In 1985, I installed my first computer, a NEC-98-vm for the first time. It was an expensive purchase, costing about 1.5 million yen, including automatic machine (PC) translation software (made by Bravis, about 700,000 yen). Perhaps the price was only natural at the time though.

　I also purchased Diamond MDB (My Database) for research and data collection purposes for about 800,000 yen, which was not for my daily work.

　At the time, a carnation growing company regularly gave me translation work, and I purchased the PC translation software for the purpose of actually investigating what machine translation using a PC would be like.

　Even today, there are machine translation systems that can produce excellent translation results for hundreds of millions of yen, but that is not the case for a few hundred thousand yen, so if you are going to spend the same amount of money, we recommend that you purchase only a good dictionary.

　Also, Diamond's MDB (My Database) was not usable due to the fact that it was launched at an early stage, the communication speed environment was poor. MDB was finally sold to NIFTY. However, they did not back any of the high membership fees to their members.

　Do not trust a company just because of its name. There are too many untrustworthy companies these days, from major companies such as Kanebo, Daiei, Japan Highway Public Corporation, major trading companies, and JR West Japan to small and medium-sized local companies engaged in house remodeling.

　It is also not a good idea to overly trust brand names and rush into buying. These are examples of my failure by haste shopping.

　It was an expensive lesson to learn that we need to carefully examine the timing of our purchases, and not be overconfident in brand names.

Serially posted again in English on Tuesdays every other week.

隔週で火曜日に英語で連載再開中

Please refer to the following site for the pictures and/or references.

https://www.facebook.com/ElectricitySavingNo.1