As a kid my complaint was that the “magique” didn’t allow you to pick up the stylus and move it elsewhere without leaving a trail. (As the animation has succeeded in doing.) By the way, I’ll never forget the Dilbert cartoon where he tells the boss he needs to hold his laptop upside down and shake it.
The Christmas before last, my stepson, William, was preparing to deploy to Iraq and was going to take his laptop along with him during the deployment so that he could communicate with my wife, his mother. However, in doing so, that would have left his wife without a computer in the house. So, as a Christmas gift, my wife and I bought a new laptop for her so that she could communicate with Will.
However, right after we purchased the laptop, I saw that Dilbert cartoon and came up with an idea for a gag gift for her as well. I opened the boxes that the laptop came in and took out the computer, leaving all of the cords and disks and manuals in the box, and replaced the laptop in the box with a full-sized Etch-a-Sketch, along with a homemade spiral-bound "instruction manual" for its use. It had a picture of the Etch-A-Sketch on the cover and, inside, it just quite simply instructed the user to "reboot" the computer whenever the "screen froze" by turning it upside down and shaking it vigorously.
We then resealed the boxes with glue, put the laptop in a laptop bag, and waited for our opportunity. As William was deploying about two weeks before Christmas, we had our "Christmas Eve" about three weeks out. Will's wife was ecstatic when she unwrapped the box and saw that it was a computer for her. However, the look on her face when she opened the box and withdrew the "laptop" was priceless.
She was overjoyed when we gave her the actual laptop in the computer bag.
I didn’t like them at all and never wanted one but do remember one afternoon sitting in a porch swing with a boy and attempting to clean the screen completely. I think we succeeded, I do know that we could see the inner workings.
