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iPad 2 helps take you from i-Resist to i-Enthralled
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I resisted joining the i-Tech revolution.

I use my cell phone simply as a phone.

This act of resistance to the march of technology has left me somewhere between the Stone Age and Medieval Times in terms of the i-World.

Going from a manual typewriter to an electric typewriter in high school was cutting edge.

I was exposed to Fortran in college and quickly determined that I didn’t have a promising career as a computer programmer. As far as being a data processor, I figured the world would never do without typewriters.

That proclamation pretty much sealed any potential I may have had for a career of being a prophet.

My first exposure to a word processor was in 1980. It was part of a Mycro-Tek system. You’d be hard pressed to find one today unless you look in the Smithsonian Museum tucked somewhere between the crank-arm telephone and a vacuum tube radio.

I became cutting edge for two years in the late 1980s when I had a Tandy 80 working as an Associated Press stringer covering the Sacramento Kings. The Trash 80 - as they were affectionately called - weighed as much as a brick. It allowed you to see two lines at a time. To send it you had to use acoustical couplers with an honest-to-goodness phone. It was high tech when Radio Shack came up with the ability to bypass the couplers. The upgrade everyone wanted was the Trash 102. It had a flip up screen and showed about 10 lines.

There were a lot of naysayers who believed the Tandy 102 concept was impractical. The screen was subject to being easily damaged. The Trash 80, on the other hand, could be drop kicked and just get a ding or two.

When I used my first Apple Book I thought it was the ultimate in cutting-edge. It was light - perhaps the weight of three quarters of a brick. It actually saved the phone numbers you needed to dial to send your stories.

Smart phones never got my attention because they are impractical for writing stories. Try typing a 500-word story with keys more suited to midgets that make Lilliputians seem like kissing cousins of Paul Bunyan.

I thought iPads were more of the same.

Boy was I wrong. Coming out of the gate, it is three times quicker and two times easier to compose stories and send them than it is on a personal computer or even an Apple.

So I guess with an iPad 2 I’ll be close to cutting edge for a year perhaps at tops.

Then before you know it, the iPad 2 will look as prehistoric as the Tandy 80 does now.

This column is the opinion of managing editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Bulletin or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA.  He can be contacted at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com or 209-249-3519.