| ??? 04/05/08 04:41 Read: times |
#152976 - Differ'nt strokes fer differ'nt folks ... Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Craig Steiner said:
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Now if you're using DOS then I guess that doesn't apply. But I don't use DOS anymore. Most people don't. So what might seem like a good approach to you very well may not apply to others. Now you can see why I've gone back to using Windows v3.1x and DOS for much of my "serious" work. Strange. It seems you're sacrificing a lot of productivity over the years (by using obsolete technology every day) in order to make sure you don't lose a day or two of productivity in the event of a very infrequent catastrophic failure. I know you've said that you are more productive in DOS than in a graphical environment like Windows. I don't really buy that. It might be true, but only if you intentionally refuse to become proficient in the tools available or if your tools of choice are extremely poorly designed. It seems kind of like opting for a horse-drawn carriage because you don't want to have to have the car in the shop for a day when the power windows of a new car break down. Regards, Craig Steiner Well, there are things for which DOS works WAY better than Windows, particularly if you drive custom I/O. I use Windows 3.1x because it peacefully coexists with DOS applications without interfering with their use of I/O hardware. I can write a little 100-byte routine to drive some piece of plugged-in or EPP-attached hardware and get quite a bit done with it. I've attempted that under Windows 9x and later, to no avail. Windows doesn't let you have control of anything. I'm using XP on this box, but I don't do much of any importance on it. I have other XP boxes as well, not to mention that I like those removable HDD's that allow me to load whatever OS I want without jeopardizing anything else. If you try that sort of thing on multi-partition setups, you're on your own. The main reason I can get by with the DOS and very useful Win31x, is that they are never attached to the LAN or the internet. As a result, I've had no crashes, no data losses, etc, in over a decade with those boxes that do the important work. The other "thing" is that the old reliable, tried-and-true tape backup system works under DOS/Win31x. It even works with Win9x, though not as well, due to the long file names. It does, of course work, if I do sector by sector copy-to-tape via SCSI. It even does that when "disconnected" so as to tie up only the SCSI channel. That doesn't work so well with ATA-to-SCSI tape transfers, though. RE |
