It is fair to say that I owe the lifestyle we have now to computers. Way back in the mists of time, fretting about how Fran would cope with school, someone pressed a web link into my hand, I discovered home educating and the rest, as they say, is history. Through our clunky old computers we made friends, many of whom are now as close as family and very much real life friends, we’ve educated, we’ve laughed and shared and grieved.
We went from one occasional computer taking up a corner (and if I’m honest, too much of my time) to two, then we became people who ran a business online, one that now supports us. We couldn’t eat or live without our computer and that’s a fact. Our children work online, they work using Word and Excel and Powerpoint and blogs and gradually, as space became a premium and it became impossible to provide enough desktops, we all moved on to laptops. Which, if I’m honest, have their ups and downs too, not least that mine is so slow and clunky that I regularly consider hurling it through a window and the children have ones which whirl and clunk in a frankly unwholesome manner. 
It’s a bit of a conundrum; unlike a lot of families, we don’t spend hours on games but we do have one desktop which is banished to a side room, not because it is old and defunct but because, in order to run silly racing and flying games that Max occasionally plays, it has a fan worthy of a 747 engine. It is SO noisy. Noisy, big, unsightly and still with the endless ‘parts’ issue of older desktops. I want to change that room into a sitting room for the kids and put the Wii in there, but I’m thwarted by it not being compatible with the screen we have.
I’d never even heard of the www.dell.co.uk/all-in-one let alone seen one and had no idea, if I’m honest, that home computers had got all sleek and squished together into one thing-ish. I can see this really appealing to us next time we upgrade. The very fact you can connect a console to it is a huge plus and if anything irritates me into moments of house-proudness (and it has to be bad for that to happen) it is wire nests. This seems like it has to have less wires and can be everything from a tv to a dvd player to a computer – we don’t have much space with 6 of us in the house and reducing extra gadgets is great – having lots of things in one small footprint of desk area seems a real bonus.
It is inevitable that with our girls heading into teenage years now we need to make space for their computing and tv needs to evolve, while letting the little girls stay little and watch cartoons somewhere else; we need to encourage them to explore technology like touch screens and develop strong computing skills. They need good access to the interest (within limits that are safe and wise) and it is great to be able to have fun together, learn together and enjoy technology without the constant wrestle with poor performance or outdated hardware. If I don’t make sure they are technologically clever enough to take over the business, I’m never going to be able to retire 
I’m honestly surprised to hear myself being so enthusiastic, but i really wish we’d known about these before we bought our last desktop.
Further information can be found here and you can also watch the youtube Video
Sponsored Post – the fee for this post will be donated to Hinchingbrooke SCBU in memory of our little boy, Freddie.
