IT and Computer Science

I am awaiting delivery of a new laptop. I have had one laptop before, bought for me by a company that I was working for, and at the time, it was cutting edge. But after I hit it, it was never quite the same, so now I only use it for playing movies on, as it has an S-Video output (in other words I can plug it into the TV).

The new one, I think I am justified in saying, is also fairly snazzy. It is what you might call a tablet/laptop hybrid. That means that as well as working and looking the same as a laptop, the screen swivels round and snaps onto the casing, forming it into a tablet. You can then write on the screen with a special pen, or touch it with your finger, or, heaven forbid, some other part of your anatomy.

It has long been a dream of mine to have such a thing, but I only found out by chance that they even existed, while looking online for a laptop. A friend has a tablet, which is great, as it allows you to handwrite notes in lectures, which are then digitally saved, but doesn't have an attached keyboard. With handwriting recognition, of course, writing can be converted into a typed form. But the killer app for me would be annotating lecture slides. Then my notes and the slides would be in one place.

It's due to arrive today, and I'm actually nervous. I bought it online, and the supplier doesn't have a reassuringly smooth order tracking process, so I suppose I'm slightly skeptical that it will actually arrive. I'm going to France in a couple of days and I would be disappointed not to take it, as I need to revise for upcoming exams.

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As some of you may know, I'm studying computer science. When I tell people this, one of the more common responses is - "oh, my hard drive doesn't work - do you know why?" or some such IT question. Actually I hate IT: the complexity, the endless acronyms, the corporate people power-dressing a crap product to sell it to clueless small businesses... the sheer stifling boredom of it. I get so turned off by IT publications that it makes me wonder why on earth I would want anything to do with computers.

Stacked on top of that are the horrendous user interfaces of some computer programs, which make them extremely frustrating to use. How many people have been insulted by a message that pops up saying something like "Illegal memory request in module 111073 - this program will now terminate"? Or not been able to make progress with a program because against all rules of common sense they have hidden a common function in an obscure place.

Well, those things *are* improving, partly because people on computer science degrees are being taught how to design interfaces better. It's quite a challenging thing to do, I am finding. For my third year project, I'm considering doing some kind of user interface project. I'll say more about that later, I'm sure.

Next article will be a continuation of this - why I *do* like computer science.