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

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

#831

Post by tonyarkles » Mon, May 16, 2016, 6:28 AM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #564

hollander wrote: post #218

Writing, with a pen. I never do it anymore, but it worked great until I got a PC, a Psion 5, and especially after my first Macbook. Since then I barely write with a pen, and if I do it's cramped.

This will sound silly and non-sequetor, but bear with me: Get a fountain pen. A $2 Pilot Varsity will get you started. A fountain pen is a joy to write with. It requires virtually no pressure, especially when compared with cheap ball point pens. The ink flow is regular and heavy, resulting in even crappy writing looking interesting. It makes it fun to write, which makes (me at least) more likely to write whenever I c…

The Varsity was definitely my gateway drug into fountain pens. I burned through too many of them in grad school. Fantastic little things. I've since upgraded, but if I'm in a bind I'll grab a few of them at Staples.

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

#832

Post by Glench » Mon, May 16, 2016, 7:12 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #57

Glench wrote: post #35

Yahoo pipes

I wish something better than yahoo pipes existed in the first place. I mean, I love the idea, but every time I tried to use it for something more than a toy, I ran into the same issue - I need to unpack one item into several items and switch to processing those. I never found a good solution for that and ended up writing own python/requests/lxml processor instead.

I totally agree. I'm working on something better for my research. But it was amazing, given how bad the UI was, how well it seemed to work for people.

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

#833

Post by pvdebbe » Mon, May 16, 2016, 7:33 AM UTC

sly010 wrote: post #538

Microsoft Excel 200x on Windows. Everything else (Google Spsheet, Numbers, etc.) is slower with less features, more bugs, and no keyboard bindings.

Yeah, Office 2000 hit the sweet spot on lightweightness and features.

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

#834

Post by pvdebbe » Mon, May 16, 2016, 7:35 AM UTC

fabiobruna wrote: post #91

Amarok 1.4

Yep. Amarok 2.0 forced me to learn MPD. :)

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

#835

Post by Piskvorrr » Mon, May 16, 2016, 8:10 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #691

figushki wrote: post #580

Free time. I used to use it to sleep, read books, listen to music, watch movies, play video games, do laundry, exercise, talk to my family, and cook my own food. I can do some of those things on the commute to and from work with apps, but it's not the same as when I had free time. I think google or facebook bought it and quietly obsoleted it in 2006. I'm still looking for a replacement. Someone suggested Activity Blo…

Pretty easy to get it back. Cancel your home internet, mobile phone, and maybe even cable TV. You'll be back to the 1990s when you had hours of spare time.

Also, get rid of the house (and mortgage), get a divorce and send those pesky kids to an orphanage. And perhaps a way to magic away 25+ years, if you are serious about 1990. (But yeah, mobile internet is a free time black hole)

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

#836

Post by Piskvorrr » Mon, May 16, 2016, 8:28 AM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #523

zevv wrote: post #507

A phone with a proper SSH client and a real keyboard; I have owned and loved (in this order) the Nokia E71 and N900, HTC Desire Z, Motorola Droid 4 and Photon Q. But now I am out of options, as there are no worthy successors to any of these devices. Modern phones and tablets are not about production, but only about consuming. A lot of thought goes into the output devices, but the only input device - the touchscreen -…

Android devices with bluetooth can connect to hardware keyboards ranging from tiny things to full-size desktop keyboards. They aren't good for use on the bus or while walking, but if you can take the time to sit down and pull out your keyboard, it can work quite well.

Which defeats the whole point: I'd still use my Xperia Pro with a built-in slide-out keyboard, except app bloat makes it useless (Google Play now clocks in at 190 MB? And this is representative of the other apps.) It was perfect for touch-typing "on the bus", as you say: if you have to fiddle with accessories and perhaps get a coffee table to put them on, you might as well lug a desktop computer with you ;)

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

#837

Post by a_bonobo » Mon, May 16, 2016, 8:34 AM UTC

j_s wrote: post #763

nirav72 wrote: post #669

I miss all those old school RTS games like Total Annihilation, Command and Conquer series, Age of Empires etc. No one really makes decent RTS games now. Also miss all the pre-bittorrent P2P clients.

There are several so-called 'spiritual successors' on Steam; just spend some time reading the reviews of the official successors to find the negative reviews suggesting alternatives. One potential qualifier: http://store.steampowered.com/app/335940

I've received Grey Goo with a recent Humble Bundle, it feels very much like an old school RTS with three different factions (Starcraft-like) with a focus on base-building and resources

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

#838

Post by cpach » Mon, May 16, 2016, 8:47 AM UTC

teh_klev wrote: post #297

skrebbel wrote: post #165

Jasc Paint Shop Pro. This tool had the useful half of Illustrator's features and the useful half of Photoshop's, it was blazing fast, and it combined them in a single program so you could mix vector and raster layers. This made it absolutely perfect for web-targeted graphics work. It was the first software I legally bought because it was so good and still affordable (a fraction of the price of Adobe's stuff - somethi…

I still have a working copy of PSP 7.04 on my Windows 10 machine and it's still my goto tool for tweaking images.

That’s awesome. I’m not a fan of Windows, but it’s really cool that it still can run fifteen years old software.

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

#839

Post by angelofm » Mon, May 16, 2016, 9:30 AM UTC

therealmarv wrote: post #410

Total Commander (yes it's still available and still great but I'm not using Windows anymore, now OS X). I even miss Windows Explorer... I will never get in love with Finder on OS X.. most horrible File Manager ever. Finder is like a punishment for everybody switching to OS X (I want copy&paste and folders first everywhere, gosh). Thunar on XFCE was also ok. At least ForkLift nowadays helps me not to be angry at my Ma…

I totally agree, I changed all the settings on my mac to try to see if I could get a good experience but I just can't, typing the path with auto complete in Windows Explorer and "F2" to rename a folder name are the features I miss the most.

Edit (I was referring to Windows Explorer)