Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 20:29:05 -0400 (EDT) From: "Paul O. Bartlett" To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Subject: Public Buying (was: Re: DRDOS FDISK) In-Reply-To: <003f01c0410e$bc749b40$a2881004@dbcooper> Message-ID: X-PGP-keyid: 0xF383C8F9 X-PGP-fingerprint: E62D2E2C7BCD08CB B742A93726A91532 Organization: SmartNet Private Account MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: opendos AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk On Sat, 28 Oct 2000, Patrick Moran wrote (tiny expert): > This problem may not even be a DRDOS bug, but a Compaq compatibility > problem. I really hate those computers and do not understand why anyone > would buy one. A lot of people simply don't know any better. Most of your average computer megastore shoppers wouldn't know a Compaq from an interstate compact. I have been following this list for some time now, and for the most part it seems to be a list for hackers (in the original good sense). I subscribed because I don't like Windows and thought about trying to install something on my home box (made out of parts by a mom-and-pop shop) like DR-DOS. I prefer a command line, not a GUI. (I looked at BeOS briefly -- very briefly -- and it looked like more of the same on the surface.) I am not a hacker, and all this talk about boot records and what not is 100% perfectly legitimate but of little interest to me. I recently bought Partition Magic and downloaded DR-DOS (7.02) but have not tried to use them yet. (Partly lack of time and partly trepidation.) First I think I need to get a new modem, as what came with my box was apparently one of those cheesy "Winmodems." (BeOS would not use it, and somebody on a BeOS list called it a Winmodem.) But beyond that, I do not want to play with the computer as an end in itself. All I really want to do is install DR-DOS, so I can use all my old DOS programs instead of bowing and scraping to Windooozy, but I don't want to wipe Windooozy clean off the box. (For one things, there is one site I want to access from time to time which will refuse to work with anything but Internut Exploder >=4.5 or Nutscrape >=4, requiring that Java be enabled, and my company's intranet is set up so that it simply will not work with anything other than Exploder >=4.) In fact, I nearly bought a Compaq at a megastore until somebody tipped me off against it. I wouldn't have know the difference myself, and a lot of the buying public are the same. This list is rather specialized, and the general public do not subscribe here. That is why they buy Compaqs and the like. -- Paul mailto:bartlett AT smart DOT net .......................................................... Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA Keyserver (0xF383C8F9) or WWW for PGP public key Home Page: http://www.smart.net/~bartlett