www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Geek Hall Forum Technology Poll 2009

No server OS's in the poll! Is outrage!

I have a few server operating systems at home in my "home network / home lab."

I will try to be more advanced in the next poll. Considering we have a few "cavemen" here, I could not be too overwhelming.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

NOTE: I split off Tim's problem with VISTA on his Mac into a new thread in this section.

I find the results interesting so far, especially with a slow holiday weekend here in the states.

One, that sticks out is the number of posters that have more than one computer in their household and use them. The other is the number using the manufacturer's internet browsers, i.e. Internet Explorer and Safari vs Firefox. I am wondering if most have upgraded to the Internet Explorer 8 and Safari 4 Beta?

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Well I have Safari4 Beta - and it's as my secondary Browser - I'm not totally happy with it

My first computer was an Atari 1200XL - it had a whopping 64K of memory! I was the envy of all my other (6th grade) geek friends.

Now in my house I have an XP desktop (necessary for work), a MacBook, an iMac, and a Linux server. And yet I still consider myself a Luddite.

Dear Francis,

Luddites would never have that array of computer equipment and software in their homes! You might be more along the reformed Mennonite lines.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Fr. Anthony,

Oh yes, WP 5.1--the ultimate DOS-based word processor. You didn't have the possibility of creating tables, but you could set up "parallel columns" which would allow you to have something like a table--just don't accidentally delete any part of the invisible "end" code or the whole thing will go haywire (no "undo" key, either!).

However, it was the only word processor I ever used where you could do a search-and-replace on hard returns, and even now this is a very useful feature when converting ASCII documents. It also had the capability of creating a master document, in which you could embed other documents and print out the whole thing in one shot--in the days when "print spoolers" were an add-on and didn't always work right, this could be very useful indeed!


Peace,
Deacon Richard

Fr. Deacon:
On the Mac, almost all the word processors have supported find and replace of hard returns. Many, you had to copy a hard return, and paste it into the search box...

But I do so miss WP Mac 3.1 (I've still got my disks, but it was OS8.1-9.5, and I'm on an intel mac now...)

I'm still using Claris 2.1 v 3--the main reason why I've kept the classic MacOS9

I hated claris prior to the merge with Appleworks. I still have AW6 running. Mostly for the draw module.

Let's see, Word Processing I started with:
CPM: Perfect Write and Wordstar
Apple //e: Appleworks 3.0/3.1, PFSWrite, and GEOS Write, Beagle Write
Mac, OS 6-7: MacWrite, MacWrite II, Word for Mac 1.1
Mac, OS 7.11-9: Appleworks 5 & 6, PageMaker (4.2 – 6), MS Office 5-2003, Claris Works 4, MS Works, WP 3.0/3.1, SaintEdit*
Mac, YellowDog Linux: kWrite, OpenOffice
Mac, OS X: AW6, MS Office 2003/2007, iWork, Jer's Novel Writer**, Open Office

* used for text editing. Very nice piece of SW.
** the combination database/editor is really nice for doing drafts of research work! Not just for novels.

Of these, my favorites are WP 3.1 Mac, AW 6.2, and Pages, and JNW is excellent for writing drafts.

To be honest, I have no great passion for any word processor. In the course of 19 years, I have gone from Appleworks 1.0-2.0 for the Apple IIc, PFS First Choice 3.0 and WP 5.1 for DOS, then MS Word 2.0 from there as it evolved in its many manifestations for the PC. When I went to back Mac a few years back, it was one of the few cross-platform word processors. I use it because I am comfortable with it and can work quickly in it, not that I love it. I currently use Office 2003 for PC and Office 2008 for Mac - Special Media Edition (which I picked up for a song last November when they were running a two day 85% off special from MS ), along with Pages from iWork 08 which I use for quick short drafts.

I also have the last version to be released of AppleWorks that sits in a box on a shelf in my studio just collecting dust that I never really used.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

I have Office 2008 as well - but find myself using Neo-Office rather than Open Office

I noticed that there's still one vote for Ubuntu. I switched to Linux from Vista because my hardware was being overloaded with spurious demands. I chose Ubuntu over other Linux versions because I am not a programmer and don't work with code. Also it's currently being upgraded on a constant basis.

Terry

Newbies all!

I built my first computer. Not from boards, but with a wire-wrap tool. It had 2k of memory (which took 16 chips), toggle switches and a button for input, and two digits and a light for output . . .

I have an original mac in the attic, as well as a macportable with a couple of hypercard stacks that I wrote that I really need as soon as I can fix 9t (there's some things that hypercard did that have never been replaced . . .)

My big machine runs freebsd (kind of like linux for grownups), but the laptops have Kubuntu (a ubuntu variant with kde instead of gnome [the gnome project was created in an ideological tiff over the kde folks not being pure enough with regard to the holy GPL license]).

Except for the big machine, there are still windows installations on the machines, but they are blocked from the internet (safe computing).

The *only* reason we have linux instead of FreeBSD on everything is that the newer versions of flash aren't reliably available for FreeBSD (for the kids' sites)

Uh, yeah, I'm a computational economist.

hawk

My first time assembling a computer was a 4bit mechanical kit... which my dad had acquired as a required tool for his "introduction to computing" course at Mich. Tech.... in the 1950's.