New Technology – Hesitation and Surprise

Some days new technology (at least to you) and change are imposed on you by no choice of your own. Several weeks ago my 19″ monitor that I use with my laptop just kicked-the-bucket in the middle of the day. I thought no big deal. HAH!

It seems that it is very difficult to find the “old” style square monitor. They are all wide screen now. In my mind I’m thinking:

  • How is Microsoft Word and Excel going to work here?
  • Won’t it distort the Word page and not look like I expect when working on a client’s template?
  • I don’t game, why would I possibly need a wide screen monitor?

NewImage

See, even those of us that are nerds and love technology have our own aversions and doubts to some changes. Once I had spent time finding out I could get an exact replacement for my screen but that I would have to pay shipping and it is more expensive that everything else, I decided to bit the bullet and buy a new widescreen monitor.

I go off to the store. I’m on the monitor aisle, apparently looking a bit perplexed and a nice young man asks if he can help. I ask him if one of these is hooked up to a computer with Microsoft Word so I can see how it shows up. I wish I had a picture of the look on his face. There was a mixture of:

  • This old grey haired lady is a looney.
  • What does she mean what does it look like on the screen?
  • It looks like it is supposed to look lady.

But he proceeded to take me to a computer and show me how Word would work. Well, so what’s my problem here. Looks like it is supposed to look. He went to the back room, got me the monitor, I checked out and took it home.

Well, first of all the new one weighs about 1/2 of the old one. Next it was so easy to set up. And best of all, some programs open up full screen on this thing and the print is nice and big. I am hooked. So I went from hesitation to surprise. Change in hardware and software is not always this easy. But it shows that we should keep an open mind. We might be pleasantly surprised by the change.

What technology change challenges are you contemplating or that you have encountered? What are your concerns?



  • Nibby Priest

    Not only with hardware, I see this many times with software too.  Our agency GoVaughn.com Insurance has for many years used PaperPort.  Many in our office do not want to leave that software for a more robust real piece of software such as Adobe Acrobat.  Once they give it at try they say it possibly will work.

    I’m curious to know exactly what Make and Model of monitor you purchased Pat.

    • Nibby, I bought an HP2311x. I have seen others tied to PaperPort for a very long time and successfully move from it but as with other big changes it is painful. I find so many other document management solutions so much better than PaperPort. Good luck. Let me know if I can answer any questions.

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