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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?

#381

Post by clarry »

I miss my 19" 4:3 CRT monitor that did 1600x1200 @ 85Hz.

I want to play doom with it again. No matter what you do, upscaling a low resolution game to high resolution flat display just doesn't look good. Whereas a CRT, even a high end one, could switch to a low resolution mode and look crisp without turning the pixels into huge squares.

I see that "crt shaders" are popular today, but to me they all look like they're trying to replicate the look of a NES hooked up to a shitty old television. It's completely different from a high resolution computer display.

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

#382

Post by FatalBaboon »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #156
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…

Lenovo destroyed the Thinkpad legacy. I gave up on them a few years ago when they dropped the 7 row keyboard. The 7 row keyboard was leagues ahead of any other laptop keyboard, ever. The replacement keyboard is awful. I hate the loss of web forward/back keys too. I hate chicklet keys. I hate pgup/dn placed as though I'll almost never use them. I still prefer the trackpoint over any touchpad. I'd buy a retro Thinkpad,…

It's too bad Lenovo ripped before I ever bought one, I often see nostalgious people. Have you tried system76 laptops? A bit expensive but no real flaw so far for me.

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

#383

Post by davb »

avar wrote: post #116

A few things: Everything not being 4:3 screens. I found it better for programming than everything being cinematic screens. Back when monitor manufacturers were racing to make better / higher resolution monitors, instead of just leaving it at 1080p / 4k / whatever the current standard good enough for movies is. The GMail interface before it started auto-converting the textarea to HTML when edited externally. Console g…

> Console gaming when it Just Worked. Nowadays when I pop in a game it's update this and update that, long loading times etc.

This might be about to change with Nintendo's upcoming NX system rumoured to use ROM cartridges rather than optical media. The cart-based 3DS has loading times comparable to the Mega Drive or SNES (negligible). And the cartridge distribution model is great for this with sub-par internet connections.

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

#384

Post by purerandomness »

Lopster, a GTK+ file sharing client using the OpenNap protocol (which was built after the original Napster (which has nothing to do with today's Napster) protocol)

You could download songs in 320kbps mp3 quality, you actually owned the tracks.

You could discover home-made remixes of completely unknown artists, which could happen to be truly amazing, and which then got lost forever after the downfall of the OpenNap servers.

You had an insta-search feature where you typed something in a search box, and the track list actually filtered immediately.

I miss all of this and I would pay so much money (even monthly) if something like that came up again.

Yes, it was illegal, and you have streaming services like Deezer and Spotify today, but try searching for Adele. There's no point if you have to have 2-3 sources to listen to your favourite music. The movie industry is repeating the same fragmentation faults of the music industry. There's still no legal way to stream or download your favourite music and movies.

You have music communities like Soundcloud, but artists need to pay money to make their work public (laughably unaffordable if you're, say, in Romania) and the sheer amount of work went forever extinct, just like what happened to Grooveshark.

You could search your library, and the library would filter your results instantly by the letter you've just typed. This is impossible with today's SPA platforms. Not a single competitor does sub strig filtering, and by the time your AJAX request hits the server, you're already 20ms over the time the results would have been shown in Lopster.

There was a golden time when those Napszter clones were alive, anyone remembering WinMX? I'm delighted Soulseek survived until today, i'll see what's left from the legacy.

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

#385

Post by ZenoArrow »

paol wrote: post #277
anexprogrammer wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenovo destroyed the Thinkpad legacy. I gave up on them a few years ago when they dropped the 7 row keyboard. The 7 row keyboard was leagues ahead of any other laptop keyboard, ever. The replacement keyboard is awful. I hate the loss of web forward/back keys too. I hate chicklet keys. I hate pgup/dn placed as though I'll almost never use them. I still prefer the trackpoint over any touchpad. I'd buy a retro Thinkpad,…

I'm desperately hanging on to my T500 daily work machine. It was the last generation with 16:10 screens and the second-to-last with the good keyboard layout. With an SSD and maxed RAM it's still viable, but the C2D processor is a real bottleneck. Trouble is, any machine I could replace it with would be a processor upgrade and an everything else downgrade. Edit: actually the Macbooks have great 16:10 screens, so there…

I don't want to get your hopes up too high, but there are positive signs that Lenovo is listening to what ThinkPad users want. There were a number of surveys started last year (and that may still be open) for feedback on a retro ThinkPad.

http://blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/retro-thinkpad-survey-4-misce...

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

#386

Post by bitwize »

clarry wrote: post #381

I miss my 19" 4:3 CRT monitor that did 1600x1200 @ 85Hz. I want to play doom with it again. No matter what you do, upscaling a low resolution game to high resolution flat display just doesn't look good. Whereas a CRT, even a high end one, could switch to a low resolution mode and look crisp without turning the pixels into huge squares. I see that "crt shaders" are popular today, but to me they all look like they're t…

A lot of people think that CRTs all worked like the flickery, jittery displays from Fallout games. Compare also the default settings on cool-retro-term, and then track down a working-order VT220; odds are the picture on the actual terminal will still be rock-steady and razor-sharp.

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

#388

Post by Joeri »

Ecco Pro outliner. Technically it still runs on w10, but the various glitches forced me to onenote.

I also really miss my nt4 system: office 95, delphi 3, coreldraw 5, photoshop 5, netscape 4. Despite having only a 233 mhz cpu and 128 megs of RAM that system seemed more responsive and easier to use than my current pc's, and it did everything i needed it to.

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

#389

Post by DiabloD3 »

teknopaul wrote: post #126
jlebar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows only. :(

I think audacious is based on winamp code. aptitude install audacious

It's not. It's based on, if you go back far enough, XMMS, which was the original *nix Winamp clone.

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

#390

Post by ZenoArrow »

davb wrote: post #383
avar wrote: post #116

A few things: Everything not being 4:3 screens. I found it better for programming than everything being cinematic screens. Back when monitor manufacturers were racing to make better / higher resolution monitors, instead of just leaving it at 1080p / 4k / whatever the current standard good enough for movies is. The GMail interface before it started auto-converting the textarea to HTML when edited externally. Console g…

> Console gaming when it Just Worked. Nowadays when I pop in a game it's update this and update that, long loading times etc. This might be about to change with Nintendo's upcoming NX system rumoured to use ROM cartridges rather than optical media. The cart-based 3DS has loading times comparable to the Mega Drive or SNES (negligible). And the cartridge distribution model is great for this with sub-par internet connec…

I strongly suspect the NX will be based on a game streaming service like OnLive. If you look at most of the rumours with that in mind, they make more sense.
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