Xywrite on PC DOS

["Thomas J Hawley" tjh@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "Mimi Gauthier LeBien"  on Sat,
9 Nov 2002 20:27:28 -0600


> If you were to partition, why not partition MS-DOS only, instead of adding
> another Windows operating system? Also, where can one purchase MS-DOS or
> plain old DOS these days?

IBM is still selling DOS, which they say has a 100 million user base worldwide.
The latest (and I expect last) version is the PC DOS 2000 upgrade to PC DOS 7.
Y2K compliant, includes REXX, and supports the Euro symbol too.

Product number is 04L5567 (CD ROM; $62) or 04L5596 (3.5" floppy, $67).

See http://www-3.ibm.com/software/os/dos/index.html

But why? If Xy was the only program you ever used, it would make sense. But
everyone on this list at least uses email too. The only really viable and long
term solution is to get Xy to work in Windows XP, either in a window if that's
what you want, or full screen. (In my experience, with Windows 2000, full
screen was easier and involved fewer compromises.)

It seems that the two areas where Xy is now most vulnerable to becoming
obsolescent are screen appearance and long filenames; printing, surprisingly,
is not, at least as long as PostScript is alive and well. Unfortunately,
somewhere down the road, there will be no more hardware or operating system
support for 16 bit DOS. Ten years?

Tom Hawley
New York
tjh@xxxxxxxx