Pissed off with Windows

[Misunderstood]

Why?

Well, seeing as you asked...

Mainly because I am tight. and proud.

I use DOS when I want to get basic work done and don't want to lose processing power to a graphic interface,

I had acquired a number of very specialist programs that run on 3.1 and to replace them would cost thousands and I don't want then THAT much!  Including a star map that runs like blazes on a 3GHz processor   

I actually wrote some programs for 3.1 and they worked. I can't be bothered to learn all over to do that again.

I have a wonderful collection of avionic simulator stuff that runs on 98SE  and a lot of games and stuff I don't want to lose.

And various bits 'n' bobs from 2k that won't run on XP and so on.

I have been running a evaluation copy of Vista for getting on a year and it should have collapsed on June 1st and it didn't 

Finally I have documents and programs I created on a BBC-B that I still refer to and one of the best collection of Arcade games ever seen. but I corrupted my ELITE    (5 1/4" Floppy disks are getting on a bit) and I cannot find a replacement, the PC versions weren't half as good  I have a world standard score on "Swoop"  .

The best of it all is that when I have finished with the virtual machines they just disappear they, don't collect dust or sink under other stuff, and are always available at a click.

OK?

[Snoopy]

Of course you do dear, anything you say is OK with me >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Backs towards door, nervously.

[Grumpmeister]

I have been running a evaluation copy of Vista for getting on a year and it should have collapsed on June 1st and it didn't 
OK?

That wouldnt happen to be one of the ones on a high end laptop that Microsoft 'lent' to prolific bloggers and then gave up any hope of getting the machines back would it?

[Darwins Selection]

Why?

Well, seeing as you asked...

Mainly because I am tight. and proud.

I use DOS when I want to get basic work done and don't want to lose processing power to a graphic interface,

I had acquired a number of very specialist programs that run on 3.1 and to replace them would cost thousands and I don't want then THAT much!  Including a star map that runs like blazes on a 3GHz processor   

I actually wrote some programs for 3.1 and they worked. I can't be bothered to learn all over to do that again.

I have a wonderful collection of avionic simulator stuff that runs on 98SE  and a lot of games and stuff I don't want to lose.

And various bits 'n' bobs from 2k that won't run on XP and so on.

I have been running a evaluation copy of Vista for getting on a year and it should have collapsed on June 1st and it didn't 

Finally I have documents and programs I created on a BBC-B that I still refer to and one of the best collection of Arcade games ever seen. but I corrupted my ELITE    (5 1/4" Floppy disks are getting on a bit) and I cannot find a replacement, the PC versions weren't half as good  I have a world standard score on "Swoop"  .

The best of it all is that when I have finished with the virtual machines they just disappear they, don't collect dust or sink under other stuff, and are always available at a click.

OK?

OK

[Grumpmeister]

Finally I have documents and programs I created on a BBC-B that I still refer to and one of the best collection of Arcade games ever seen. but I corrupted my ELITE    (5 1/4"

Far be it from me not to help a furball in distress 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Elite-for-BBC-Micro-5-25-Acornsoft-Disk-Version_W0QQitemZ300121025433QQihZ020QQcategoryZ50218QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[Barman]

The first personal computer I sold was a Hewlett-Packard HP85 it had 16K of memory, 5? screen and a tape drive for storage. You could buy a storage system upgrade that supported either 8? or 5?? floppies. If you had loadsamoney you could have a 5Mbyte Winchester disk drive although it was formatted as four 1.2Mbyte volumes to emulate the 8? floppy.

Then came CP/M ? I liked CP/M it ran on one or two Z80 processors and was quite fast ? lots of software available too. If you had loadsamoney and plenty of time you could configure a word processor using Wordstar (I liked Wordstar a lot) and a Diablo 630 daisywheel printer. When I took a system home to do a ?mail merge? one weekend the whole floor moved and the neighbours in the flat below complained.

The first ?real? PC that I sold was an NEC advanced PC. Unlike the IBM system that it was attempting to emulate it had two 8? floppy drives making software impossible to obtain?

Not one to miss a trick, HP?s first ?PC Compatible? was the lovely HP150. It had a touch-screen that software didn?t support and innovative 3?? floppies so software wasn?t available anyway?

I don?t know why I bothered typing that lot as you will take the piss I?m sure (assuming you bother to read it) but they were very happy days and I feel privileged to have been involved? 

[Snoopy]

I still have my first which was/is an Amstrad complete with Daisy Wheel Printer!
Yes Alan Sugar I helped put you where you are today 

[Grumpmeister]

Slightly off topic but does anyone know what happened to DR DOS, I remember using it during my college days (waits for another snoopy rant about going down t'pit) 

[Barman]

Slightly off topic but does anyone know what happened to DR DOS, I remember using it during my college days (waits for another snoopy rant about going down t'pit) 

It was shite ? good riddance to bad rubbish. Compatible with MS-DOS my arse.

I used to sell a product that ran on DOS ? had a support nightmare with a very important customer, tried everything FAXED (no e-mail then of course) back and forth, telephone calls, blah, blah, blah? It was only when my hair had been fully removed that he admitted he was using DR-DOS.

Upgraded to MS-DOS and it worked first time.

[Misunderstood]

The first personal computer I sold was a Hewlett-Packard HP85 it had 16K of memory, 5? screen and a tape drive for storage. You could buy a storage system upgrade that supported either 8? or 5?? floppies. If you had loadsamoney you could have a 5Mbyte Winchester disk drive although it was formatted as four 1.2Mbyte volumes to emulate the 8? floppy.

Then came CP/M ? I liked CP/M it ran on one or two Z80 processors and was quite fast ? lots of software available too. If you had loadsamoney and plenty of time you could configure a word processor using Wordstar (I liked Wordstar a lot) and a Diablo 630 daisywheel printer. When I took a system home to do a ?mail merge? one weekend the whole floor moved and the neighbours in the flat below complained.

The first ?real? PC that I sold was an NEC advanced PC. Unlike the IBM system that it was attempting to emulate it had two 8? floppy drives making software impossible to obtain?

Not one to miss a trick, HP?s first ?PC Compatible? was the lovely HP150. It had a touch-screen that software didn?t support and innovative 3?? floppies so software wasn?t available anyway?

I don?t know why I bothered typing that lot as you will take the piss I?m sure (assuming you bother to read it) but they were very happy days and I feel privileged to have been involved? 

Actually, I liked 'Wordstar' a lot too.  I remember doing wedding invitations, list and menus and things on a 9pin dot matrix that caused the neighbours to set the RSPCA on me as they were convinced I was torturing something.

In those days if you mentioned computer to anybody their faces usually set grim as they called you a technophobe and said it couldn't possibly be of any use to anyone on earth, so don't waste any time playing with it.

I had the original 'Office' suite that came on six 5 1/4" disks which called for endless disk swapping every time I actually did anything with it, and I had an advanced two drive system. 

I further remember buying my first modem, a 1200bps card that took me two months to get going and all I could find was bulletin boards, but it was a good fax.

I worked with an IBM 1500 mainframe that had no visual interface only pages upon pages of printout to pour over. and when I identified a mistake (often) I had to re enter everything all over again verbatim in a negative format to erase it.  That was very, very hard to do as any further typing error quadrupled the error task.

I could - after a while - calculate the data rate faster than the computer could and nearly got sacked for 'cheating' as my boss could not believe it.  But I was very well paid for my efforts so it wasn't so bad.  It all started to go downhill when I bought a new fangled Texas LED calculator and they finally figured out that with the calculator we didn't actually need the computer any more.  But it cost a fortune in batteries to keep the LED's going.... So for the next few years I think it was cheaper to keep the mainframe going until we finally sold it and made ourselves redundant...

You can't beat government establishments for logical joined-up thinking....   

Ahhh The good old days...

[Barman]

I like Linux a lot!

Its definitely replaced Window$ on one of my laptops ? I use it in the field to set up satellite systems and it does everything I need. It integrated with all the laptop components and actually uses the power management features a little better than Window$. It also recognises a USB mouse when I plug it in so if I am somewhere with more room I can use that instead of the mouse pad (ok, that?s not exactly rocket science but I didn?t expect it to do so).

Also, it was my oldest laptop and it now has a new lease of life ? it is much faster to boot up and doesn?t take forever to load its word processor?

File server next. 

Actually, one of the things that encouraged me to try this was the file server which sits in a little black room in my basement. I was thinking about Window$ Fista and realised that it would never be able to run it.

However, I remembered that it used to be my desktop PC ? it is an HP Vectra with a 600MHz Pentium III and 500Mbytes RAM. It was delivered with Window$ NT 4 which I upgraded to Window$ 2000 (shite) and finally to Window$ XP Pro.

I remember thinking at the time what a slick and impressive combination it was running Office, etc. Yet now, having done a clean install of XP and having it run nothing at all apart from anti-virus software it runs like a pig.   

[Misunderstood]

I like Linux a lot!

Its definitely replaced Window$ on one of my laptops ? I use it in the field to set up satellite systems and it does everything I need. It integrated with all the laptop components and actually uses the power management features a little better than Window$. It also recognises a USB mouse when I plug it in so if I am somewhere with more room I can use that instead of the mouse pad (ok, that?s not exactly rocket science but I didn?t expect it to do so).

Also, it was my oldest laptop and it now has a new lease of life ? it is much faster to boot up and doesn?t take forever to load its word processor?

File server next. 

Actually, one of the things that encouraged me to try this was the file server which sits in a little black room in my basement. I was thinking about Window$ Fista and realised that it would never be able to run it.

However, I remembered that it used to be my desktop PC ? it is an HP Vectra with a 600MHz Pentium III and 500Mbytes RAM. It was delivered with Window$ NT 4 which I upgraded to Window$ 2000 (shite) and finally to Window$ XP Pro.

I remember thinking at the time what a slick and impressive combination it was running Office, etc. Yet now, having done a clean install of XP and having it run nothing at all apart from anti-virus software it runs like a pig.   

Why exactly, is your little basement server room, BLACK? 

[Barman]

I like Linux a lot!

Its definitely replaced Window$ on one of my laptops ? I use it in the field to set up satellite systems and it does everything I need. It integrated with all the laptop components and actually uses the power management features a little better than Window$. It also recognises a USB mouse when I plug it in so if I am somewhere with more room I can use that instead of the mouse pad (ok, that?s not exactly rocket science but I didn?t expect it to do so).

Also, it was my oldest laptop and it now has a new lease of life ? it is much faster to boot up and doesn?t take forever to load its word processor?

File server next. 

Actually, one of the things that encouraged me to try this was the file server which sits in a little black room in my basement. I was thinking about Window$ Fista and realised that it would never be able to run it.

However, I remembered that it used to be my desktop PC ? it is an HP Vectra with a 600MHz Pentium III and 500Mbytes RAM. It was delivered with Window$ NT 4 which I upgraded to Window$ 2000 (shite) and finally to Window$ XP Pro.

I remember thinking at the time what a slick and impressive combination it was running Office, etc. Yet now, having done a clean install of XP and having it run nothing at all apart from anti-virus software it runs like a pig.   

Why exactly, is your little basement server room, BLACK? 

Just because the light is turned off... unlike my cinema which really is black. 

[Barman]

Well, I?ve managed to get the laptop, desktop and now the file server configured to dual-boot Windows and Linux? Now all I have to do is find time to get all the systems working together and sharing their files? 

No disasters so far except that the bootloader offered two versions of Windows on the file server ? I configured it to default to ?Windows? like the desktop and laptop (the other option was ?Windows1? and it said ?No Operating System Found? when I restarted the PC.

This was after Linux had re-partitioned my hard drive so I nearly had a heart attack! Anyway, I?ve now changed it to ?Windows1? and it works perfectly?

Yes, I had taken a backup actually!

 

[Bar Wench]

Geeky spod.