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Mission Impossible

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

One of the first things that I did when I started working was

to buy an address book and a visiting card holder. At that time, the only phone

numbers I needed to look up belonged to friends and relatives. I soon started

acquiring acquaintances whose contact details I needed to look up. Both the

address book and visiting card holder started to fill up nicely. These tools

worked fine but could be cumbersome to update. For example, when a contact

changed jobs, I had to tear up his old visiting card or strike out his entry in

the address book and replace it with a new entry. I soon started looking for a

way to apply technology to the task.

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Those were the days when the PC had just been introduced.

dBase III was the database of choice and the options available were (a) Maintain

the database in dBase with custom programs for searching and directory printing

or (b) Use packaged software like SideKick to maintain an address book. I chose

SideKick, partly because it was the first genuine TSR (Terminate and Stay

Resident) program that I had seen. SideKick was soon found lacking in

flexibility and I tried dBase. dBase gave me complete control, but writing the

programs took a lot of time.

By this time, I was dissatisfied by the PC as a medium for

storing addresses and phone numbers. My manual address book was portable, my PC

was not. To refer to addresses while traveling, I’d have to print out the

address book and lug it around. Even a single change could require up to 10

pages of printing (assuming I printed only the alphabetical section that had

changed). Finally, PC-based phone books lacked flexibility. For instance, I

sometimes have telephone numbers of up to a dozen people in a single

organization. Such information can’t be easily dealt with using a rigidly

defined field structure.

And then came the digital diary. I thought it the ideal

solution and bought a Casio model with 32 kB RAM. Finally a tool that could be

carried around and was electronic. My Casio worked well and I had soon abandoned

my PC-based address book. I did keep my manual phone book, perhaps because it

was the best backup of my data.

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Things began to move faster. First came the laptop. I

resisted the compelling appeal of moving my address data to my laptop, as I had

realized that I wouldn’t carry my laptop even half the amount I carried my

digital diary. Fax and e-mail became widespread and suddenly I had problems

cramming data into my digital diary. The field structure was such that fitting

in two office numbers, two residence numbers, one fax number, and an e- mail

address was not easy. I was in the market for another solution.

Enter the cellular phone and presto, I had another phone

book. My initial enthusiasm (for the address book function) gave way to complete

irritation. Mobile phone address books really limit the amount of information

you can keep. The second problem is that I tend to switch off my mobile phone,

when in office or at home, and switching it on to get a phone number is really

irritating. Lastly, the chicklet keys on the keyboard are a huge disincentive to

updating the database.

The last straw was introduced by the growing proliferation of

e-mail. My e-mail address directory grows at a much faster rate than my phone

book. Theoretically, I should consolidate all types of information in my e-mail

address book. Practically the solution is not workable, as I use separate

machines for day-to-day work and Internet access. In any case, the lack of

portability of my Internet machine would be a major stumbling block.

So, I’m back to a hybrid solution involving a manual phone

book, a PDA (instead of my digital diary), and an e-mail address book. And I

believe that the predicted convergence between mobile phones and PCs will not

make any difference. It’s easier to use computers to track balance sheets than

to use them for tracking addresses.

The bottom line Advanced technology can prove useless when dealing with

trivial problems. You should know when to cut your losses.

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