On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 01:34, Eric Auer wrote: > Hi Theresa, <snip> > > FreeDos is legal, isn't it? > > FreeDOS is completely free and legal, written by volunteers all over > the world. Even some of the GUIs are completely free and legal, while > others are not free. The above should tell you that many people do not > give a damn about copying MS Windows or MS Office from their neighbours, > but it is certainly illegal. There are various legal alternatives: > Use OpenOffice.org, which is free and legal, pay 100s of bucks for a > legal copy of MS Office, or buy it bundled with a new PC, in which case > it costs only a fraction of the normal price. Exactly the same happens > for Windows: As an alternative, you can use Linux, BeOS Zeta, FreeBSD or > any other free operating system (including FreeDOS), but you can also > buy it for quite some money, or buy it bundled with a new PC or at least > "piece of hardware". The bundled price for WinXP Home is around 100 Euros > as far as I remember.
I've been very impressed lately by some of the "missed opportunities" in early Win31/Win95 Office Suites and DOS WordProcessors. A complete Office Suite that fits on less than 9MB hard disk space - I like! In relation to that, does anyone know where I can find the specifications of the native WordPerfect file format? And suchlike? I know O'Reilly's had something of the sort, and there might have been something similar published somewhere else - but I don't know where to get copies. Thanks Wesley Parish > > In either case, WinXP and MS Office are far too "heavy" for your very > old laptop. So you can only use it with Win95 or at most Win98se. In > Germany, it is legal to sell 2nd hand copies of any Windows version, > as long as you REALLY sell it (give everything to the one who buys it, > and delete everything on your own PC: You must MOVE it to the new owner, > not COPY it...), but in other countries, it can happen that a Windows > license is glued to a human being or PC forever, even if the PC falls > apart into a pile of rusty dust. Anyway. You can buy 2nd hand copies of > Win95 for 20something and of Win98se for 40something $$. You wrote that > your laptop already has Win95 installed anyway. If you have a legal copy, > e.g. have the license certificate around, then you can probably ask MS to > send you a new CD-ROM if you have lost the original one. And, at least my > personal feeling tells me this, nobody would complain if you use the CD- > ROM of Win95 of somebody else to install drivers on the Win95 which you > already legally own, even if you no longer have the original CD-ROM. > > I hope that answers some of your questions. > > Eric. > > PS: Please do make sure that you configure your EMail program to send > mail only as plain text. At the moment, you use HTML, which is pretty > "unstylish" for mailing lists / not nice and easy to read. > <snip> -- Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish ----- Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui? You ask, what is the most important thing? Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people. ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=6595&alloc_id=14396&op=click _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
