these asked about my digital camera after seeing some photos I'd shot and put up on a Web page, she revealed that her husband had just gotten one but couldn't figure out how to use it. I assumed she was referring to what to do with the images after they'd been taken, but I didn't have the heart to tell her that if they had a Mac, all they'd need to do was plug the camera into the computer and watch the photos download.

[Note to Dori and Phyllis: if you're reading this, please forgive me for any literary license I may have taken with the dialogue, and rest assured I'll do whatever I can to help you with your spam problems. There's an iMac in the back of the office, anyway, and that's a great place to start. :-) ]

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