Re: [Thinkpad] Antiques

[Kyle:]

>I started looking at the DOS manuals, and learning all the commands.
>This lead to me finding BASIC among the System Disks.
..
>Later still I found Borland's Antique software on their site, and it ran Pascal
>5.5 just fine.
..
>Sorry if I'm jabbing, but I do have so many fond memories of that wonderful
>machine.

     Hallo, Kyle. I don't date back quite that far; but I know exactly what you
mean. I learned Pascal programming in 1989, and learned computers on MS-DOS in
the years before and after that; and it seems that I still think the same way
way as programs and computers of that era in some respects. I suspect that many
of the difficulties I have managing computers, which I have occasionally
mentioned on this list, stem from my inherent inability to adjust to modern
Windows-style graphic programs of (to me) mind-boggling complexity and
obscurity, and I have a deep inability to trust these programs, because their
organization seem to me to lack transparency, and they seem very unreliable and
unpredictable to me, even in identical situations.
     When I got my first I.B.M. ThinkPad was the time I was first exposed to
Windows and Windows-style software, and it was all worse than I expected it to
be; and this did rather spoil the experience for me - and I have never managed
computers very well ever since then. I sometimes suspect I'm a Luddite at heart.
     In the old days I loved exploring software: MultiMate, XTreeGold, Norton
Utilities, Norton Commander, Turbo Pascal, and various games too, of a type that
would seem quaintly naive today - but I enjoyed them - the sort you could find
distributed on floppy disks at Sunday markets.
     Some of these old programs were ingeniously designed, and (being both a
touch-typist and pianist) I could almost play some of them like a piano, and
there was not a mouse in sight (or, if in sight, very much an optional alternative).
     Now, I feel completely differently about software, and don't adopt new
programs at all easily unless I really need to, and I almost regard software as
a necessary evil.
     I've more recently (well, about 5 years ago) acquired the DOS
word-processor XyWrite, which looks to be a good program, of the sort I like -
but I am reluctantly getting to feel it is just too incompatible with so much of
today's computing environment to be all that useful now, and maybe I shouldn't
try to get into using it regularly. It doesn't quite behave as it should under
Windows, which seems to be a warning signal.
     But I do feel nostalgic about all that old stuff. So I guess I do feel
something like the way you do about your old computer.

                         Regards,
                          Michael Edwards.

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Received on Fri Mar 31 16:11:01 2006