Technology & Innovation

Back from hols and 1,024 emails in the inbox. Bet you can’t beat that. It’s always the same after a period away and it takes me a good couple of hours to shift through what is, if I’m perfectly honest, 95% dross. You may think it’s great being so popular but you’d be wrong. And they’re not all spam offering me four gross of Cialis for $129.99, or a chance-of-a-lifetime opportunity to help some West African whose father has sadly passed away and who needs help getting his secret stash out of the country. No - they’re mostly no-hope press releases from desperate PRs.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, as soon as I switched it on, my Dell started producing some alarming clicks, clunks and whirrs and then went on a general go-slow. Time to call in the IT Boys. An upgrade and a new hard drive was the diagnosis; up came the guy with his sonic screwdriver and off I went for a meeting.

When it comes to my tech equipment I’m fairly conservative and don’t take to change lightly (I still think wistfully sometimes about my old Amstrad 8256 and stuck with my Nokia 6310 until last year). So, imagine my horror when I returned and didn’t recognise my desktop, background and, most importantly, my Outlook. The new version is completely different and I was thrown into a complete funk. It was like coming back to your house and finding someone had painted the hall mauve, laid shag pile in the living room and interfered with the cat. That is how intimate our relations with technology have become. 

As for me, I need another holiday.

In today's bulletin:
Credit crunch leaves UK £600bn out of pocket
Water lot of money to spend  
Editor's blog: The tyranny of technology  
Olympics give us a sporting chance  
Business Travel Special: Durrants Hotel, London