Season's Greetings, Halaster & all the BIP Gang!`

Post by **Beowulf** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:55 am

Been pretty quiet here lately...I realize everyone is busy with life and the holidays, but I wanted to drop in and say HI! And to thank Hal for BIP. I know your life's been crazy, but hopefully the new year will find you well and ready to tackle some old school gaming projects!

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 4:17 am

Thanks Beowulf!

Xmas this year is more like the Nightmare About Xmas. For the first time in all my years, I just want it to be the hell over with. My early Xmas gift this year was a total computer crash. My museum piece computer bit the dust in a major way on the 8th.

So I had to spend a hell of a lot more than I wanted to this month (and it really screwed the budget!) to get a new one. I freaking HATE Windows Vista! Everything is too video game style, complicated, unfamiliar, and hard on the eyes. Is there any reason why I can't go into Windows Explorer, click on a file, and click delete instead of having to right click everything? Argh!

I want Windows 98 back!

Plus, I was far behind on backups. So if they can't do data recovery off the old hard drive, I'm screwed and will have to re-create years of work from scratch. If they can't recover my bookmarks and above all my stored emails (several hundred thousand research emails), well...there goes years and years down the drain since I can't find the backups I did awhile back.

Computers hate me, and I hate them back!

It feels kinda odd going from an 8GB hard drive to a 320GB hard drive though!

Then again, I can now get speeds on the internet in the 4-5Mbps range instead of the 1-2 Mbps range, so that's awesome. Plus I can now access all sorts of stuff that I couldn't on the museum piece (all that stupid Flash crap and Youtube nonsense, all of which has very limited appeal, which begs the question of whether it's an improvment so to speak).

Now if only someone could invent a program that makes Vista look like 98, I'd be thrilled!

Post by **Beowulf** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 6:49 am

Awww, that sucks. I have a few pretty up-to-date PCs, and a few big external HDs (between 400 and 750 GB) but I don't back up nearly as often as I should.

I'd be totally screwed if I lost my Favorites for Firefox.

It'd take me years to find all my sites again, and I doubt I ever could.

Best of luck, Hal. It may be trying, but who knows- perhaps you'll like 21st century computing.

Post by **McDeath** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 2:13 pm

Ouch! So I take it all BIP projects have taken a major backslide?

Post by **Varl** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 4:07 pm

Halaster Blackcloak wrote:Now if only someone could invent a program that makes Vista look like 98, I'd be thrilled!

I can. It's called XP, and it works 1000 times better than 98.

Good to hear from you again, Hal. I was starting to think you'd given up on the internet.

Post by **Beowulf** » Sun Dec 23, 2007 1:10 am

I like XP pretty well. Eventually though I'll probably have to get Vista...if not now, next time I build a PC.

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Sun Dec 23, 2007 1:26 am

Thanks Varl!

I wish I could have gotten a computer with xp, but most of the package deals came with Vista, so Vista it was.

Post by **Unther** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 4:37 am

If you aren't running Windows software, you could also look to linux. You loose access to a lot of commercial software, but the more mainstream stuff has free alternatives for Linux, but more speciallised apps may not be replacable (CC etc...)

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 5:36 pm

It'd be a cold day in hell when I switch to Linux. That's like driving an out of date foreign car. Can't get service or parts. With well over 90% of everyone and everything running on and designed for Windows, I'd have to be crazy (and a glutton for punishment) to switch to Linux. I'm having enough aggravation just getting used to Windows Vista from Windows 98 (including software compatibility issues). No way I'd switch to a different platform that would cause me more problems.

I'm at the point where, almost a month into Vista, I'm seriously considering getting a used computer with Windows 98, re-installing all my old software, and just using that for many applications. The new Microsoft Word 2007 is a nightmare of confusion compared to the version I had on Windows 98. I tried installing GIMP to replace Photoshop 7 (which doesn't work with Vista), but that program is far less user friendly than Photoshop was. Don't want to spend $150 for a new copy of PS either.

Did I ever mention that I absolutely loathe computers and computer technology?

Post by **Mira** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 8:13 pm

Seems to me that going to Vista is a bigger jump than going to Linux from Windows 98

There's going to be MORE support for things on Linux than for things on Windows 98 actually, so that excuse doesn't really hold up either.

You definitely don't want Office 2007 if you want to be able to look at your old documents, unless you use a registry hack, you can't open older document formats in Office 2007 or Office 2003 with sp3 installed.

OpenOffice will handle them just fine however.

Ubuntu Linux has gotten to the point where it's surpassed Windows 98 in usability, but hasn't quite reached Windows 2000 IMO. Windows XP is quite good (for Windows anyways), Vista is the reason why OSX and Linux have become so much more popular

For you, you're best bet is probably Windows XP in a drive that is formatted as FAT32 (because many older programs won't like NTFS) instead of the default NTFS. Most of your older software should still be runnable, and you'll have drivers that support the hardware. Windows 98 is just not going to run well on any decent system anymore, the hardware just doesn't have Windows 98 drivers.

Linux would be better than Windows 98 or Vista though

(98 was a decent OS, it just can't handle the hardware you can get these days)

Mira (To err is human; to really foul things up takes a computer)

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:06 am

Mira wrote:

Seems to me that going to Vista is a bigger jump than going to Linux from Windows 98

I'm starting to think you're right!

I guess most of it isn't that hard. It's just that Vista seems to be dead-set on:

a) making things more tedious and requiring more clicks
b) trying to think for me instead of letting me do what I want
c) making changes for the sake of change

Like why take out the menu bar in Windows Explorer (where you can click File, Edit, View, Tools, Help? Now when I click on a file and want to delete it, I can't just click the file and click delete. I have to right click on it, then scroll down to delete, then click delete. I can get the menu bar back by clicking the Alt button, but it disappears soon after. Can't make it stay up there, as far as I can tell.

Some menu stuff is weird, like why is the setting to view or hide hidden files under the Organize tab and not the View tab? And Microsoft Word 2007 was designed specifically to give me a headache. I swear it was! Who the hell in their right mind would intuitively think to click the icon on the upper left corner to reach the Save, Save As, Print, etc menus? Insane.

There's going to be MORE support for things on Linux than for things on Windows 98 actually, so that excuse doesn't really hold up either.

The point though, is that I already know pretty much anything I need to know with 98, and I know how all those programs work with '98. So for example, I now opened GIMP with Vista to work on some image modification, and the settings seem almost randomly organized. It feels clunkier and takes more work (from what I'm experiencing so far) to do what I used to do in Photoshop. And I don't mean just not knowing the new system, I mean certain things I've already figured out are just nowhere near as user friendly as Photoshop 5 was.

You definitely don't want Office 2007 if you want to be able to look at your old documents, unless you use a registry hack, you can't open older document formats in Office 2007 or Office 2003 with sp3 installed.

Not sure what you mean. Any Word document you mean? So far I've been able to open every one I've tried, with no problem. Some needed to be "converted" to the new standard or whatever, but they seem fine. Please tell me I'm not in for a bad shock.

Ubuntu Linux has gotten to the point where it's surpassed Windows 98 in usability, but hasn't quite reached Windows 2000 IMO. Windows XP is quite good (for Windows anyways), Vista is the reason why OSX and Linux have become so much more popular

Seems to me that the two biggest problems with Vista are non-compatibility with a lot of older programs, and changes that seem to have no reason other than being for the sake of change, and not therefore not adding to being user-friendly.

Leave it to Microsoft to cause more problems for people!