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The personal computer and INC. have grown up together. Over the years we have published a number of feature stories on both the machines and the companies that make them, starting with an article in our first issue about a small but feisty microcomputer company that called itself, of all things, Apple Computer. This month's cover story, focusing on portable microcomputers, is only the latest in a fairly long line.

With all the attention these machines and their makers are getting today -- including a new breed of periodicals exclusively dedicated to their users -- it pays to look occasionally at the impact of the microcomputer in human terms, to remember that the real story is the eye-opening personal process every new user goes through in becoming comfortable with a computer. During the past year this point was driven home to me on two separate occasions.

Six months ago my father, who has written a dozen books and countless articles using a combination of legal pads and electric typewriters, mentioned casually that a word processor had been installed in the university office where he works Of course, he quickly added, he wouldn't use it -- but it would make the secretaries' lives easier. But the lure of technology is strong. Curiosity led him to try out the machine, and, now, with his typewriter sitting unused on a shelf, he wonders how he ever got along without the word processor.

In a similar vein, I told my colleagues at INC. that the text processing system we installed last summer wasn't for me. I would stick to my pencil and typewriter, a holdout for tradition to the end. But just a week after our system was installed, I began to play with a machine, and in two hours my perspective on the computer age had changed forever. How did I ever write and edit without a computer? Or, more to the point, why should I?

The examples cited have nothing to do with portable micros directly but everything to do with the process of buying and using one. When computing was strictly the province of the data processing department, the machine might seem to have put a greater distance between people and their work. But the personal computer, and sophisticated software, have achieved the opposite. Direct access to data, and the ability to manipulate it while considering a broad range of options, puts technology into the hands of managers themselves, and, in turn demystifies the computer. As portability increases and cost decreases, utility will increase as well.

Perhaps most important, however, is the comfort factor. The more one works with a computer -- word processor or portable micro -- the less intimidating it seems in any other form.