February 8: Oita Group of Friend tries personal computing by Mie
"Personal computers are booming today", "People say that the Internet may cause troubles", "PC is too difficult for us....." Some members of Oita Group of Friends, which I belong to, have been thinking that personal computers are something hard to use. Time has changed, however. Homemakers have to learn how to use computers. A floppy disk was sent from the headquarters of the Group in order to add up last year's household accounts of each branch using a spread sheet.
	The figure summarizing more than 15,000 household accounts from all over the country attracts attention of the Prime Minister's Office due to its high reliability. Here in Oita, we planned to master how to use a spread sheet, Excel, to add up our house hold accounts. Excel is somewhat unfamiliar to me because I don't use it in making my home page. I crammed up to use a data-input software based upon Excel for today's class. I put a note PC and a heavy desktop monitor into the car and headed to our meeting place. I hope the display will help many people view the work easily.
	Seven members showed up today, including the general leader of the Oita branch and a group leader of household account section. I am usually a student on how to handle a PC, but today I have to explain a PC to others saying, "This is a mouse, the main body of the PC is this small box, and a large TV screen-like thing is a monitor which indicates what is being run in the main body."
	"A floppy disk should be inserted here. Explorer makes visible what is in a PC in a tree-structure as you see on the display. Can you identify a folder that contain a spread sheet for calculation?" All members watch the display and input household data of each family into the worksheet.
	Today, we used two PCs, mine and another one. After the work, we took pictures by my digital camera each other and viewed them impromptu. It was a fun to browse my home page, playing on a painting tool, and trying to write an E-mail. They seemed to understand what could be done by a PC. They said they would be happy to have another chance like this. I think, in the 21st century, almost all homemakers will fully use personal computers in their homes.

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