IE and Edge go into crash-dive

[vienna]

Originally Posted by BarracudaUAK

Just a quick note:

Word Perfect predates Microsoft Word,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect

And Lotus 1-2-3 predates Microsoft Excel,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3

Compare the release dates of MS Word, and Excel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel


I knew several people that switched from these to Microsoft Office when their jobs switched over to Windows and MS Office.

I used Word Perfect also, actually worked on my Tandy 1000 RL.

Also of note is GeoWorks, We had a 386 SX/25 that originally came with Geoworks Ensemble,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(...erating_system)

There were things I could do in Geoworks, that I couldn't do in Win95 years later.

Still have the disk in storage... I really need to go dig them out.



Just a bit of info.
Have a good one gents...

Barracuda

Predating both Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel was Multiplan, a very early spreadsheet; it was the first PC spreadsheet I used and it was bit of a struggle to make it really workable; the first project I created was tax depreciation schedules for a utility company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan

Also, predating MS-Office, was a Lotus product called IBM Lotus Symphony, an all-in-one suite of software, which later morphed in what is now OpenOffice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony

The utility company I mentioned above got me the Symphony package after I solved a problem of not having a word processing application (it was either get Multiplan or get a word processor, not both) by using 1-2-3's macros to program a rudimentary word processor, so I could handle inserting large blocks of text into the spreadsheets...

I recall the transition to Office and Windows; I accepted a project and was told the company used MS-DOS, WordPerfect, and 1-2-3, all of which I was well familiar; when I got to the site, I found out they actually used Windows 3.1 and MS-Office, neither of which I had ever used; it was a real "in at the deep end" situation, but I was able to suss out how it all worked and complete the project. Ah, the "Good Old Days"...





<O>

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by vienna

Windows 3.1

Shivers, I still feel uncomfortable when hearing the sound of that. The OS before that I was familiar with, was Amiga DOS. LOL. The migration was not really smooth, not really without enormous difficulties, and in the end not really successful. I hated it, although later, still at university, I learned to hate SPSS 6 for Win95 even more.

[propbeanie]

How 'bout GeoWorks on Commodore C-64 machine with 64k total RAM - at 1.2MHz - MEGA-Hertz!!!??... - phwew! no hard drive either...

man, I'm having a difficult time getting me-self up off me land-lubber floor!...

That, and some spreadsheet and database that ate up floppy disk after floppy disk... and The Hunt For Red October on 2 floppies... ah yesh... good times, good times... sigh... - two-button mouse! almost forgot about that one...

My least favorite computer thingies was probably AS/400, after having gotten used to a gui on a C-64, Amiga, Mac, and Windows... but man, it was powerful... "Robust" was a term they used back then. Not anymore... "Today, Corporation XYZ has announced another 3.2 million customers were exposed in its latest data breach"... so let's trot Edge out there...

[Rockin Robbins]

I remember as an Apple II with Visicalc guy going to a sales session for the Tandy of the time with Microsoft pre-Excel, what was it? MULTIPLAN! That's was the ticket!

The instructor was up there telling us what to type into the machine and I found a few other Apple guys. "Type sum(a5...a8) and press Enter! And the machine went zoom zoom, as every time you entered a formula the floppy disk ran like a washing machine.

Us Apple guys just laughed and laughed. "You mean every time we enter a formula we have to wait for the stupid machine to run the floppy drive for ten seconds? Hashahahahahahahahahahahahaha!" We were amazed how much better VisiCalc was than Multiplan, and maybe our Apple IIs over the Tandy.

But we knew crap when we saw it and that was pure crap! The instructor/sales dude wasn't amused.

[Skybird]

Imperfection with fascination.to day, more visual perfeciton in games, butn the thunder, the magic, the fascination is somewhat gone. Is perfection really always worth it? Food for thought. Time was good to me, and those were good times for sure, at least for me. Sometimes, I remember them. And then I miss them. To much perfection today, and gettin abused for questionable casue, and paid for with new, other imperfections.

Very well. Now I talked myself sad. Well done, Sky.

[BarracudaUAK]

Originally Posted by vienna

Predating both Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel was Multiplan, a very early spreadsheet; it was the first PC spreadsheet I used and it was bit of a struggle to make it really workable; the first project I created was tax depreciation schedules for a utility company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan

Also, predating MS-Office, was a Lotus product called IBM Lotus Symphony, an all-in-one suite of software, which later morphed in what is now OpenOffice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony

The utility company I mentioned above got me the Symphony package after I solved a problem of not having a word processing application (it was either get Multiplan or get a word processor, not both) by using 1-2-3's macros to program a rudimentary word processor, so I could handle inserting large blocks of text into the spreadsheets...

I recall the transition to Office and Windows; I accepted a project and was told the company used MS-DOS, WordPerfect, and 1-2-3, all of which I was well familiar; when I got to the site, I found out they actually used Windows 3.1 and MS-Office, neither of which I had ever used; it was a real "in at the deep end" situation, but I was able to suss out how it all worked and complete the project. Ah, the "Good Old Days"...





<O>

I was sure someone would fill in the area before Word Perfect, and Lotus 1-2-3.
Those were the earliest that I remembered...

My Mother had several jobs that included transferring older records/files to MS Office.
Some as far back as an early '60s OS (Unix maybe?) when everybody decided to update to PCs.

I remember using the old mainframe/dumb terminal at the local library to find books that I wanted (on submarines and planes mostly ).

Then the library switched to a PC/web site based search system, I couldn't find ANYTHING I wanted, no matter how I searched.
I went to using the 'cards-in-the-small-drawer' file to find the books I wanted (I forget what the actual term is).

Originally Posted by Skybird

Shivers, I still feel uncomfortable when hearing the sound of that. The OS before that I was familiar with, was Amiga DOS. LOL. The migration was not really smooth, not really without enormous difficulties, and in the end not really successful. I hated it, although later, still at university, I learned to hate SPSS 6 for Win95 even more.

A family friend had an Amiga 500, played "A-10 Tank Killer" on it once, also "F-117A".
"Babylon 5" space scenes were rendered on the Amiga model directly preceding the 500, and the 500 as well, for season 4 or 5.
I have all 5 seasons of this, plus the Spin-off/continuation "Crusade". Awesome Shows.

Amiga's had excellent graphics capability when IBM compatibles were on CGA/EGA.
If Amiga could have held on a little longer, I have a feeling that they would be the "gaming" machine of choice, or we would all be running "Amiga" video cards!
(This is just a thought, nothing to say they could do it, but if we look at the pace of development shortly after Amiga went under.... seems plausible.)

hmm, just think, Amigas running Unix/CP-m(?,the MSDos predacessor)/Linux...
Now I have to find an Amiga 500, and find a version of Linux to run on it....

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

I remember as an Apple II with Visicalc guy going to a sales session for the Tandy of the time with Microsoft pre-Excel, what was it? MULTIPLAN! That's was the ticket!

The instructor was up there telling us what to type into the machine and I found a few other Apple guys. "Type sum(a5...a8) and press Enter! And the machine went zoom zoom, as every time you entered a formula the floppy disk ran like a washing machine.

Us Apple guys just laughed and laughed. "You mean every time we enter a formula we have to wait for the stupid machine to run the floppy drive for ten seconds? Hashahahahahahahahahahahahaha!" We were amazed how much better VisiCalc was than Multiplan, and maybe our Apple IIs over the Tandy.

But we knew crap when we saw it and that was pure crap! The instructor/sales dude wasn't amused.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Imperfection with fascination.to day, more visual perfeciton in games, butn the thunder, the magic, the fascination is somewhat gone. Is perfection really always worth it? Food for thought. Time was good to me, and those were good times for sure, at least for me. Sometimes, I remember them. And then I miss them. To much perfection today, and gettin abused for questionable casue, and paid for with new, other imperfections.

Very well. Now I talked myself sad. Well done, Sky.

I typed this in reply to RR's comment, but it also seems to apply to Skybirds, so I moved it down, as I can't split it to make any sense!!!!!


Must have been a model before the 1000RL (RLX had a hard-drive), but it did access the drive anytime you ran anything because there was only one 3.5" floppy...
But if you were running a command from the "C:\" ROM, it skipped the floppy.
This one had Dos 3.1, upgraded it later to Dos 3.3...
Put a 40MB (yes that's MEGA-Byte) hard drive in it, and it didn't check the floppy for anything unless you were accessing A:\.
Only 768K of ram, but it was a very cool little PC, boot time on the ROM was under 4 seconds. One the HDD, about 5-6.
The Double Density 720K floppies, and the 768K of RAM were the biggest limiters.
But I did "game" on this PC for several years, then jumped to a 386 SX/25, then a 486 SX/25. Switching between the 2 because the 486's Game Port didn't work.
Sometime between 2010 and 2014, I found an old 486 DX/33mhz CPU and dropped it in the Socket next to the SX/25 processor... Played on that thing for the next few days.
Still works, has Win95 installed.
BUT, Command; Aces of the Deep works on it. WITH voice commands!

Skybird, you've done it to me too!!!

OK, I'm moving on now...

Barracuda

[vienna]

Originally Posted by BarracudaUAK

I was sure someone would fill in the area before Word Perfect, and Lotus 1-2-3.
Those were the earliest that I remembered...

My Mother had several jobs that included transferring older records/files to MS Office.
Some as far back as an early '60s OS (Unix maybe?) when everybody decided to update to PCs.

I remember using the old mainframe/dumb terminal at the local library to find books that I wanted (on submarines and planes mostly ).

Then the library switched to a PC/web site based search system, I couldn't find ANYTHING I wanted, no matter how I searched.
I went to using the 'cards-in-the-small-drawer' file to find the books I wanted (I forget what the actual term is).

...

Sometime between 2010 and 2014, I found an old 486 DX/33mhz CPU and dropped it in the Socket next to the SX/25 processor... Played on that thing for the next few days.
Still works, has Win95 installed.
BUT, Command; Aces of the Deep works on it. WITH voice commands!

...

I did several conversion projects when PC first came out; sometimes the job was fairly easy and other times, they were near intolerable. The utility company I mentioned before was a case of the near intolerable; there was a very strong resistance from the mainframe group to the new PCs; the CFO and I asked for a direct connection to mainframe data so as to download raw financial information to be refined using the PCs, with the priority project being to speed up the monthly financial reports; prior to the PCs, the procedure was to have the DP unit printout a hard copy of the raw financial data (mainly ledgers and journals) and then forward it to Accounting where the data was written up, in pencil, on accounting pads in a rough final format; the pads would then be reviewed by the CFO, revised if needed, and the 'final' version would be sent to the Typing Pool where ditto machine masters where typed; then the ditto masters would be reviewed, and, once approved, the Print Shop would run off copies of the Financials to be distributed to the executives, outside auditors, and legal advisors; the whole process took about 1-1/2 to 2 weeks, not good if you wanted good data fast. The DP Head (who was a rather unpleasant person) refused to allow a mainframe to PC hookup, citing "security concerns", even though we argued having paper copies of printouts all over the place was hardly secure, and there was to be no connection to any other net, internal or external (the WWW was very new and we were far from capable of making any connection). They wouldn't budge, but they did grudgingly offer to supply us with the data on a tape spool (which were huge on mainframes), so we had to take what we could get; we found a tape drive that would interface with the IBM PCs. Lotus 1-2-3 (and later Symphony) couldn't directly download to the spreadsheet in those days, so I rigged up a macro in Lotus that would make a call to dBase III, which would run its own macro I programmed to run the tape drive and download the data to dBase II and then from there to Lotus. I had setup a spreadsheet to exactly mimic the final format of the monthly Financials and put a sort of gathering area for the data at the bottom of the spreadsheet, using formulas to assemble and compute the data into the appropriate areas of the report. Downloading form the tape took only a few minutes instead of hours over accounting pads; from there Accounting could make any necessary tweaks, print out a draft, get it approved, print a final, and xerox it, and distribute it to the execs, etc. The whole new method took two days, tops, rather than 1/2 to 2 weeks. After the battle over the data and tapes with DP, the CFO said he took no little amusement, when at the Executive Meeting following the first run of the new process, the CEO was praising the speed and efficiency of the new method; the DP Unit Head was rather put out by the CEO's praise of what he viewed as a threat to his little 'kingdom' and angrily said "Well, DP could have done the same thing long ago", to which the CEO demanded, "Well, then, why didn't you?" The CFO said watching the DP Head cringe when he realized he had royally put his foot in it was worth the trouble we had gone through...

I, too, miss the old index card files that used to be in libraries and have found the 'improved' digital lookups to be ma bit frustrating at times; if a patron is not really familiar with database search techniques, they can miss out on relevant information; an added problem is the quality of the conversion; here in LA, volunteers, of varying computer and typing skills, were used to manually enter the paper card data into the database; typos of all sorts resulted and, unless, you know try variant searches, some items will not show up. On a plus side, an artistic use for the old cards have been found:

http://www.poetichome.com/2010/03/15...eek-wallpaper/

Here in LA, the old wooden card catalog drawers have been re-purposed into a "Donor Wall" displaying the names of Library benefactors and donors:





I own what has been called one of the first models of a PC 'portable computer', a Compaq 'luggable', so called because the thing weighs about 40 pounds (a bit over 18 kilos):









<O>