On 17/06/2010 23:59, Dilwyn Jones wrote:
Damn, I missed all the fun as Orange havent delivered the mail for
over a week ;o( Not even the message to tell me that I need to agree
to their new conditions before I can use my mail account (via an email
client or even their webmail interface). How dumb and unhelpful is that!
On Orange broadband here and no end of annoying little problems even
though no major outages. My big gripe is their tech helplines -
foreign and totally incapable of appreciating (language permitting)
that there can be any sort of problem, let alone what it is. They seem
to have a "we are Orange, we are perfect, therefore you must be wrong"
approach. You are guilty until you prove yourself innocent beyond any
whisker of doubt.
Service slows right down in the afternoons when local kids come home
from school - yet it's only a small village, god knows what it's be
like in a big town. Or maybe that's the reason?
My main gripe with ADSL providers is that they never consider that poor
speeds and connection issues may be a problem with the line - they don't
want to call in BT engineers, even when you are paying them the line
rental. I eventually decided to move back to BT, when my broadband
dropped to below 300Kbps and Talk Talk were telling me that my line
could only support 512Kbps anyway, so the 300 was a result of the
contention ratio (that was despite the fact I was getting 2.5Mbps with
Tiscali before Talk Talk took them over).
Switched to BT and they sent out an engineer to find the line was
corroded at the point it came into the house.
Regarding floppies, No, you cant format DD disks in Vista or W7 as the
native drivers dont support it. No problem reading them, though, and
no problem formating HD disks from W7 or from within QPC - at least
there shouldnt be. Solution: Copy your old stuff to HDDs and go on
living!
I suspect Rich might have been copying stuff for a customer onto DD
disks when this thread started. Likewise, I get the occasional request
for stuff on DD disks. Apart from archived old QL disks, I never use
floppy disks for my own QLing any more.
Yes I have to still make up DD disks for customers when they order software.
But Per and others, have probably missed my comment. The point is, is
that I can sometimes format DD disks in W7 - I just have to unplug and
replug in my USB disk drive a few times, to get it to work eventually.
There must be some drivers about somewhere which will work reliably on W7 !
As for the QL future, I guess there aint any, at least not at the
present (if that makes sense). Modern computers have evolved far
beyond what was envisaged when the QL was young. Surely we dont need
yet another way of doing the same old tired things any fool can now do
with Linux, Windoze or Macs. The current trend appears to be towards
Cloud computing, where data storage and even processing power is an
off-site, on-line service. Thats a major paradigm shift - back to
square one, some three or four generations ago.
Using online applications is a bugbear here. Type something and then
the whole thing stops while it's sent and handled. Part of the thrill
of living in an area where dial-up is modern high tech I guess.
There is still the possibility that some of the seminal concepts from
the QL era will come round again in a new form in the future, so its
worthwhile hanging on in there and keeping it alive as best we can.
And if not, weve still had our moneys worth!
Definitely. I think the one thing that came out of this discussion is
that the QL has meant a lot to many of us and it still has its uses in
knocking up a quick basic program to do a specific task. It's more
than a quarter of a century old, discontinued a quarter of a century
ago and people have said here they felt it never really knew its role
in life. People still use ZX81s and Spectrums and other 1980s
computers - I guess some of them are retro games machine whereas the
QL has been more of a home programming machine in some ways. Either
way, it's had a good innings even if it slowly passes away. It still
has its uses for me but I can also see the day sometime in not too
many years when it won't.
Well, contrary to popular opinion on the list, I still see a future in
the QL market. Yes, many of my 600+ QL customers have come to me to
purchase a membrane, or items of software to collect, but many of them
(50-60%) have gone on to purchase other items too, including games, disk
drives and other items which suggest that they are doing more than just
collecting computers.
It does not help that Quanta do not actively work to promote the QL
apart from running the odd show (well, not to my knowledge). I
mentioned some months ago about going to the Vintage Computer Festival,
but it was down to me to suggest that they let me have some membership
forms, and a banner to display, along with Quanta magazines - even then,
I had to print off the membership forms to take with me. The QL Wiki
(and Norman's own QDOS Wiki) are probably some of the best marketing
tools out there for promoting the QL and informing people what it is
about - however, I get no input from Quanta (Dilwyn excepted and I
believe he is doing that off his own back) and requests for financial
assistance to help preserve QL software and make it available into the
future to support existing users fell on deaf ears.
That said, it is not just Quanta. SellMyRetro offers a cheap way of
selling second hand items, and traders and user groups can open a free
store, and use it to advertise themselves. Unsurprisingly no-one has
yet bothered to do this - all it takes is 10 minutes to register with
the site, open a webstore, decide which category you want to be linked
to (eg. Retro Computers->Sinclair->Sinclair QL), upload a banner and put
some introductory text about what you do and a link back to your own
site if you like.
The number of registered users on the site continues to grow daily and
there are quite a few items being sold through the site now - it also
gets fairly high results in Google, when searching for purchase sinclair
ql (or similar), so is ideal to help promote the QL.
I guess what I am saying is that if you want the QL to have a future,
then come on pull your fingers out and contribute to forums and sites
outside of this list. I know that some people put a lot of effort and
contribute in other ways (writing free software, articles and publishing
magazines), but we all need to use the internet to promote it more
widely and be willing to stick our necks out.
--
Rich Mellor
RWAP Services
http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk
http://www.rwapservices.co.uk
-- Try out our new site: http://sellmyretro.com
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