I use IT a lot in my job, though I freely admit to knowing/understanding very little about digital matters, having ended up here by default when my previous post within the organisation ceased to exist. I'm quite indifferent to what I do, and find myself cynical about most aspects of IT, seeing it largely as a self-serving industry that sucks people in with its flashy equipment and slick programmes, knowing that once they are on board they're prisoners for life, committed to upgrading hardware and software forever after on a regular basis. I hate that. My upbringing in a city that was still recovering from the war with parents who had lived through it instilled in me a sense of looking after things, repairing them when they went wrong and making them last a long time. That applied to everything, and so I kept my last car for over 12 years, have the same record turntable that I was given as an 18th birthday present 32 years ago, will always buy secondhand quality tools in preference to cheap, imported new ones, etc..
Thus, I still use the Pentax KX that I bought in 1986 and getting into an expensive loop of buying into the digital domain doesn't interest me one jot.
I originally found APUG and continue to use it because I have the facilities to do so at work. Though I have an ancient computer at home, I don't have the Internet facilities there to participate in APUG, so if I didn't work in IT, I wouldn't be one of the 39,000.
Steve
