At 4:16 this afternoon, I saw this old typewriter in a store window in Cannes. Less than one hour later, I am typing these lines on my MacBook Pro running OS X Snow Leopard, the most advanced operating system in the world (sorry, Djukel). I still own a considerably more modern, but still fully manual Olympia Monica typewriter. It is on the Monica that I typed my high school essays, the editorials for the school paper, as well as pretty much all my correspondence. These days, aligning things and correcting errors is much easier; on the other hand, back then I never wondered about how much battery power was left , and backing up meant putting the car in reverse. Still, I wouldn’t go back. Sorry, Monica, not even close, and clearly no cigar (apologies to Bill Clinton).