Re: My Venerable 386

[dski@cameonet.cameo.com.tw (Dan Strychalski)]

  Charles Mueller (cmueller@metrolink.net) wrote --
  
  >         No small number of members have reminded me that my venerable 386
  > computer is not exactly with the times in 1997.
  
  Making people buy a new computer every three years is part of M'soft's
  global strategy. What's wrong with a 386? I'm using my employer's 486 at
  the moment, but my home machine -- from which I do a great deal of
  browsing and posting, and on which I did a huge amount of job-related
  work before being forced to use Windows here -- is a 386. It is *more*
  than up to the job.
  
  > (There were compensations:  On that [1926 Underwood], we learned fast
  > touch-typing in a way that never leaves us--in my case, up to 100 wpm now
  > on any keyboard on a good day.)
  
  For text -- but what about commands? Are you aware that with properly
  designed software your hands need never ever EVER leave the touch
  typist's home position for typing OR commands? This is what tipped me off
  to M'soft back in '86 -- they *disabled* convenient, standards-based
  keystrokes to (1) lock keyboard users into IBM's keyboard design and (2)
  make keyboarding a horror so everyone else would go to pointing devices.
  
  ALL big-name software in the second half of the eighties ignored
  standards-based main-block keystrokes and forced people to use IBM-only
  Alt, function, arrow, paging, editing, and number-pad keys. That's M'soft
  working behind the scenes. You won't convince me otherwise.
  
  >        Has the time come for me to similarly give up the 386...?
  
  Absolutely not.
  
  Dan Strychalski
  dski@cameonet.cameo.com.tw