OT: flame? (RE: 1.5.x goes current on 2003-08-23?)

["Hannu E K Nevalainen \(garbage mail\)" <garbage_collector at telia dot com>]

> From: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com [mailto:cygwin-owner@cygwin.com]On Behalf
> Of Gerrit P. Haase
> Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2003 10:33 PM

-- LATE ADDITION --

Before I begin:
 Please! Don't reply to this.
 This is just my way of getting some frustration off my shoulders.
 No offence intended nor implied.

-- E.O.A. --


> <flame>
> Why not upgrading to W2K or XP?
> You can get W2K really cheap at second hand shops;)
                                                   ^^ is that a amiley?

> Last time I was at microsfot.com I saw that they don't support
                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ :-] heh... nice one.

> Internet Explorer 5 and 5.5 any longer.  That means that the support
> for Win98/ME will also be dropped soon as it already happens now for
> Win95 (you cannot install IE6 on W95).

 Can you believe;
there actually is people using machines and software *older* than that.

>  I cannot believe that there
> are some users out there who still work with their first, ten years
> old, Pentium I, 90Mhz box

 Is this ironic? If not then it at least reveals a few blind spots
regarding the hard facts of life.

 a) Not everyone has the cash to buy a new machine every year

 b) Not everyone has the wish to be "upto date" with MS-claimed
   "inventions" - which IMNSHO *often* adds _very little_ value.

    Ironic:
    More often it seems they just add security holes. (Requiring
    the download of 100MB+ service packs every three months - for safety)

> which cannot run W2K because their 4 GB
> harddisk is too small and they cannot upgrade the hardware because the
> BIOS is too old to recognize some hardisk larger than 4 GB

 c) The fact that Moore's law has been fulfilled for a long time doesn't
    imply that one HAVE TO follow the lead.
    i.e. Get real!
    One actually CAN achieve great stuff with older hardware too
   (i.e. *less expensive* hardware).

> and are
> really happy that they could install Win98 because it gives you the
> look and feel of a real system.

 IMO Windows in general isn't a "system" - it very often feels like the
 singletasking singleuser graphic shell it was originated from (i.e. Win
3.x).

 e.g:
1a) in Outlook (Express) open "Tools > Options", then try to move or resize
the main window (impossible).
1b) Open the explorer, select (a) file(s) of significant size and copy
it/them to a (temporary) location. While the copy operation is done: try to
do anything with the originating explorer (impossible).
1c) Select the files that you created in operation 1b) and Delete them.
Again; try to do something with the explorer window while the delete is
commenced. (impossible)

 I see this as flagrant examples of the irritating shortcomings of the
GUI/system - these should IMO be relatively simple to remove.

2) It is impossible to "depth arrange" the windows.
 a) Click in one window, to set focus, and it pops up in front of anything
else
 b) ...unless you have some foolish window/dialog that *ignorantly*
    has been set to be held in front of everything else.
... thus making it hard to "multitask" i.e. do something else while some
slow and/or time consuming task completes.

3) 1) and 2) in combination creates situations where the mouse is just a
peice of garbage on your desk. You _have to_ wiggle around with
ALT/CTRL-Tab, the Windows key and the like to get anywhere but to the
topmost application window.

 Intuitive, Desirable, "State of the art", Cute?  Not very IMO.

> </flame>


To sum it up:
 I'm still running a couple of old P-pro equipped 200MHz machines with low
amounts of installed RAM and slow+small harddisks. Still these *DO*, most of
the time, generate the expected output. It might take some time and there
are issues at times, but eventually the result is there.

 Even thinking of having Win NT (or any successor) installed on one of these
is just a childish dream - NT+ is simply too resource hungry.

I'll stop here... <sigh> `:-7

/Hannu E K Nevalainen, B.Sc. EE Microcomputer systems - 59?14'N, 17?12'E
--END OF MESSAGE--


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