IE and Edge go into crash-dive

[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>

[BarracudaUAK]

Originally Posted by vienna

...
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:
...



<O>

My problem on the PC/website system was when I looked for a title or subject, such as "submarine"... I got nothing.

I tried multiple variations on the names of books I had checked out before... nothing.

I went to the shelf and pulled a book that I had read, went back to the PC, and entered the Library # on the spine of the book into the search function provided for that
(Mainly there to tell you which shelf the book was on), it didn't show up.

According to the system, it didn't exist.
I'm thinking, "it *does* exist because I'm holding it in my hands!!!!"
Hop over to the 'no longer updated, but not yet removed' dumb terminal, and guess what?
The book exist *AND* told me the exact shelf I just grabbed it from!

I logged out of the PC, hopped on the Terminal, and started digging.


I also went back to the old way of doing it... I walked around and looked at the books on the shelf.
Found some REALLY good ones that way.


Later they did get it working. But the primary problem was that the server for those PCs also served the Library's "new" website. So you could search for books at home.
It couldn't handle the load, so it would crash, and render the whole thing useless.


Barracuda

[propbeanie]

... which reminds of when our company at the time, went from "dumb" terminals to "smart" terminals, and half of the employees had at least one computer of some form or other at home, and all commented "why not a pc for the terminal keyboard?" - Blank stares from the mainframe guys that were all out of work less than a year later... Not that the mainframe was eliminated, just that higher-ups found out it didn't take 20 people to do the maintenance and support work... tic

That "luggable" there vienna, is what our "tech" guys carried around for their "test" machine, for troubleshooting all manner of computer issues in the office (which, btw, was not air-conditioned for the humans' comfort, but rather was set to 64 degrees for the computers, in an attempt to keep the room below 74 -fahrenheit, that is!). They even hauled it to "remote" locations across and out of town. At least, until it was accidentally dropped down a flight of stairs. It bounced a couple of times, but then broke into pieces...

[vienna]

The big problem I found with the new library computer system here in LA is what I mentioned before: poor data input. Say you were looking for materials on u-boats; you not only would have search for u-boat, you might need to also search for uboat and/or possible misspellings such as ubaot or ubot. Same with names; looking for Robert?; you'll also need to search for Bob, Rob, Robby, etc. ...

I've spent an awful lot of time in climate-controlled computer rooms and it never really bothered me; I'm originally from San Francisco and grew up in a city where the average temperature was in the mid-60s. While others complained, I enjoyed. Besides, one keeps better at low temperatures...

The "luggable" was actually a pretty sturdy machine (unless, of course, it was used to clear stairwells); I've had to service and upgrade several of them back in the day and once the outer case is opened, there is mass of interlocking steel cages surrounding the innards; it was always a struggle to put it all back together...





<O>

[propbeanie]

Did libraries lose something in "alphabetizing" things when they started using computers? The first and middle initials, salutation titles, periods, dashes, underscores, etc., but especially suffix titles, such as "PhD", etc. really throw the poor computers off. I can find things in a phone book, but not in a library's database. Like you, I will usually walk around to the 912 section and browse the titles... - btw, don't forget about "uboot" as a spelling...

Our local library here used to have "Sherlock", or whatever its spelling was, but they ditched it a while back (about the time they changed their users' card system) and now shell out to a Google search of the site, so they've gone from "bad" to "worse", in light of the fact that you now get hundreds of worthless "hits" that are totally unrelated to what you are searching on... my local tax dollars "hard at waste"... - sort of like its construction "project" that has all sorts of cracks and fissures in its concrete... yeah

wow, this thread started as Edge crashing its market share... - sorry Skybird

[vienna]

My apologies, also; I am unfortunately inherently prone to the tangential...





<O>

[Skybird]

Firefox looses one quarter of traffic shares over its alleged "improvements" in the past month. It now indeed reminds me a lot of the Opera crash down some years ago when Opera did the same foolish thing like now Firefox and compromised its key argument of privacy defense for - well, for whatever they think was worth it. They lost half of their users within 8 weeks. Firefox now lost around one quarter in four weeks.

https://www.computerworld.com/articl...ost-share.html

[propbeanie]

Software companies sure do seem good at shooting themselves in the foot, sometimes being so good at it, they hit the head instead...

[Skybird]

Mozilla was in a difficult seat, they had to do somethign since they were3 constantly looisng market shares. They should have more aggressively advertised the features that are their tgradiitonal stregnths: protection, poirvacy, safety, but instead they opted for starting the race the others were already leading in: more speed, at the cost of using Google's engine and thus forbidding a good amount of their former privacy features. Apparently this policy led to a split in their developer teams as well, with a good amount of their guys leaving the company, most likely in anger.

I find this arguing over vbrowswer seepds hilarious. I mean the speed of old Firefox and new Firefox - I read there is a difference. Its just that it is not apparent to my eyes. Which lets all their claimed modernization collapse, imo. Whatever it is they think they improved in: to me it is non-apparent, and meaningless. I do not care whether a site loads 2 tenths of a second faster or slower - it does not matter. I click, and two seconds later the site is up - more I cannot want. 1.5 seconds? 1 second? Less...? Pffft - get a life, Mozilla.

[propbeanie]

I also cannot tell a difference - for the most part - except some pages do NOT load. No explanation, it just "hangs" with a blank page...