The Gazette 1991

GAZETTE OCTOBER 1991 A one time "ageing, computer illiterate, country solicitor" tells of how his life was transformed by... . My Love Affair With Joyce

called locoscript. Some disparag- ingly called it the Model T. Ford of computers or the poor man's computer. Contrary to all the advice of the pundits and experts, I bought it, and returned one winter's evening to the office with a large box from which I tremblingly assembled the bits and pieces. I plugged it in and was confronted wi th a green screen. Carefully following the instructions, I managed to load the disc and after about an hour had managed to produce a short letter. A love affair had begun. Since then my extra marital affair with Joyce has blossomed and grown. Not only that but I now willingly share my experiences with a large number of previously impoverished and equally lovelorn colleagues both in this country and elsewhere. Am I jealous? Never. Joyce is a fabulous lover, with many erogenous zones, who delights in sharing her favours with all and sundry. She is friendly and lovable with the most endearing quirks and hidden delights which always come as a pleasant surprise.

Imagine if you will an ageing, computer illiterate, country solicitor in 1985, with rapidly rising over- heads, an equally rapidly receding hairline, who had progressed through the. sixties when mem- orials had to be hand written with a fountain pen on parchment, when photocopiers were only, and could only be, used by the FBI, when a commissioner for oath's fee was 5/=d, when the best agricultural land in the country was selling for two hundred and forty pounds per acre, and you will have some idea of why I was wide open to a love affair with Joyce. I should explain that Joyce is the affectionate name given to the Ams t r ad PCW 8256. Having attended various seminars, talks, lectures, and exhibitions on computers, in the early 1980s, I was convinced that the marriage of wordprocessing and a solicitor's office was absolutely inevitable. The first problem - as always - was finance, or to be more precise, the lack of it. The second problem was that there was no affordable friendly computer around with whom I might form a liaison. The message that came across was that wordprocessors were very expensive, needed a dust free environment, a new wiring system, and a maintenance contract which would cost 10% of the original cost of the hardware and software. Enter Alan Michael Sugar and the (A)lan (M)ichael (S)ugar (Trad)ing Company Limited - AMSTRAD. In the summer of 1985 there appeared the AMSTRAD PCW 8256 selling for the noble sum of three hundred and ninety nine pounds Stg. It comprised an 8 bit computer which used the outdated CP/M processing system, an inte- grated screen and printer and came bundled with a wordprocessing program specially written for it

by Henry C.P. Barry Solicitor

She may be slow but who cares. She is adaptable. She is a linguist being able to print love letters in many languages, including Gaelic, Cyrillic, Greek, French, Spanish, and many more. Not only that but her dot-matrix printer can print in various fonts without changing print wheels. She can also do spreadsheets, accounts, graphs, play games, print sideways (with the right software), and all these in draft mode or near letter quality mode. There are literally hundreds of very affordable and very useful programs available and they are still being produced. As I have grown older she has grown younger. Locoscript which once could only run under CP/M, has recently been written to run under MS.DOS, and by means of what is known as Locolink I have now transferred all the precedent wills, land registry forms, declara- tions, conveyances, court docu-

Henry C. P. Barry seated before his beloved

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