Some years ago I wrote a regular technical column in a popular monthly magazine. During this period I received a large number of letters requesting help or advice. Most were from enthusiasts, but some were from people who seemingly had wandered into the PC world by accident. In particular I received a series of letters from a man, Maxwell HS Holgate, who was much troubled by technology and trying to make sense of a world seemingly gone mad.
I must say I don't agree with all of Max's comments. I played my own small part in the development team of the Amstrad PCW and I know that every decision made during the course of the development was taken after much heart-searching, debate and sometimes rows. 'Joyce', as the PCW was known to its many friends, revolutionised the public perception of computers in the UK and European markets. Its very success earned Amstrad the disdain of the British academic and computer worlds. Amstrad may currently be in the doldrums but no-one should forget that the British PC scene is mostly what it is today because of what it achieved.
I can, however, feel Max's pain. His letters were truly a cry from the heart, The originals were all hand-written, whether in frustration or as some kind of insult I have never decided, but not one was printed on his Joyce. I have tried as far as possible to reproduce the look and feel of the originals here. If every software developer is forced to read these letters at the start of each and every project and reflect, Max's suffering will not have been in vain... These, then, are the letters of Maxwell H S Holgate:
Dear Sir,
Today I received my first issue of [your] magazine. 99 percent
of it was incomprehensible to me, much as I suspected, being in
the style I have come to recognise as characteristic of computer
literature - typical aren't-we-clever-people-let's-keep-our-
Masonic-secrets-out-of-the-understanding-of-the-vulgar-mob.
But I could understand, and was amazed by, the letter from
Mr Price, who writes: 'Since March this year I now regard myself
as a complete master of my machine'.
He must be a genius.
In my retirement I took up musical journalism and criticism
and when my wife's illness deprived me of her typing assistance
I was delighted to be told that a word processor would solve
many of my problems, enabling me to submit respectable copy
(with all my non-typing errors corrected before printing) to
editors and keep a record of my work in a compact form.
I purchased a PCW8256, being advised that this was the lowest
priced available. It seriously dented my savings and in my
ignorance I did not know that if I had 'shopped around' I might
have obtained one for almost £200 less. Worse still, however,
was that I had not known that word processors are intimately
tied up with computers. People of my age do not understand
computers, are not interested in computers; in fact between you
and me, WE LOATHE BLOODY COMPUTERS AND THINK
THE WORLD WAS A BETTER PLACE WITHOUT THEM!
Imagine my horror when I discovered I had bought one of
these contraptions, and further that I could not use it as the
manual was a farrago of meaningless computer jargon.
However, correspondence with Amstrad suggested that
joining the Professional User Club would be of some help,
especially as it included Step-by-step Guide to LocoScript', a manual to
interpret the manual. I paid a further large sum of money to
discover that this second book offered little if any more assistance.
I am now attending two classes a Week to try to understand
this modern miracle, and finding it terribly hard going. The
other members of the class are some 40 years my junior, but at
least I have discovered from the class that the 'manual' and Step-
by-step are standing jokes of impenetrability.
This morning I spent three hours in the class trying - and
failing - to learn how to set margins: child's play on a typewriter,
but an incredible ritual of menus, F1s, F2s, enters and exits on
the word processor. Last week I discovered that underlining -
so simple on a typewriter - involves a further series of complex
manoeuvres. Meanwhile, my work falls further and further
behind, thanks to the miracle working computer.
Good luck to Mr Price as I said, he must be a genius. I'm
only an Honours BSc, but that was 45 years ago, and I'm baffled.
I think it unlikely that you will print this letter, but it will let
you know that not all the customers are satisfied. You will note
that I have written this letter with an invention even more recent
than the computer - the rolling-ball (not ball-point) pen. It's
much lighter and cheaper and in my hands much faster then the
word processor; and unlike the printer, it never refuses to start
Yours, totally disillusioned,
Maxwell HS Holgate
PS As a musician, I must ask: since the keyboard includes #, why
not the natural and flat signs, which are just as essential to me!
Dear Sir,
I am a writer who was sold a PCW8256 as a machine which would be of greatest help to me because of my limited typing ability. I was not told that it was a computer or I should not have purchased it, as I do not understand computers, I do not wish to understand computers, I have the deepest suspicion of computers, and believe the world was a better place without them.
I soon found my mistake; that using a word processor involves understanding an extremely complicated technique in no way comparable with the simplicity of a typewriter. I did my best with the handbook, but found it baffling. In desperation I joined the Amstrad user's club, not a cheap matter, and received
the Step-by-step Guide to LocoScript, which was even more confusing. As for [the] magazine, I can seldom understand a single page of it; computer people do not seem to know when they are
using jargon - or perhaps they do, and with their nasty little superior manner wish to cover themselves with mystery and sneer at the 'computer illiterate'. I may be illiterate to them, but I do not require electronic assistance with my spelling.
I then joined an instruction class run by the Education Department, consisting mainly of young ladies 40 years my junior. At least I learned from this class that the handbook and Step-by-step are regarded as a joke and little more than useless. I did learn a little: I can now manage a simple letter and even differentiate between 'print all pages' and 'print some pages'. I can get the thing to print italics, but sometimes it prints half-size letters instead, so I try this seldom. Things like altering margins,
tabs, numbering pages, headers and footers, blocks and phrases, cutting and pasting are all beyond me, not for lack of trying.
A piece of computer jargon I have understood is 'user-friendly'. Well, the PCW8256 is USER MALEVOLENT. It has three standard party tricks - (i) lines starting at different points, especially verse, will suddenly all run together. (ii) Having corrected my many errors as seen on the screen, it nevertheless prints the text with all the errors carefully reinstated. (iii) The piece-de-resistance - after laboriously typing a morning's work, the brute erases the lot.
You are fond of publishing letters from people saying how delightfully simple the PCW is, how 90·year-old grandpa or 4-year-old Willie can operate it and so on. I challenge you to publish a letter illustrating a different experience, though I doubt if you will. Put briefly - briefly , that is, compared with most computer guff - my opinion of the PCW is that it is hopelessly complicated, it has wasted hundreds of pounds of my money and months of my time, AND I HATE THE BLOODY THING!
Yours very sincerely,
Maxwell HS Holgate
PS I see that a 70year old pensioner writes to say he 'can comprehend CP/M instructions". A pensioner myself, but only 67, maybe I'm too young to know what the hell CP/M is. Nothing rude, I hope!
Dear Sir,
I noted that my letter was published (in somewhat bowdlerised form) with 'answers' to my queries.
I spent the greater part of an afternoon and an evening following your recommended rituals for resetting margins and 'justifying' right-hand margins, with the usual results - ie vox et praeterea nihil. At some point the infernal machine emits a 'bleep' and does nothing more. To quote you, "It's as simple as
that". I expected no more. The computer fraternity do not willingly divulge their secrets to us illiterates, but maintain an attitude of ubi palam locuti sumus, ibi nihil diximus.
I have not attempted the complex rigmarole for numbering pages, as your clumsy and complicated machine was superseded long ago by a smaller, quicker, cheaper and simpler device - the pen. I am given to understand that Shakespeare, who had the good fortune to live in a computer-free world, used
one of these very effectively.
To be fair to you, I have read pages 105-110 of the manual. It is indeed a classical example of complex incomprehensibility. After it, I spent a sleepless night shouting "Enter Exit Exit Enter Exit' ad nauseam until my wife asked me if I was writing an avant-garde play.
Pardon my occasional lapses into illiteracy. The wonders of the computer have proved to be a case of parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus as far as I am concerned, but it will doubtless translate for you.
Yours disgustedly,
Maxwell HS Holgate
Dear Sir
I write to complain in the strongest terms of my experience with you, your company and your infernal machine designated PCW8256. My God, how I wish I'd never heard of Amstrad or word processors - I'd already heard of computers and learned to distrust them as things that could land you safely on the moon but which send you a hill for £1,000,000,000 for a quarter's electricity or a wage slip for £00.00.
I am a pensioner who augments his pension with a little journalism. Unable to type except in an inefficient manner, on an evil day I was informed that a word processor was a magic machine
which would allow me to correct my errors and keep a record of my work. I spent £400, which I could ill afford, on one of your damned contraptions. Nobody told me I was buying a computer, or that I should have had second - or third - thoughts.
Within a month of my purchase, the price was reduced by almost £100. That was not a good beginning.
I very soon found that your 'manual' is virtually useless. I was having great difficulty in performing tasks which would be of extreme simplicity on a proper typewriter, so I attended a class, where I discovered that the manual was regarded as a bad joke and a by-word for incomprehensibility. That was about all I did learn. I then paid a large sum to join the so-called professional user's club, as I expected to obtain a helpful magazine and above all the booklet Step-by-step Guide to LocoScript, said to be a simplification of the notorious manual
The magazine transpired to be a farrago of computer jargon. Had it been in Ancient Greek I might have understood a word or two; the fact is that the best-laid schemes of mice and modems - and kilobytes and programs spelled like that - are MEANINGLESS to anyone aged 60+. As for Step-by-step: USELESS!
I have written more than once for advice. Usually I have had no reply. I wrote to an advertiser which purported to have for sale a book of simple instructions for the cursed box of computerised tricks, sending a cheque for £35.95. I received no reply. Is everything connected with computers a swindle? Meanwhile, the thing's repertoire of evil tricks is beyond belief. Anytime I expect the ingenuity of LocoScript to produce a 'menu' - that's the jargon, isn't it? - it says GET STUFFED.
Last week, for instance, for no reason at all my work suddenly ignored the margins and spread itself right outside the boundaries of the screen in a size that would have required a printer two feet wide. Nothing in the blasted useless 'manual' tells me how to get it back. Then these damned 'templates'. I
don't know how you start one - and I don't want to - but far worse, I can't get rid of them. You try to erase them and they reappear! Even on 'M' [the Ram drive on the PCW], which is supposed to
be erase everything on switching off, that bloody TEMPLATE.STD (whatever it means) pops up again, giving me narrow A4 margins. I loathe templates, whatever they are.
Today, the evil spirit which I believe inhabits all computers has developed a new stunt. After nothing like a reasonable number of lines, it starts a new page for no reason at all. In desperation I attempted to derive some information from the dreadful manual, page 102, as to how to change the number of lines per page. I think I followed the rigmarole to the letter. And what happened! IT SET UP ANOTHER PAGE ONE LINE LONG. Nothing I attempt will rectify matters, so all that work is ruined.
Its other standard tricks are (i) erasing hours of work at its own wicked volition and (ii) printing 'corrected' work WITH ALL THE ORIGINAL ERRORS RESTORED.
I am now very desperate. I have lost months of work and not a little money, for editors will only accept work in typescript. This infernal machine has nearly cost me my sanity - indeed rendered me at times almost suicidal. I hardly expect a reply. Amstrad has never been given to a reply of any sort. But I can tell you this. I curse the day I ever heard of Amstrad or a word processor. Word perverter would be more accurate. And were I a wealthy man, I should sue the firm for selling goods under false
pretences, pretending labour-saving simplicity, while both they and their instructions are bafflingly complex. Curse Amstrad and curse computers were I dictator I would have every one destroyed. This I can tell you with certainty - I have lived my life mostly in a world without computers or word perverters, AND IT WAS A BLOODY SIGHT BETTER PLACE.
Yours with all worst wishes,
Maxwell HS Holgate
PS I am certain that, for example, a television receiver is as technologically complex as a word perverter; but its designs have made it usable by the normal individual. The computer freemasonry, however, do not wish their secrets to be understood by the man in the street, even the educated man. This is why they perpetually resort to jargon!
PPS A reply, if any, [in the magazine] is useless, as I have ceased to attempt to read it.
PPPS This morning, in utter desperation, I tried pressing every key on the keyboard at once. The brute squealed horribly - I hope I gave it an acute pain in its electronic guts.
My wife instructs me to tell you that the matter is affecting my health and endangering our marriage, and she holds Amstrad personally responsible. I did not believe in the occult until I realised the existence of computerised evil spirits, but now HEAR MY CURSE - FOR ALL THEY HAVE DONE TO ME, FINANCIALLY, PHYSICALLYAND MENTALLY. DAMN ALL COMPUTERS TO HELL!
Of course this was all in the past wasn't it? Things must be better now, surely? Well in my humble opinion, no, not really and, ironically, for just the very same reasons. It is certainly true that the hardware is much improved. The current 32/64-bit processors with megabytes of memory can do vastly more than the 8-bit PCW with 256K could ever dream of. The very fact that processors are faster and memory is no longer as expensive as it was means that more can be done by desktop computers. This has led to an explosion in the functionality of software application packages, but at the same time has made the products 'feature rich' or, in other words, damn complicated and almost unsupportable!