It’s an incredible feeling to know I made a difference in someone’s life. Thanks for sharing this story, Sean. And if you come up with a copy of that story I wrote back in 1992, let me know. I’d like to read it again, too!
It’s a wonderful life
Published
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
That is a great story — both stories, actually. (WP 5.1 was for a long time my word processor of choice until I blundered across Word for Windows 3.1 and got hooked on that.) It’s amazing how much has changed in the software world, but the sense of excitement that people feel when digging into something new seems to stay the same (thankfully!)
I bought my first PC in the summer of 1997. I didn’t know much about computers back then but I used to tinker the poor thing and always call for help. The man who sold me the PC was so desperate that he gave me the book “Using Windows 95”. The author was someone named Ed Bott and I am an MCP now.
Ed I wish you and your family a happy new year!
George from Greece
It’s true. For me it was my dad’s subscription to Byte magazine that first got me interested. Twenty years later, my team develops a network management tool that affects the daily lives of millions of users around the world. Thanks to Ed and all the other journalists who have piqued the curiousity of untold wannabe geeks. 🙂
I remember reading your column in PC Computing back in the early 1990’s, when I was barely a teenager – it was always a fun read.