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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?

#811

Post by mindcrime »

i336_ wrote: post #237
mindcrime wrote: post #3

OS/2 (ok, technically it does kinda-sorta still exist, but for all practical purposes it's dead)

No 'tisn't - https://www.arcanoae.com/ At the very worst they already have a bunch of drivers for relatively-modern hardware: https://www.arcanoae.com/shop/os2-ecs-drivers-software-packa... However, if their promises to release a semi-modernized OS/2 actually come to fruition I'll be really happy. :D

Yeah, I'd love to see an OS/2 comeback on one level. Although since my old OS/2 days, I've become such an F/OSS ideologue, that I probably wouldn't use a modern OS/2 unless it were F/OSS.

At this point, I'd settle for a really good implementation of the WPS on Linux. I don't care that much about the OS/2 API or SOM or any of that stuff. But the UI experience hit a sweet spot for me.

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

#813

Post by RantyDave »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #173

Logitech Mouseman+ ( http://2a.zol-img.com.cn/product/117_500x2000/44/cepKXmRt1Cs... ) Best ergonomic mouse ever made. Fitted my hand perfectly. The extreme slant looks terrible but works far better than every handed mouse I've used in the 20 years since. There was a matching trackball if you preferred that. Unlike every modern Logitech mouse made it did not break after a short life. It was thrown away because it was…

Microsoft make one with an admittedly less extreme slant but slanted none the less. Really surprisingly good...

https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-us/products/mice/sc...

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

#814

Post by RantyDave »

kriro wrote: post #118

Borland stuff. Some websites (author died, they faded away/are not the bleeding edge any more etc.). A good example would be the old Searchlores website ( http://search.lores.eu/indexo.htm )...apparently the original domain is now owned by some marketing company. Yikes.

Turbo Pascal was "boom" fast on a 286. Presumably on modern hardware it would finish compiling before the key came all the way back up.

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

#816

Post by eb0la »

pknerd wrote: post #23

Borland's Turbo C and Pascal

I still remember and miss how fast IDEs can be.

Also, if you broke something the runtime error messages were useful, not like the stack trace we have today. There is beauty in having just a single line runtime error.

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

#817

Post by vram22 »

>Turbo Pascal (mentioned by many in this thread).

I'll third or fourth or n'th Turbo Pascal and Turbo C (and a few other Borland products over time). (I know about their corporate issues and pivots, yes.)

TP 3.x: Under 40 KB .COM size (not MB, not .EXE). Blazingly fast WordStar compatible editor and true compiler (created .COM files) in that size.

Had a lot of fun working on it, and created one of my first freelance projects using it (started, somewhat unusually, as a freelancer, and then went on to jobs).

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

#818

Post by i336_ »

rmchugh wrote: post #429
akerro wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 use it for the history search in the address bar, it seems to remember far more history than Chrome which is really useful when I'm looking for that StackOverflow thread I read the other day.

Chrome only remembers history between now and 90 days ago.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/history-trends-unl...

As noted in the description, this extension resolves that permanently, although I'm still not quite sure how it impacts history sync or URL bar search.

I also think (totally unsure) that you might need to open the extension occasionally for it to save the history.

It's awesome though.

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

#819

Post by i336_ »

Havoc wrote: post #531
privong wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well aside from the bottom left key being FN instead of Ctrl...that part is retarded. There's a BIOS option to swap Fn and Ctrl, at least on the X250.

Interesting. I'll check. Not sure I can get into BIOS though...corporate laptop.

Did it work? If not, can you hit ESC and still save the option?

(None of my old TPs have this, so I can't check.)

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

#820

Post by Theodores »

developer2 wrote: post #544
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…

>> some devices aren't available in a quality we used to have available in mainstream This unfortunate reality extends to pretty much all products. Manufacturing is nothing like it was 20 years ago; quality is down across the board. Products used to be well made, but are now mass produced using the cheapest materials possible. Go buy a Scrabble board. The unfolded board won't lay perfectly flat on the table because t…

With many games the copyright comes to an end and, when that happens, one company no longer has the entire market for that game. Consequently anyone else can make the game, to undercut the original price competitively. This happened about a decade ago with 'Connect 4', originally a premium product by MB games, nowadays anyone can make it but they have to call it 'Four in a Row' or something like that. Needless to say the clones and the updated 'Connect 4' are rubbish compared to the 1980's vintage version.

I don't know what the copyright situation is with Scrabble, however, there's bound to be some reasons like what has gone on with 'Connect 4' meaning the product is degraded.

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