I've been following the debate in a rather detached way since all I use now is QemuLator running SuperBasic (nicer than XBasic and I have a lot of existing software), the Editor (friendlier than Emacs), Abacus (for one spreadsheet I can't be bothered to convert), and (occasionally) QMaths.
To keep an old computer going you need a reasonable user-base and a perceived function. The Spectrum gets continued support because it had masses of users to start with and it's easy and fun to write games for it. The Z88 is still alive as it can be used to take notes all day far from a power supply without the batteries dying. The QL no longer has enough users to make commercial products viable, nor to produce enough programmers to support open-source products. Look at UQLX: when its developer moved on, no one else could or would take over. There's no particular feature, like the games of the Spectrum, to make any but a small band of "tinkerers" want to use it. Even with a SGC, the abilities of a QL will always be limited. My Q60 ran at one twentieth of the speed of my PC (using bogomips): no wonder it was like a snail in reading a PDF file or running a graphical web-browser. Then there's the lack of USB and printer support. Have fun tinkering with the old hardware, but admit that major expansions and serious software developments are just not going to happen. _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
