Re: Giving up on giving it up ...

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

mhchoate wrote:
> I'm a devoted XyWriter (DOS version 3.55) .... but have tried to give
> it up, reluctantly ..... I have just given up on giving it up.
Don't give up. Xy can do things NO other app can appraoch. And it can
apparently run under even Vista, not to mention Mac and Linux (with
much tweaking).
>
The full screen issue you describe is one I've never heard of, but
then I run in windowed mode. Anybody? Some boxes supply a "full
screen" that isn't full; this is a hardware issue governed by the
native resolution of the screen, and is especially common on laptop LCDs.
> Do computers deteriorate if sitting unused, in a box? ...
Theoretically, no. In practice, I think the heating up caused by
electricity suddenly flowing through could stress a system that had
been left "cold" for a couple of years. I'd fire them up periodically.
But in my experience, modern hardware (if it's not rejects, such as
Avrom got stuck with last time around) is pretty good.
> I'm thinking about shopping for the cheapest laptops I can find, that
> still have a Command Prompt that runs in Full Screen mode .... buy at
> least one extra, and if cheap enough, another extra (etc.) ... load
> XyWrite .... and have them handy on the shelf ... immediate backup ready
> to go ....
That could well work. But you'd better do it soon. The dealers are
trying to ram Vista (loaded on boxes with far too little ram) down our
throats.
> And I need a way to export files
> to that OtherStuff computer. I'm thinking CDs. Surely that OtherStuff
> computer will be able to read CDs for a long enough time (?).
Not too sure. NASA has tapes of date from some of the early fly-bys of
the outer planets. No drive now exists that can read those tapes. I'd
think a network connection or a flash drive would be more durable. and
CDs can deteriorate. Contrary to what has been rumored here, 98 (even
initial release) can talk to XP--and presumably anything that comes
down the pike for our lifetimes--over a network.
> Are we a large enough PAC to lobby Microsoft to maintain a Command
> Prompt that works in Full Screen, in perpetuity?
Hah! But to be scrupulously fair, I think the full screen oddities are
BIOS related.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx