20 Days Without a PC

Day 1 Through Day 6

Day 1

I'm trying to deal with every last e-mail in my in-box before I shut down my home office's three computers. I print my contacts and calendar, and I send a note to friends mentioning that I'll be off e-mail but available by phone or snail mail.

Then I turn off my slim Sony Z505 laptop and lock it in my office safe for dramatic effect. I power down the two other computers as well. The Eagle has landed.

Already, I miss Google. Want a recipe for ravioli in sage cream sauce? Need to know what a grimoire is? Want to see what people think about their 1999 Audi A4 Quattro wagons with Tiptronic transmission? I did recently, and Googled my way to answers in seconds. Without the Web, it dawns on me, I'll have to work harder to learn stuff. Or live with knowing less.

Day 2

I drag my wife Betsy's IBM Selectric II typewriter in from the garage, where it's been moldering for a decade, so I can type a journal for my editor. I can't recall the last time I wrote anything longer than a brief note using anything but a PC.

I blow off some dust, and the Selectric seems to work. My 10-year-old son, Jack, starts typing up his homework, a pen-pal letter to another fourth-grader in Wyoming. Jack doesn't remember a world without computers, but he pounds on the Selectric like a pro. With no computer to fight over, will we compete for the typewriter instead?

Day 3

Blissfully free of the need to monitor my e-mail, I spend the morning goofing off at a coffee shop with friends, and then I head to the guitar store to test-drive some Stratocasters. It feels like a highly artificial vacation: PC World is paying me not to go through my usual daily grind. (Try striking that kind of a deal with your boss.) Later on, my editor cheerfully tells me that the experiment is probably costing me money--my name keeps coming up for possible PC World assignments, but nobody wants to give them to an unwired author.

Day 4

I get up early and head downstairs to the office to write in my journal. The room is incredibly peaceful--the three loud computers no longer rule the roost.

My usual background noise would consist of live-band MP3s. Instead I pull out interesting CDs and LPs I haven't listened to in years. I realize I've been downloading music faster than I can enjoy it.

The mail comes, and I discover that one of the friends I alerted to my experiment has sent me a warning note: You are in such deep &@#* if you find out you like this. He could be right. Computers and the Web are understandably pervasive forces in my life. But without them, I feel a wonderful lack of mental clutter. I could get addicted to this, or at least try to find a way to get more of it into my life.

Day 5

Hmmm--this Selectric needs work. The right-margin bell doesn't ring, so I keep running off the edge of the paper. Does anyone fix typewriters in 2003? Yup, and business appears to be thriving: I find a repair service in the Yellow Pages but must wait my turn for a house call.

Jack asks when the computer will be available again. "In a couple of weeks," I tell him. Instead of playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and cruising skateboarding-magazine sites for video clips, he actually skateboards and reads.

Day 6

My typing is improving. I crank out three pages in an hour and a half, and run off the side of the page only once. Still, it would have taken me about half that time to do the job in Word, and it would have looked a lot more professional.

Bereft of e-mail, I walk to a nearby drugstore-cum-post office, copy the pages, and mail them to my editor. Total cost of production and delivery (not including the cost of the typewriter): 67 cents. Total travel time from Boulder, Colorado, to my San Francisco-based editor: four days.