Thomas Mueller said:
>On Living On Earth, broadcast over National Public Radio
>stations including WFPL in Louisville KY, there was a
>part about old computers being brought back to life with
>New Deal software, which includes word processing and
>Internet. There was discussion on this list some months
>ago on New Deal. These computers can be sold to people
>who could not afford the price of a new computer. There
>was no mention of Net-Tamer or Arachne. New life for
>old computers keeps toxic waste out of landfills. Many
>of those computers revived with New Deal are early Pentiums.
>I noticed a lot of earlier Pentiums on Second Wind PCs.
IMHO, what most hurts older computers is the inability to fully use the
Internet. You can perform word processing and many other tasks adequately
on old units, even the 8-bit home computers like the Commodore 64. But while
you can access the Internet somewhat in a text-only fashion with these
things, you can't get the whole effect. The Internet, more than anything
else, seems to drive users toward the multimedia Pentiums of today.
I have the free downloadable demo of the New Deal software on one of my
computers; not a bad little package, but I haven't rushed to install it on
others. And I don't recall anything about Internet access with respect to
that software. It seems to me Arachne would be the key to keeping some of
these older units going, since it provides the critical access. Some people
clearly feel that without full Internet capability, a computer isn't a
"real" computer, though I don't personally feel that way.
