EVERY now and again some accident of technology forces me into an unusual direction to experience something new, or sometimes old. On a recent overseas trip my word processing package delivered a crippling blow by developing a very peculiar fault at 35,000ft. On every carriage return it would create a new copy of either the line I was working on or the page, or complete document, or everything at once. And this at the start of a five-day excursion with little chance of a wide-bandwidth connection for online repairs.

Fortunately, I had a standby word processor produced by an entirely different company on my hard drive. In a matter of minutes I was back in action, typing another in this series of monologues.

It is amazing how we are so easily conditioned by the second-rate if force fed a diet of technology dictated by a need to interface with the rest of the world and compliance within our companies and organisations. What a delight - a word processor that is clean and uncluttered to look at, intuitive and easy to use, extremely fast and responsive, very light on memory and as solid as a rock.

What have I been doing? Why have I been suffering all these years? Suddenly I seem another 10 per cent more productive, and hey, this word processor allows me to translate too and from just about every format of package I ever heard of including my old one.

It gets better. This new package only requires 30 per cent of the memory normally devoted to my word processor. It simultaneously occupies less hard disk and demands less RAM, while running at something approaching twice the speed at my human interface level. It opens up and saves faster, spell-checks, does word counts, corrects, backs up, and formats instantly. What an absolute joy, a technology that matches me and my lust for speed.

Somewhere in all of this there is a gradual feeling of familiarity. I seem to have been here before, but a long time ago. I'm pretty sure this is a modern version of my original word processor that arrived on a single floppy disk well over a decade ago. It is now flooding back to me; this is where I first learned word processing. No handbooks, no training courses to attend because there was never any need or demand for them, just good design. What have we done? Why have we allowed mediocre technology to take over? Surely we have not rolled over just to appease the gods of corporate and global compatibility.

In this new package I now discover an equally delightful spreadsheet and graphics package with all the facilities I need, and similar economies of memory and speed. Perhaps office suites are like video recorders, the best do not, or cannot, win, because the market just goes with dominance and ease of compatibility. Perhaps we have to wait until a technology is so crushingly bad that there is a rebellion.

The five days following this incident were crucial in my making a bold decision. Not only will I continue my personal policy of not operating with a standard PC platform, I will not run the standard sets of software either. It is just too tough when there are such wonderful alternatives available. Why ride a motorbike if a car is cheaper?

Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is:
http://cochrane.org.uk