Something old is something new.

When my dad came to visit, he brought two laptop computers, in addition to one he sent me a month ago. These computers were donated by clients of a friend of my dad's. I want to say THANK YOU to everyone involved and show you where the computers ended up.

The laptops are a few years old, but still function perfectly well. They came with clean installationss of Windows XP, AVG Free antivirus software, and Microsoft Office. I added iTunes, Firefox, Microsoft Encarta (which is a lot cooler than I ever imagined), TypeFaster, and Rosetta Stone with American English Levels 1, 2 and 3. All the program interfaces, except for the operating system and Microsoft Word, are in Spanish. Two of the computers have WiFi cards and can be connected with my "high" speed DSL. (Broadband service here is not exactly universal; I have DSL rated at 1MB/second, which is effectively about 100kb/second. But it's internet, and it's fairly reliable for browsing. I can even stream some videos and download a 100MB file in about 20 minutes.)

The first computer went to my goddaughter. She's been using it for about a month and it's great. She has computer access in school, so she was already comfortable with using the operating system and a few programs. She was less experienced with downloading programs and organizing files, which makes sense, since they're probably not allowed to do that on school computers. The real biggie is internet access at home. One day while doing homework, she asked if I knew what a "ho-ule" was. After a brief discussion about what subject she was working on (Science), and after I figured out that something pronounced "ho-ule" in Spanish would be spelled "joule" I told her (in my toddler Spanish) that a joule is a unit of measurement of energy. Correct, yes, but not a terribly complete answer. Then I said, "why don't you look it up on the internet?" That was a very cool moment.

The second computer is going to stay here for the rest of the family to use. I'm going to start giving my friend, who's never really used a computer, some basic lessons so she can use the web (by "web," of course, I mean Google). She's already been asking me to "look it up on the internet" so I think she'll have a lot of fun doing it herself.

The family decided to give the third computer (the one without WiFi) to a 12-year-old cousin. She just finished primary school and had her confirmation, so the computer was a gift to celebrate her accomplishments and acknowledge her entry to secondary school in the fall. Her family (my friend's sister and her three kids) lives way out in the country at the top of a mountain about an hour past the other side of Guadalajara (about two hours from where I live). Their village is teeny-tiny and a lot of the houses don't have running water or telephones. There's definitely not a cyber-cafe in town. The family doesn't have a home phone (mom and the oldest brother have pay-as-you-go cell phones), so they don't have internet access, but we stocked the computer with some downloaded desktop backgrounds, a little music from our collections, and the programs mentioned above. This is where Microsoft Encarta is really cool--you don't need internet access to use the encyclopedia. I added a headset with microphone so they can use Rosetta Stone, and my dad brought a carrying bag.


Here are some pics of opening the present during a family outing to the nearby state forest. You can tell by the look on her face that even after she sees the computer bag and feels how heavy it is, she's not quite ready to believe it's really going to be a computer.

Yesterday at home, we installed the rest of the programs, and my goddaughter showed her cousin how to navigate the English operating system. We practiced opening and using all the programs, learned how to make folders and organize files, and surfed the web for desktop background pictures of cute boys. (They appreciated the teddy bears that I downloaded, but those were rapidly replaced.)

In the States, how quickly does a computer go from state-of-the-art to out of date? From where a lot of us sit, including me with my two-year-old 15-inch MacBook Pro Deluxe Edition which I've been thinking is due for an upgrade (although I'm starting to rethink that), these three computers might seem archaic. But in Mexico it's different. Yes, there are plenty of people who have the latest computers, but there are other people for whom technology is completely out of reach. Thanks to the generosity of those who donated their old computers and others who pointed those computers in this direction, these families have access to a luxury that most of us consider indispensable.