This is my first blog post on my new hardware, so it's a kind of test to see if everything is working, and so far it does.
My old computer had a 30 Gig and a 40 Gig hard drive, and about 6 months ago I upgraded the 40 Gig one to 500 Gig. It was quite difficult to find one, as most of the hard drives being sold now are SATA, and I wanted an EIDE disk to match the other one. Eventually I found one, backed up all the data on the old drive using Acronis disk imaging software, installed it on the new drive, and everything still worked.
This time, however, was more ambitious.
The old computer was getting rickety. I dared not switch it off, because it might not restart. If the power went off, I'd have to sit pushing the power button for half an hour before it would run.
The CPU fan was also getting noisy, and it sounded rather ominous.
So that meant replacing the motherboard, and both hard drives (both now 500 Gig SATA). I'll see if I can use the 500 Gig EIDE drive an an external housing as a backup USB drive - it's only about 6 months old.
It took me a day to get this far -- backing up the 30 Gigs of data on the G: drive took 9 hours, and nearly 2 hours to restore on the new drive. And the C: drive was the critical one, because that had the operating system (Windows XP) -- would it work on the new drive? It did. Everything seems to be working fine.
The only problem is, Windows thinks there have been too many hardware changes, and wants to be revalidated. If that goes as smoothly as the rest of it, all will be well.
Oh, and my printer has a parallel cable, and the new hardware has no parallel port. But perhaps a USB cable will work, or I can nick a parallel card from the old one, if it fits the new motherboard.
Showing posts with label upgrades. Show all posts
Showing posts with label upgrades. Show all posts
28 October 2010
04 February 2008
Twenty-one years old -- the best word processor
It's now 21 years since I began using XyWrite III+, a program whose word processing functionality has never been surpassed.
It seems that rival word processors, unable to compete directly, have got ahead by reducing hardware functionality.
How do they do that?
It now seems to be virtually impossible to get a computer printer that doesn't require Windows to work (what do Linux users do?)
So I find that XyWrite and other MS-DOS programs I use every day cannot have their output printed directly. Hardware limitations reduce the efficiency of the program to that of its bloated competitors. Any time saved by greater ease of use is lost by having to find workarounds for less capable hardware.
One of the hardware limitations was introduced quite early -- the "enhanced" unergonomic keyboard. Whoever decided to move the function keys on keyboards from the left to the top must have hired a whole team of inefficency experts to come up with the most ergonomically clumsy design.
The result is that the two-finger XyWrite functions for delete word, delete sentence, delete line etc now become two-hand ones, which take longer to perform, and probably increase the liklihood that one will get carpal tunnel syndrome and some other weird typing diseases.
After all, how difficult is it to manufacture an ergonomic keyboard with function keys on the left?
After learning to do things the easy way, I still, after 15 years, find it annoying to be forced to do things the hard way by the stupidity of keyboard manufacturers.
One has to jump through all sorts of hoops to print a doccument, like finding a way of importing the output into a Windows document.
One of the programs I use for this is XyWrite 4.0. It can convert documents to RTF, which can then be imported into Windows word processors like Open Office or MS Word to be printed. And Open Office and MS Word are still clunky compared with XyWrite. Oh yes, they have lots of bells and whistles. What they lack is basic motive power.
The analogy of bells and whistles is taken from old-fashioned steam locomotives. You can design a steam locvomotive that can play tunes on its whistles in four-part harmony, which is just the thing if you want to park it at a fairground and use it as a steam-organ once a year. But if it means that you have to break a train in half and haul one half up the hill and then go back for the other half, and you have to do this every day, are the bells and whistles worth it?
The fancy Windows word processors can do all sorts of things you might want to do once a year, or once every five yesrs. What they don't do as well is process words -- the kind of stuff you want to do once every five minutes.
XyWrite remains the best word processor I have ever seen. I still use XyWrite III+ every day, even though it is now 21 years old.
One of the nice things it does is that it can take output from other programs and turn it into fully-formatted word porcessing documents. One can write a report for a database program that does this.
It was very useful for writing journal abstracts. Just enter the abstract into the database, and set up a report that inserts XyWrite formatting commands (which are Ascii, and similar to HTML codes). One can't do that with MS Word, and not even with WordPerfect (though at least with WordPerfect you could see the formatting codes in a document).
Why is it that whenever you have to upgrade your computer, you have to accept a downgrade as well?
Another problem -- I keep getting urged to upgrade to MacroMedia Flash 9.0, and every time I do so, it breaks my batch files, and I have to go to a system restore point and undo the installation. I use my batch files every day. I use Flash 9.0 once a month or less, and when I see something that needed Flash 9.0, it wasn't really worth it.
So there's my rant on computer development -- that minor conveniences come at the cost of major inconveniences. Now we're offered Windows Vista. I've looked at a list of stuff that it's supposed to be able to do, and can't think why I'd ever want to do those things. Not one of them.
It seems that rival word processors, unable to compete directly, have got ahead by reducing hardware functionality.
How do they do that?
It now seems to be virtually impossible to get a computer printer that doesn't require Windows to work (what do Linux users do?)
So I find that XyWrite and other MS-DOS programs I use every day cannot have their output printed directly. Hardware limitations reduce the efficiency of the program to that of its bloated competitors. Any time saved by greater ease of use is lost by having to find workarounds for less capable hardware.
One of the hardware limitations was introduced quite early -- the "enhanced" unergonomic keyboard. Whoever decided to move the function keys on keyboards from the left to the top must have hired a whole team of inefficency experts to come up with the most ergonomically clumsy design.
The result is that the two-finger XyWrite functions for delete word, delete sentence, delete line etc now become two-hand ones, which take longer to perform, and probably increase the liklihood that one will get carpal tunnel syndrome and some other weird typing diseases.
After all, how difficult is it to manufacture an ergonomic keyboard with function keys on the left?
After learning to do things the easy way, I still, after 15 years, find it annoying to be forced to do things the hard way by the stupidity of keyboard manufacturers.
One has to jump through all sorts of hoops to print a doccument, like finding a way of importing the output into a Windows document.
One of the programs I use for this is XyWrite 4.0. It can convert documents to RTF, which can then be imported into Windows word processors like Open Office or MS Word to be printed. And Open Office and MS Word are still clunky compared with XyWrite. Oh yes, they have lots of bells and whistles. What they lack is basic motive power.
The analogy of bells and whistles is taken from old-fashioned steam locomotives. You can design a steam locvomotive that can play tunes on its whistles in four-part harmony, which is just the thing if you want to park it at a fairground and use it as a steam-organ once a year. But if it means that you have to break a train in half and haul one half up the hill and then go back for the other half, and you have to do this every day, are the bells and whistles worth it?
The fancy Windows word processors can do all sorts of things you might want to do once a year, or once every five yesrs. What they don't do as well is process words -- the kind of stuff you want to do once every five minutes.
XyWrite remains the best word processor I have ever seen. I still use XyWrite III+ every day, even though it is now 21 years old.
One of the nice things it does is that it can take output from other programs and turn it into fully-formatted word porcessing documents. One can write a report for a database program that does this.
It was very useful for writing journal abstracts. Just enter the abstract into the database, and set up a report that inserts XyWrite formatting commands (which are Ascii, and similar to HTML codes). One can't do that with MS Word, and not even with WordPerfect (though at least with WordPerfect you could see the formatting codes in a document).
Why is it that whenever you have to upgrade your computer, you have to accept a downgrade as well?
Another problem -- I keep getting urged to upgrade to MacroMedia Flash 9.0, and every time I do so, it breaks my batch files, and I have to go to a system restore point and undo the installation. I use my batch files every day. I use Flash 9.0 once a month or less, and when I see something that needed Flash 9.0, it wasn't really worth it.
So there's my rant on computer development -- that minor conveniences come at the cost of major inconveniences. Now we're offered Windows Vista. I've looked at a list of stuff that it's supposed to be able to do, and can't think why I'd ever want to do those things. Not one of them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
LinkWithin
