July 6, 2001

Hmm … I was kinda tempted to go on another ranting rampage today but then again since it’s Friday and I’m feeling really mellow I think it is actually going to come out no-so-much-a-rant :p But you never know since most of these entries are never pre-planned … so I go where the writing takes me …

Saw Chris Pirillo of LockerGnome fame appear on Call For Help on TechTV yesterday. I’ve not communicated with Chris much but I’ve been reading his e-mail newsletter from the early days – if I recall correctly as far back as 1995 or 1996 though I’m not even sure whether LockerGnome was around then to be honest … but it was a long time ago <vbg> I’ve seen his newsletter go from a weekly compilation of interesting software and sites to a daily newsletter and then multiply into several newslettters. And now he’s on TV!! It’s in a way sort of like watching reality-based TV in very slow motion :p

It’s interesting how much has changed in such a short time span as 10 years. Some of the computer stuff that I worked on 10 years ago seems positively ancient! Who remembers Central Point Software’s PC Tools? I used to love using PC Tools to edit command.com so that I could have my own version of DOS with customized commands like DOG for CLS and silly stuff like that … Speaking of DOS, who remembers working with DOS 3.0 (or was it 3.2? I forget now … too many things rolling into one and I’m not sure whether there was a DOS 3.2 or whether I’m thinking of DOS 6.22 – the last “real” DOS <g>)? I remember how eagerly I awaited the release of DOS 5.0 with all the neat and nifty features it promised because I didn’t want to use DOS 4.0 with its reputation for higher memory consumption and general bugginess. I remember the DOS wars when Microsoft had MS-DOS and IBM had PC-DOS and Digital Research had DR-DOS (which later became NDOS when Novell bought it and then in turn was bought over by Caldera). Of course, IBM and MS were developing DOS cooperatively if I recall but their cooperative agreement ended around the time of DOS 6.22 and then IBM did their own PC-DOS 6.23 …

My parents back in Sri Lanka still use a notebook (my very first computer that I bought with my own money <g>) with Caldera’s version of DOS – I don’t even remember what it was called and Caldera’s site doesn’t seem to have any info on it now – which is one of the best implementations of DOS I’ve used. It’s got true multi-tasking (in DOS!!!) as well as some other pretty nifty stuff … but then again, the computer that my parents are using is a 386SX/25MHz with 5MB of RAM and an 80MB (that’s MB not GB …) of hard disk space and they run Eudora 2.0 (I think) on Windows for WorkGroups 3.11 to e-mail me … Really ancient, huh? 🙂 Ah well … those were good days when things were so much simpler … but do I want to go back to those days? I don’t think so! There’s so many more exciting things and possibilities in the computing arena of today – of cousre, I do wish some things were different but hey, you can’t have it all 🙂

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Posted by Fahim at 9:08 am  |  No Comments