I know we are living in a technology driven age but personally, I hate it.

Maybe it’s because I have never had a computer that wasn’t basically a piece of junk.

I take that back. I had one laptop once that was decent, and my work laptop is decent, too  — knock on wood.

Or maybe, it is just the kind I buy.

The laptop in direct line of my ire is this HP Stream — I can only imagine what the ‘stream’ stands for. A couple of ideas come to mind.

This is the biggest waste of money I have ever spent, and I have some questionable fashion from the ’90’s somewhere in the depths of my closet.

I bought my current laptop when I started a new position a little over a year ago and needed to have Windows 10. Not sure why anyone would want that as an operating system; it’s not that great, in my opinion. I’ve heard horror stories of how some friends had updated to 10 and lost everything.

After buying the laptop, I found it would crash on me several times a day.

Why? Because I had more than two tabs open.

I constantly had messages there was not enough storage — on a brand-new device. The suspected reason was the fact it only has 4GB of memory, which is probably the equivalent to a thimble.

I need to have several tabs open at once constantly, so my workflow was greatly impeded.

I made do but found myself cussing under my breath constantly.

A few months later, my work sent out an email to everyone, inquiring about their devices.

I thought since mine was just a few months old, it would be fine, but I got an email letting me know I’d be receiving a company laptop. Their pity at how pathetic my device is was palpable.

Let me tell you, there’s a big difference in the way that machine works versus the flimsy little HP one I have.

Of course, it is a bit pricier too. I find it hard to spend a lot of money on something when the most I have ever had one work was a couple of years.

The sole exception was one that lasted about six years; in a fit of frustration, I somehow pushed the start button in too far once when trying to restart it, and had to use a tiny screwdriver to turn it on after that.

Still, it worked better than the puny little waste of buttons I have now.

I am just not one of those people who goes gaga over the latest iPhone or high speed anything.

I do not care one iota about how many gigabytes something has, nor do I have to upgrade on a whim.

Even though computers have made it easier in some regards, I miss the days of my old word processor, where I could type my documents and not lose them because of some stupid fluke.

Maybe it’s because I am a pen and paper gal, and one who loves the feel of a book in her hands versus a device with print so dang tiny I can’t read it.

But I just loathe most technology.

I had typed out my column and was about to do a final save. As I went to do so, something happened and, poof, like Keyser Soze, it was gone.

I tried everything possible, and searched Google for possible fixes. A painstaking process, since the laptop would freeze up and crash every two seconds.

Nothing worked.

It would show in the documents but when I tried to open it, I got a message stating it was either deleted or removed, or was in some irretrievable part of the universe. Probably floating around the ethers with the U.S.S. Enterprise or the Battleship Galactica.

I spent a good portion of my night trying to recover it to no avail.

“I don’t know why people think Bill Gates is going to make a Covid vaccine,” I told my husband. “I haven’t seen proof he can make a Microsoft product that’s worth a ding dang toot.”

Lamar nodded. He would tell you he doesn’t have a computer, has no desire to have one, and his closest connection to being ‘on the grid’ is his cell phone, and it doesn’t work half the time.

“What do you think is wrong with your computer?” he asked.

“For starters, it’s an HP product,” I said. I have never had good luck with HP, but they are cheap and there’s an adage there about how you get what you pay for that seems to fit this situation.

The second problem is probably related to how now, most technology is made to be disposable and replaced about every two years. At least that’s been my experience.

I know technology is not going away. If anything, it will continue to expand and take over more and more of our lives.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, because I absolutely won’t.

Sudie Crouch is an award-winning humor columnist residing in the North Georgia Mountains among the bears, deer, and possibly Sasquatch. You can connect with her on Facebook at Mama Said: A Collection of Wit, Humor, and Deep-Fried Wisdom. Her recently published book, ‘Mama Said: A Collection of Wit, Wisdom, and Deep-Fried Humor’ is available in paperback and Kindle download on Amazon.