He needn’t call himself a “computer lawyer.” A good contracts lawyer
or intellectual-property expert, if conversant with computers, might
also work out.
If the job is simple enough, don’t negotiate in the same detail that GM
does when installing a $10-million mainframe. Again, even with small
tasks, do sign a contract or write a letter similar to the sample one on
page 114. And if you can afford it and the job’s important enough, think
about still-another contract—for a second consultant to check up on the
first.
BACKUP IX ❑ Window Shopping
The ad men and writers have had fun with the inevitable: “Microsoft Does
Windows.”
You read the headline and envision some programmers with buckets and
rags, bravely scaling Manhattan skyscrapers to help executives get a
clear view when they’re looking up from their computer screens.
=Windows=, however, actually are _within_ computer screens.
You can split your screen into parts: one window showing a chart, for
instance, while the other displays the report into which you’re
inserting it.
Of course you need a screen big and sharp enough to get good views of
many windows.
And the software problems could be hairy. Microsoft as of late 1984 was
months and months behind in releasing its windows-type product. Other
companies were behind on theirs, too. Someone once coined a term for
much-talked-about-but-late software—“vaporware”—and it is sure described
windows.[104]
Footnote 104:
I asked John Butler, a Microsoft products manager, why windows would
hit the market months late. “We don’t like to announce products too
far ahead of time when they’re not fully developed” he said, “but with
Windows we had to tell other software companies about its existence
early on—so they could write programs taking full advantage of ours.”
Well, now that the miracle windows are theoretically here, are they
worth gazing at?
Depends.
_Don‘t_ buy windows if you’re just writing short letters and you needn’t
blend anything else into them or regularly don’t consult other material.
But consider them if, say, you want to look at many spreadsheets quickly
while writing reports.
Think what this means to executives with cluttered disks, er, desks.
They can stash their material away electronically and not have to print
hard copies as often in the future.
“I can imagine people having as many as twenty or thirty windows ready
to call up with notes or working papers,” says John Butler, a product
manager with Microsoft.
Also, windows software may let you switch noticeably faster from one
program to another. And with a RAM (temporary computer memory) above
500K, you may even be able to do so instantly.
The plus of this? You won’t need to return as often to your computer’s
operating system and feed the programs one by one into the RAM.
So the machine may seem to impose itself less between you and your work.
When “windows shopping,” however, you should ask these questions and
more:[105]