I use three computers:

1. An old 100 Mhz machine that boots up in DOS 6.2 It is where I do Assembly Language programing or longer text. It has my tools and the best text editor, spelling checker, and file compare programs I know of. Vastly better than I find on my second and third computers.
2. An ASUS Eee PC running 32-bit Win-7 Startup. It is small but I have a USB connected full size keyboard. It is where I do my web pages because: It will run the DOS programs I mentioned above. I also have a totally useless HP that came with 64-bit Vista. Need I say more about it? I will never buy another HP product. My latest printer is a Kodak ESP 5250 I bought at Wal-Mart for $119. It has WiFi so power is the only wires connected to it, and it works with both my ASUS and my iMac. So far, I am happy with it.
3. I have a Mac mini in Quartzsite, and a 24 inch iMac in San Jose. I do my email, and internet exploring on the Apple computers. I love Apple's big Touch Pad, it is much better than their cordless mouse--which is the best mouse I have used.

Unfortunately, garbage all over a hard drive is the norm today. Nobody cares about how much disk space they squander. None of us have the foggiest idea of what is going on in our computer. Have you noticed as computers get faster and memory gets bigger: The time it takes from when you turn it on until you can use it gets longer? I did LaForth on a Motorola 6800 with a 1 MHz Xtal for the clock, and put the program (very slightly over 4096 bytes) into an eprom. It was like a pocket calculator, when you turned it on it was there with no apparent delay at all. The only wait was a few seconds for the CRT in a terminal to warm up!

The following is old mostly written in 2004

Before I installed Microsoft Office (which I eventually had to do to get a spelling checker to work with my email) and did a bit of hard disk clean up. There were over 57,000 files on my laptop! I can't believe more than 1 percent of those are of any use to me. I think I can justly say, "It is too bad that memory, and processor cycles have become so cheap." Literally, everybody I know who is using WinXP is limping along with a "sick computer" and a few things he "can't get to work, any more". I enjoyed computing much more when everything in the computer was under my control.

My solution: Two computers. One has Windows XP for an internet connection, and is otherwise worthless. The other is an older IBM Laptop. It has 64 Megs of RAM and a hard drive which I seldom use, as I recall it had 4 GIG of space on it. I boot up DOS 6.2 , from a 3 1/2 inch floppy and create two RAM drives C: and D: each with over 30 Megabytes. You can't boot from a floppy on a more recent Fujitsu Laptop that came with XP installed. I wonder if it was Fujitsu or Intel that screwed that up?

The reason I use DOS: It has only 3 files, two which are the operating system and the third is COMMAND.COM that interprets the keyboard commands, such as: DIR, TYPE, COPY, and DEL. Under DOS I am in control and know basically everything in the computer. You may recall in DOS any file name ending in .COM .EXE or .BAT is a command. CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT determine what occurs when the computer boots up. CONFIG.SYS sets up the RAM drives and AUTOEXEC.BAT copies, to C: about 30 of my "useful tools" which includes the best editor/spell checker I have found, plus a great file compare, and an Assembler.

Under DOS I create all the HTML files for web pages. (I use a .bat command to invoke the editor/spelling checker and expand the "boiler-plate" so all my web pages have the same general color and form.) I under WinMe on the IBM Laptop I use a browser to see how the page will look, and do touch up using MS-DOS and my DOS tools.

I use WinME because: Bill Gates and company have screwed up the "Command Line Prompt" under Windows XP making it near useless. (Bill Gates didn't create DOS and, I suspect, is embarrassed that they still have to use it to get their software out, so: they changed the name, tried to hide it, and messed it up to make it almost useless.) I like to remind people: it was DOS that nearly killed Apple not Windows. For a Window/Mouse environment Apple is cleaner and has a better user interface. I should get a MAC to play with for the internet and digital photos.

Unfortunately, Apple has never made a reliable computer. They have always had over-heating problems and never even put parity checking in any of their computers. Before Apple announced the MAC they came to a company I was working for trying to get parts that used less power, and hence would produce less heat. Apple knew they had heat problems in the MAC before it was announced, but chose to sell it anyway! I guess their computers are OK for entertainment, but a disaster for really serious work, such as process control or financial software like banks use.

The vast majority of computers are sold for entertainment. It is hard to buy a personal computer with any error detection, and memory is too big to even think of error checking by software without a hardware assist. Bottom line: all we can buy today is cheap junk, no doubt it has some bad memory locations; but there is so much memory we just see it as "drivers" and things that have to be reinstalled once in a while. To get a computer with memory error detection you have to buy a "server". Obviously, this has been a sore spot with me for years. At home I use an Intel 300 MHz Motherboard with ECC. (Single error correction and multiple error detection.)

Today, we have a hodgepodge: buggy software, poor hardware and a society that doesn't realize computers should do the same thing with the same program every time. Except for a few programs that use a random number generator of some sort to insure they don't do the same thing every time.

Cheers from Quartzsite, AZ
LaFarr

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