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Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

howtogeek.com

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Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#141

Post by morganvachon »

flomo wrote: post #88
hapless wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wordstar was genuinely good. It is a strange accident of history that WordPerfect and lotus and Microsoft supplanted it so easily.

For a TUI program Wordstar seemed much more accessible than WordPerfect. But I guess WP was more aimed at professional secretaries and typists, and people with offbrand printers. When I was first messing around with Linux, I was (pleasantly) surprised when a WordStar clone popped-up instead of vi. Googling says it was called joe editor.

> joe editor

JOE is one of the most versatile TUI editors out there. It can emulate not only Wordstar, but Pico/nano, and Emacs. It has full UTF-8 support and can display pretty much any character in any written language.

These days I just use nano for simple, quick command line editing, but my writing machine (2000 era Dell Latitude CPx with Slackware) has JOE for long-form writing in Wordstar mode. Like the article author there's no need for internet or other distractions, just boot to terminal, log in, open JOE, and start writing on the fantastic keyboard.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#142

Post by kiplkipl »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #102
emersonrsantos wrote: post #55

George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels, he saves his work on floppy disks. Of course, he has a second computer for email and web browsing.

> George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write [citation needed] the Game of Thrones novels

His recent blogs (i.e. July's) suggest actual progress!

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#143

Post by RalfWausE »

dschooh wrote: post #129
RalfWausE wrote: post #122

Why not use old(er) Systems when they fulfill your needs? A computer is a tool, such as a typewriter, printing press, paintbrush or hammer. Would anyone argue about the age of a typewriter or hammer if its in good working condition? In fact, i am using an Atari 520ST as my main computer since my laptop died a while ago. It started as an experiment, but now "it just works". I got network connectivity, email and (limit…

This sounds interesting. Would you mind to elaborate on your workflow and what you do with it specifically? I'd love to see some screen shots.

I work (apart from my sysop dayjob) as a it-trainer, so i need to design handouts for my students for which i use "Singum!", an old, but really nice DTP software. Normally i print the handout on my Epson LQ-500 dot-matrix printer (which produces really nice prints for an dot matrix printer) and photocopy them in the institute i teach in. I need to maintain attendance-stats, lists of exam-results and other spreadsheets, for which i use "VIP-Professional", it is Lotus 1-2-3 compatible and i have a small tool that converts its spreadsheets into *.csv if i need to send the files to someone with a more modern system. For the normal letter writing etc. i use "Papyrus".

I was thinking to put this whole "using an ancient computer in modern times" thing into an article for a while now, it seems i will have to stop procrastinating on this matter and start writing in the next few days ;-)

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#144

Post by jp0d »

RalfWausE wrote: post #122

Why not use old(er) Systems when they fulfill your needs? A computer is a tool, such as a typewriter, printing press, paintbrush or hammer. Would anyone argue about the age of a typewriter or hammer if its in good working condition? In fact, i am using an Atari 520ST as my main computer since my laptop died a while ago. It started as an experiment, but now "it just works". I got network connectivity, email and (limit…

I thought you were being sarcastic until I read you second comment! :D

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#145

Post by specialist »

emersonrsantos wrote: post #55

George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels, he saves his work on floppy disks. Of course, he has a second computer for email and web browsing.

5 1⁄4" floppies in the year 2020? I'd be sweating. I assume he's saving multiple copies.

Still have painful memories of using Fastback, a DOS based backup software. Sitting there feeding floppies into a drive. Stacks of floppies. Twice. Praying the data would restore.

Part of my innovative file sharing solution, aka SneakerNet.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#146

Post by anthk »

JD557 wrote: post #134
verytrivial wrote: post #126

Old games, old productivity software. If they were good when they were new, I've never understood how they become "bad" just because time passes. It's a weird marketing and social undermining of comfort and control. Sure there is the 'security' argument, and an accretion of various quirks, but people were often happy dealing with these quirks in the day, and as OP says, making interoperability frictionful has an defi…

I'm not going to argue about old productivity software, but some games do indeed "age badly". Obviously the game stays the same, but game designed has advanced and, if you are used to play modern games, some problems that are mostly fixed on all games from the last decade become annoyingly obvious. For me, the main one is controls: * Once you are used to WASD+mouse for FPS, going back to ctrl+arrow-keys (with some aw…

Eh, this is PowerMacs. Games used WASD + mouse from long ago.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#147

Post by fps_doug »

RalfWausE wrote: post #122

Why not use old(er) Systems when they fulfill your needs? A computer is a tool, such as a typewriter, printing press, paintbrush or hammer. Would anyone argue about the age of a typewriter or hammer if its in good working condition? In fact, i am using an Atari 520ST as my main computer since my laptop died a while ago. It started as an experiment, but now "it just works". I got network connectivity, email and (limit…

colleague is using Windows Phone to "prevent distraction". He says the only usable app left is Mail.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#148

Post by shortformblog »

I literally spent the weekend setting up Debian on a Mac Mini. While I had trouble getting anything more modern to install (certain dependencies are hard to find), I was able to get Arctic Fox working, and found that it was fairly snappy given the fact it’s running on a G4 processor.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#149

Post by elpescado »

bacon_waffle wrote: post #57
jeffbee wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a word for such long-lived computers that aren't hobbies? "Retrocomputing" is people goofing around. A person who drives a 1995 Honda is probably not a "retromobility enthusiast". Maybe at some point in our future it won't seem weird to use a 25-year-old computer.

Do we need a word for it? I've got a 1996 Toyota van and a 2ish year old Dell XPS, both serve my needs well enough. Some new tools are appreciably better than older ones, others aren't; I generally prefer to not spend extra money/time for things in the second category. The 25-year-old car still takes a driver's time and some fuel, and moves stuff around just like a brand new one would. There's no hope of using a 1995…

While 25-year-old car lacks many of new tech gadgets it still is likely to have most important conveniences (A/C etc). The most important difference is safety (while not death cages like cars from 50 years ago, 25-year-old cars are still light years behind current cars) and emissions. The latter means that soon those cars might be banned from cities (at least in Europe), which renders "moves stuff around just like a brand new one" invalid.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#150

Post by KptMarchewa »

toyg wrote: post #109
unixhero wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you just use your phone as a mobile hotspot? I do that all the t I'll me instead of relying on whichever local it department coming up with solutions for me.

a lot of phones have this sort of tethering disabled by carriers, who then sell "internet access dongles" as an add-on.

How do they do it? How does carrier actually know that traffic is coming from tethered device rather than phone itself?
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