DesertDwarf wrote:
I was writing this reply to a post in another thread when I realized you hijacked your own thread and thought I should reply here (which was also hijacked, but this will help get it back on track).
LOL! Yeah, realised I should have posted that here Ric, so here it is now and removed from its wrong place:
nexter wrote:
BTW, nearing the end of a 60 day trial run of DOpus. There's much to like - it's wide-ranging facilities and features, the tabs, and the phenomenal speed of operations. But, and this is a biggie - I miss the convenience of lots of banks of function buttons and other features of old Amiga DOpus 4.12, and I absolutely hate that ghastly configuration, it's a bloomin' nightmare. All in all I've already had to spend far more time than I feel comfortable with familiarising myself with things, and I find it very slow to use because of the limitations of the UI and and layout, even when configured as best as is possible, so I don't think it's for me. I can get things done more quickly with an almost ten years out of date Magellan Explorer or even for that matter running up Amiga DOpus 4.12. Nearly 30 years of being used to that kind of layout etc. and easy, graphical configurability are perhaps just too hard to shake off.
DesertDwarf wrote:
nexter wrote:
BTW, nearing the end of a 60 day trial run of DOpus.
nexter wrote:
All in all I've already had to spend far more time than I feel comfortable with familiarising myself with things, and I find it very slow to use because of the limitations of the UI and and layout, even when configured as best as is possible, so I don't think it's for me.
nexter wrote:
Nearly 30 years of being used to that kind of layout etc. and easy, graphical configurability are perhaps just too hard to shake off.
When reading this, one word came to mind: ossification.
LOL! Well Ric, that may be the way you see it but that doesn't necessarily make it so.
I love learning new things and do so all the time (in fact, I'll be starting a PhD thesis on a subject totally removed from any of my professional areas next year, albeit almost entirely via computer as I'm not terribly mobile, so my prof and I will be communicating almost entirely that way), but new is decidedly not always better. And I think DOpus - in line with many other programmes, let alone OSs, in terms of ergonomics and general user-friendliness, has most definitely changed for the worse. And I'm not prepared to spend a month of Sundays to properly learn all the ins and outs of a ruddy file manager. Time's too precious for that, and life too short. When I first used, e.g., the old Amiga DOpus, I had one look at at, read the readme file or something, and within a couple of hours I was away with it and completely comfortable with it. Sure, there were a few things I had to learn as I went along, but it all was easy and simple. And that's what a file manager should be.
Likewise, with Magellan Explorer (initially called Voyager), being very much like the old DOpus. And although it may not have been updated in about a decade, it still works perfectly under Win 7 and is fast as lightning there, though it does have a few issues with Win 10 where it can be a bit slow with some ops (esp. deleting!) So I'll probably try and do most of my file management on the Win 7 system with Magellan once I get that machine fully set up again. (It quad-boots 32 and 64 bit versions of XP and Win 7 and is networked with my laptop, at least, when I'm able to sit at my computer desk which is never for very long due to my disabilities.) Magellan basically still does everything I need it to do, and does so in convenient, easy ways. It'll have to do, at least for now, and it will do so nicely. And not forgetting DOpus 4.12 in emulation - very fast and coping well with Windows disks and large files, thanks of course in large part also to the fantastic WinUAE.
DesertDwarf wrote:
I'm 51 and have been using computers since mom and dad gave my brother and me a Commodore VIC-20 as a Christmas present in 1979 (for the math-challenged, I was 12). I revel in learning new things, new programs, and adapting. It's what keeps computers so much fun for me. Time marches on and I move on from old programs and old methods. I have less use for DOpus at home (I do use it, of course), but for work purposes, it's a mighty champion of file manipulation and organization, whether managing your music library (Vlad?), your vast collection of photos (like my brother, the pretty decent amateur photographer), or just managing oodles of business files (me...whoopie!).
I don't reference the "first computer at 12" thing to draw a comparison to you or anyone else. I mention it as a reference to all the different systems I've played with over the years. Many I have enjoyed and loved using. A few I regret were not successful (Amiga, BeOS because they could have changed the computing world).
But I moved on. Is Windows the best? Certainly not. If Amiga had survived, our graphics and video processing would be so much more advanced now. If BeOS survived, our OS internal structure would be so amazingly pleasant and clean for programmers and users alike.
Hmm, not so sure graphics and video would be so much more advanced now if Amiga had survived. Bear in mind that if, like me, you needed at least 24 bit GFX, all the native GFX were dead. (Although I still love the idea of the Amiga's native 'pullable' screens - very useful in their day and I missed them once I installed GFX cards, though not with the A1200.) On the whole, though in its time Amigas were fabulous systems, to be realistic, first of all the OS needed a complete re-think. It needed proper and serious security, multi-user support, built-in TCP-IP stack and full networking support, inc. built-in NIC, and a more robust file system with full security, protected memory, virtual memory, multi-threading, and much more. It would have meant starting over almost from scratch. And then it would have needed to switch over to Intel/AMD x86 hardware (PowerPC was already dead in the water around the time Commodore went bust as IBM had by then withdrawn from the whole thing apart from its own Power chip for servers etc.), and any form of custom hardware would (or at any rate, should) have been out of the question. (Except perhaps custom 32 bit GFX cards with modernised custom chips.)
As for BeOS - well it had its nice points but also suffered from similar problems to the Amiga's. The OS internals were, to a point, loosely based on BSD, too loosely. It had no security, no file system security, no multi-user support. (Its technology still survives in some set-top boxes, apparently.) Basically, it was a hotch-potch of things, cobbled together with concepts etc. from BSD, Amiga. Mac, and OS/2. Quite fun and easy to use, though.
No, what we could and should have had would have been OPENSTEP 5, 6 etc. instead of idiot Jobs bailing out the rotten Apple (they were on the verge of bankruptcy) and turning OPENSTEP into the new MacOS and so severely crippling it to appease Mac users and Mac developers as to make it the pile of useless shite that it is.
OPENSTEP had already accumulated a fairly substantial x86 user base and could have posed a serious challenge to Windows. It had raw unix power combined with complete ease of use and a great look. (In fact, Microsoft licensed parts of the UI for Win 9x and NT 4 and successors. There still there in the form of the taskbar and start menu.)
All in all though it's a good thing - as well as a bad one - that we've only got one single serious OS albeit that being Windows (I don't count 'The Dark Side' - Apple - nor for that matter Linux as serious contenders, they'll always remain a minority sport). If we still had multiple platforms today, can you e.g. imagine the cost of apps? It would be even more ridiculously high than it is.
DesertDwarf wrote:
The world is full of ifs...and regrets.
For example, I regret that I drove a manual transmission car for one year in my early 30s. Using that clutch with my left foot sped up the process of arthritis (which I was always going to get early as a Larsen Syndrome dwarf) in that hip and made things painful.
Ouch, bugger! Sorry to hear Ric. I guess automatics have their uses. Personally, would never have bought one - I always preferred the control of manual and its effectiveness, as well as its much cheaper maintenance and replacement costs. If I were still able to drive today, I'd probably have to buy a 20+ year old banger or a classic car - hate and don't trust any kind of electronics in cars and prefer my old-fashioned small local garage to be able to fix anything cheaply and simply. Hated having to drive a leased automatic when we were living in the Caribbean.
DesertDwarf wrote:
But I do not regret, at all, that I strive to move on and use the newer tools and utilities, play the newer games (Gasp! He's a gamer!!1!)....
In short (pun intended), and especially because my dwarfism makes me acutely aware of orthopedic issues, I try like the dickens to avoid ossification.
LOL! Yeah, where would we be without a sense of humour. And yes, I would agree that ossification is to be avoided at almost any cost, but that doesn't necessarily mean or imply having to embrace all the latest and newest.