.

[Chuck(G)]

I guess I'll reveal my age by saying that the first computer I used was a IBM with a magnetic drum memory that you had to optimize by writing code so that the bytes you wanted to access came by the read/write heads just when you wanted them. Thank goodness Fortran came in a year or two later.!

That's be the 650, right, Don? Followed by the all-transistor 704. My first exposure to FORTRAN was on a 1401.

Starting a Mac vs PC argument is useless, as each side is conviced the others are deluded and hopeless. Just one small point: Ever try de-installing an application on Windows? On a Mac you just drag it into the trash!

Easy enough--go to Start, Control Panel, Install/Remove Software and click the application to be removed. Nothing to it. If you drag the app to the wastebasket, it simply deletes the shortcut--but it would be easy enough to create a shell hook to do the same as the Mac.

[Ricko]

I go both ways (is that OK for a Baptist?). Windoze at work, two macs and two PCs at home. The macs get all the use at home.

Last summer I was at a trade show with a Dell rep who couldn't get his handouts to print on the new Dell color inkjet (from a Dell PC). He e-mailed the brochure to me, I hooked my mac to his Dell printer and printed all the copies he needed - Let's just say he asked me to keep the mac notebook under the table while the handout printed.

I was the only kid on the block with an Atari 400 computer complete with cassette tape drive and a DEC LA36 terminal/printer.

The Mac (OSX) just seems to automatically talk to everything right out of the chute.

[ThomasDodd]

My first computer was an Atari ST with 1 meg of memory.

Most of the guys here make me feel like a newbie. The fist computer I bought was an Atari 1040STe, in '91, used. But it still runs and works great. Finally got ot maxed out to 4M ater a few years at 2.5M. I was using it almost daily when the SCSI adaptor died, an I just cannot agfford to replace it

My fist computer was a Commodore Plus/4 in 6th grade. It still works too, but I don't have space for it. I used C-64s before that, and Appl IIs in highschool.

Commodores got me into programming, and the +4 got me into "non-mainstream" computers. I've never been on the position to just go to a shop and buy software.

I got into Unix thanks to MiNT in my Atari when I started college, then moved on to Linux. Anyone here remember using 1.0 kernels?

I cannot answer the poll, since I use neither. I use x86 hardware and Linux, except for ocsional work in windoze (through vmware). My wife uses Win98 on the system at home, but I always reboot to linux when I use it. I do use HP-UX a lot at work, since the test equipment requires it.

GUI's are fun toys, but I only like them for multiple text window and web-browsing.

Chuck, ever port your editor to Unix/X11? I'd love to give it a spin. Emacs is so bloated these days, and VI is still a little quirky for programming.

[Chuck(G)]

Chuck, ever port your editor to Unix/X11? I'd love to give it a spin. Emacs is so bloated these days, and VI is still a little quirky for programming.

No, never felt the need. But if you want a decent no-nonsense editor for Linux/Unix, have a look at Joe (not Bloke, but the editor called Joe)--it's basically a Wordstar work-alike as far as the keystrokes go. It uses curses for screen management, so it doesn't even need X to run. You're right about Emacs; in 4.2BSD it was pretty cool; but it's gotten out of hand.

[ThomasDodd]

Chuck, ever port your editor to Unix/X11? I'd love to give it a spin. Emacs is so bloated these days, and VI is still a little quirky for programming.

No, never felt the need. But if you want a decent no-nonsense editor for Linux/Unix, have a look at Joe (.

I gave Joe a try back when emacs needed more memory than I had. I also tried Jove and pico. Never cared from them. I really dislike windoze keybindings, and emacs is OK once you learn them.

I was just looking at the current man page for JOE. I see support for my favorite feature, that previously I had only found in emacs. Retangle mode. I may give joe a try again. It's beyond me why other editors don't support rectangle mode. It's really handy when dealing with columns of text, which I do a lot.

[Mark]

Any programmers here from the punched card batch-processing days?

Sure. We usually used Fortran. Submitted our decks in the morning through a small window where the operators would wrap the deck with their mysterious JCL cards and we would usually get a print out back through another window early enough in the afternoon to submit another deck for an overnight run.

[Mark]

I Any of your other programmers ever use Brief? What an editor! It could do anything anybody ever THOUGHT about doing with text, with no need for a mouse. .

I tried Brief some years ago, but had the problem with WYKIWYL (what you know is what you like). I use an editor that I wrote a long time ago for 8085 under CP/M 2.2; ported it in 1983 to PCDOS on the 8088; then in 1990 ported it again to the Win32 API. It has my coding conventions and keyboard shortcuts all programmed in.

You, know I was never happy with any editor, Brief was one of the better ones as was a little editor sold by Norton before the evil Symantec bought him out. And, just to show everyone that I do know a curse word: EDLIN.

[MaryAnn]

I'm in the What You're Used To Is What You Like category, having used PCs at work forever and bought an iMac last December. Couple days ago I installed Office for Mac because my PC is spy-wared to death and I wanted to do some stuff at home in Excel. At first I thought, "Why would there need to be a special Office for Mac version of this stuff?" and then the first time I tried to right-click the mouse in Excel to do some stuff I realized WHY THAT IS. Like on the Mac you have to use a stoopid drop-down menu for everything you'd use a right click on a PC.
AND the slot-loading CD drive makes a sound like a buzz saw when it is in use. Just try listening to a CD with your zillion dollar computer speakers when the drive is making that kind of noise.
Not happy with the mac; I got ripped off and will never go there again, but I have too much invested to throw it away. My old 90 MHz Dell was running fine before it got spy-wared to death. I have the software to clean it up if I can get it going, and I got all my good stuff off it before it ground to a halt.
OS-X sucks.
I took my first course in assembly language back in (mumble) year using punch cards. I know what Joe is talking about.
MA

[ThomasDodd]

Like on the Mac you have to use a stoopid drop-down menu for everything you'd use a right click on a PC.

And I feel stiffled buy only have 2 usable button on a Windoze box. Why doesn't Microsoft use the middle button for something usefull? Not that the wheel for scrolling is usefull, but what about the button? I get both the extra axis and the 3rd button in GNOME.

And why no simple select-> past option? Why must I select->copy->paste?
Can M$ users not understand both the select buffer and a cut buiffer?

For that matter, why does Windoze require the mouse for so much? I can do 90% of my computer work and never touch the mouse. Why doesn't M$ use the Alt key as well as the Control key? Can M$ users not handle multi key commands? Or maybe useing 3 keys at once, so the Shift key might matter? Did you know the Keypad keys are different than the main keys? Why not use them differently? Or how about Left-Contrl and Right-Control being different? The alt key can be differentiated too, if M$ would let us use them.

AND the slot-loading CD drive makes a sound like a buzz saw when it is in use. Just try listening to a CD with your zillion dollar computer speakers when the drive is making that kind of noise.

Odd. I've used several slot loading CDs, from a 4 disc changer 6 years ago,to all the car units, and even the 50+1 home unit from Pioneer. Never noticed them being noisy. Perhaps a bad drive? Even Apple gets a lemon ocasionally. It should be a warranty repair.

[Chuck(G)]

[For that matter, why does Windoze require the mouse for so much? I can do 90% of my computer work and never touch the mouse. Why doesn't M$ use the Alt key as well as the Control key? Can M$ users not handle multi key commands?

There are a bewildering number of MS keyboard files out there, as well as programs that allow you to roll your own, if you don't like anything you see.

The number of Windows keyboard shortcuts is beyond most mortal memory on the stock version:

http://www.computerhope.com/shortcut.htm#21

If you want to use your keypad keys instead of a mouse, just go to Control Panel-Accessibility Options and select "Use Mousekeys".

Over the years, I've trained myself to use the mouse left-handed, rather than right as a way to alleviate CT syndrome after I had several bad occurrences of it, even changing to trackball, touch pad and foot ball devices.

I still hate the mouse and most GUIs. Period.

[Kevin Hendrick]

... just to show everyone that I do know a curse word: EDLIN.

Byte your tongue!

[Chuck(G)]

... just to show everyone that I do know a curse word: EDLIN.

Byte your tongue!

EDLIN is CP/M ED without any of the features.

How about TECO?

[ThomasDodd]

There are a bewildering number of MS keyboard files out there, as well as programs that allow you to roll your own, if you don't like anything you see.

Yeah, And i say a way to put the left control key where it belongs (betweebn tab and shift) too. But that fun with the registry.

Still, that mean downloading sopme other app/file and hoping it doesn't screw up. The next revision for M#$, it'ts broke, and you have to start over. I know the contrl-caps swap is different from Win98 to XP.

Also, there may be many shortcut, but most are not usefull. I need short cuts in the pps so I don't need the mouse, or have to navigate menus (a real pain with the keyboard)

If you want to use your keypad keys instead of a mouse, just go to Control Panel-Accessibility Options and select "Use Mousekeys".

I don't mean mouse keys. But so Ctrl<1> is not the same as Ctrl<KP1> (like the Xfree 86 Ctl+Alt+<KP+> and CTL+ALT+<KP-> to cycle physical screen size).

I would like Ctl+Alt for window manager, server (OS for Windoze types) functuions and free up Ctrl and alt for apps. So Alt+tab belongs to the app, and Ctrl+Alt+Tab for cycling windows. Would be really helpful in MDI apps.

Another exampl, mozilla for *nix: Ctrl+W close tab, ctl+shif+W close window (all tabs) and Ctrl+Q to quit the app. For the Windoz version you have to use Atl+F4 for quit. But the functionality is there. So it's just under utilized in the M$ world.

I still hate the mouse and most GUIs. Period.

For 90% of my work, me too. They are useful for some things, but not most.

Yet it's difficult to use Windoze without one. Classic Mac (and the other 68k systems) were near impossible.

[funkcicle]

Just thought I'd say +1 for the Mac users here.

I just like the easier to use and more smoothly running computer. Since my conversion to apple not too too long ago I've managed to switch a few friends and a relative.. and still spend far more time(and make far more money) fixing friends/family's windows computers than troubleshooting or fixing Apple computers(hasn't come up yet!). I did have one problem with my ibook(optical drive disconnected from the motherboard somehow) which was dealt with to my satisfaction, but still a minor inconvenience.

With Windows on the other hand, I cannot count a single 6 month period in my history of computer ownership that I have not had a significant problem with the windows operating system...when troubleshooting was available(i.e. with Gateway and with Dell, back when both had U.S. based call centers) no tech support person was ever able to tell me to try anything i hadn't already tried, and the solution in every case was to reformat/reinstall from scratch, or some other solution I was forced to improvise on my own.

As for the mouse issue, my external mouse has 2 buttons and a scroll wheel, and the built in trackpad has more functionality than either my Dell Inspiron... half the price, too.

that's just my mileage though.

[poomshanka]

The mouse only has one button, which means that the right-click, the most powerful tool in Windows, isn't available.

Well, I can't get get by without my Macally mouse. Fully programmable, two-button with a scroll wheel/button:

http://www.macally.com/spec/usb/input_d ... e_003.html

[poomshanka]

Comes down to a "when in Rome" issue for me. I make my living pushing pixels, and the entire process is centered around Macs. Nice that it's my platform of preference, but that might also have something to do with the fact that I've worked on Macs for the last ten years. It's what I'm used to at this point.

As to the stability issue, I did have some problems with the first round of G5s (the single 1.8 GHz processor), and now have two machines networked here at home (G4 1.25 GHz DP and a G5 2.5 GHz DP). Both have a boatload of RAM installed, and I routinely work with Photoshop files that open up at 8 - 10 GB. Big horses to push around, yes, but I can't remember when the last time was I crashed.

Pretty stable platform for my money, especially under some extreme processing loads.

...Dave

[tjonp]

I wish Apple would start producing two-button mice. The whole one-button mouse thing made sense in the 80's, when computers were still intimidating and simplicity was highly valued, but I think we're past that point. Of course, mac users know that pretty much any USB mouse will work with their computer (and they're fairly cheap these days), but as long as Apple keeps packaging their computers with one-buttons, people will ignorantly assume that's their only choice with the mac. It seems with all of the innovative ideas Apple comes up with, they could devise a new kind of mouse that would wow everybody. Unfornately, the company seems content to ignore the issue.

That said, I'll always buy mac.

[Doug@GT]

And I feel stiffled buy only have 2 usable button on a Windoze box. Why doesn't Microsoft use the middle button for something usefull? Not that the wheel for scrolling is usefull, but what about the button?

I use a Microsoft Wireless Optical mouse. It's got left and right buttons, wheel, wheel button, and two thumb buttons.

Most work I do on the computer revolves around the internet and word processing. So my mouse is set up to make this painless. The wheel button is set for "copy", the rear thumb button for "paste", and the front thumb button for "back." People are amazed at how fast I can copy and past information. Pressing the wheel button while turning the wheel enlarges the text size in Firefox, and does other interesting things in other programs.

A good mouse should have software that lets you set the buttons.

Also, I've got a rare gem on my keyboard. On the number keypad, the button that would normally be the number lock key is a tab key. Data entry in excel has never been easier.

Until I find another keyboard with this feature (which is not yet), I won't be buying a new one.

Doug "yeah, I use Windows"

[MaryAnn]

Odd. I've used several slot loading CDs, from a 4 disc changer 6 years ago,to all the car units, and even the 50+1 home unit from Pioneer. Never noticed them being noisy. Perhaps a bad drive? Even Apple gets a lemon ocasionally. It should be a warranty repair.

I'm on my third CD drive. They all acted and sounded the same. Apple will not admit they have a design flaw. Like I said, piece of junk. they DID say that the computer is not designed to work with any CDs except the ones it came with. Really, they said that, sniffingly, on the fone when I started making noises about design flaw. I repeat: ripped off; and I reapeat: hunk of junk.

MA

[MaryAnn]

My quick tips:

Like on the Mac you have to use a stoopid drop-down menu for everything you'd use a right click on a PC.

If you want, you can get any ol' 2-button USB mouse and plug it in. The menu in Excel for Mac when you click the right button should be the same one if you highlight something and "Control-Click". (i.e. hold the control button while clicking the mouse)

AND the slot-loading CD drive makes a sound like a buzz saw when it is in use. Just try listening to a CD with your zillion dollar computer speakers when the drive is making that kind of noise.

To avoid any CD noise: import the CD into iTunes. Then your music will be there without having to even bother with the physical CD at all.

(I have nearly all of my CDs - at least the ones I listen to regularly - imported into iTunes, and not a jewel case cluttering the desk.)

I have a USB mouse that I will try; I had assumed that the mac would not "understand" a two-button mouse but will give it a try. I don't expect the menus to appear as they would on the PC though...I'd have to go by feel rather than sight.

I don't want to put my CDs on the hard drive; I have other things I need to use it for. And I shouldn't have to fill up my hard drive with stuff I already have on CDs because Apple can't fix a design flaw. We older folks don't store all our music on our computers, s'far as I know; we usually still use the CD player. My CD player has way better speakers anyway.

MA