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Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#351

Post by vshan »

jamesrcole wrote: post #342
hoof_marks wrote: post #101

Windows XP and its search feature- Win7 above does not have it. Yahoo Geocities- simply miss it. and also Yahoo in general. My current yahoo mail is chock a block with spam mails. plus their ads. Xerox Ventura desktop publishing software- that was cool when book publishing was required. Motorola T90/91 basic mobile phone. superb and handiest phone used. Current Moto is smart but not unbeatable. Most importantly old B…

> Tap water ... > Paper bags at the grocery shop ... > A more silent neighbourhood ... Just out of curiosity, what area or country do you live in?

I presume India, since he mentioned BSNL.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#352

Post by moonfern »

akerro wrote: post #239
Grue3 wrote: post #151

Google Reader. There are no replacements that a) update fast enough, and b) allow search for free. I know, I tried all of them. Firefox had an amazing plugin called "Ubiquity", which was basically like command line for your browser and you could write custom scripts for it. It was seriously better than anything that exists today. They stopped developing it for some reason. Tab Groups is another feature that's now aba…

After removing tab groups I see literally zero reasons why anyone should use firefox. It's slower, more buggy copy of Opera and Chromium ;/

I can't argue with your point of view. 'zero reasons' reminds me that language laughs with logic.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#353

Post by damian2000 »

rcarmo wrote: post #242

XMPP. Yeah, I know technically it still exists, but having 8 different chat clients installed on my phone is ridiculous.

By chat clients you mean like WhatsApp for example? https://www.quora.com/What-is-WhatsApps-server-architecture

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#355

Post by eitally »

realo wrote: post #343

RPN HP calculators: HP29C (my first one) and HP41C (did university with it). A long time ago, some demon soul from hell decided to kill them product lines. The world never was the same, afterwards.

They're dead? I just gave away my HP48 whilst cleaning house. :(

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#356

Post by ctkrohn »

realo wrote: post #343

RPN HP calculators: HP29C (my first one) and HP41C (did university with it). A long time ago, some demon soul from hell decided to kill them product lines. The world never was the same, afterwards.

HP still makes RPN financial calculators. I recently switched to using an HP 12C at work, after holding out for a long time. It's amazing how quick it is once you get used to RPN, and I love the solid feel of the hardware. You can pick one up for around $50.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#358

Post by Arwill »

Sygate Personal Firewall. It had a simple interface, nothing flashy. It was possible to simply define custom firewall rules. It was a Windows program, yet it felt like it had so much control as what a Linux firewall would. It just worked and was quick. Then it got bought up by Symantec and was killed off.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#359

Post by Tomte »

nanoverge wrote: post #266
frik wrote: post #142

* IBM ThinkPad T41p/60. Lenovo T410/X210 where still somewhat fine. But these newer ultrabooks nowadays have less powerful specs than 5 year old notebooks. The Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon isn't bad, but a far cry given it's ultrabook less powerful specs than an 5 year old high end notebook. And these shitty keyboard nowadays, give me back the old keyboard layout like grouped F1-F12 key, better placed Home/PgUp/PgDn/End…

The Microsoft IntelliMouse was so good. This was something I realized at the time and hoarded them. I now have a wonderful stash of that mouse.

MS hardware was always good.

Their joystick offerings (Sidewinder) were top-notch, for example.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#360

Post by jdbernard »

OJFord wrote: post #334
CraigJPerry wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this plugin but I don't understand the use case. Group of tabs = a browser window. Am I missing out on a productivity boost?

Personally I agree, especially with Mac's CMD+` to cycle through them. But I guess it adds another level for grouping things that are in the same window but slightly different, or maybe some people are just prejudiced against multiple browser windows.. The only thing I can think of that isn't just down to "how you use it" would be grouping tabs in the same cookie session, but not persistent - i.e. an incognito window…

Well, on Mac CMD+` doesn't cycle through full screen windows.

I tend to open a lot of tabs, so it was convenient to have an easy way to group them by topic or environment without closing up my windows manager with multiple FF windows.

If you think about it, tabs themselves are just an effort to avoid multiple browser windows.

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