On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 3:58 PM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 9:46 AM, Dale E Sterner <sunbeam...@juno.com> wrote: >> >>> I installed win 7 on a laptop to see what it could do but not to use it. >>> I installed software that I bought to see what it would do on win 7. >>> A lot of of message boxes came up giving me 24 hours to reactive >>> or it would shut down forever. >> >> Did those messages come from Win7 or the software you installed? > > Can't you use a RC (release candidate) for a few months? Or is that > not supported any longer?
If what you *have* is a Release Candidate, maybe. (I have no idea if it is still supported.) >>> I left the test software on being affraid that if I removed it, it would >>> do it again. Win 7 is now on my junk software list. > > In fairness, Win7 doesn't have a lot of life left, so it's not a good > long-term solution. (Vista very recently died, so no more updates or > fixes.) Win7 is no longer under active development. It *will* get Extended Support (IE, security updates) till 2020, but MS would really like you to move to Win10. The bigger longer term problem is that each new release of Windows adds new things to the Windows API, and as time passes, software will expect that new stuff and fail to run on systems that don't have it. I have an ancient notebook running Win2K Pro that can't run some stuff I use elsewhere because it requires XP minimum. There are already things that require Win7 minimum and won't run on my XP Home netbook. There are reasons I prefer to stay current on Windows... >> You got DOS and DOS apps in the old days, got them to where you >> wanted, and stopped. If what you have does what you need, splendid. >> If it doesn't, you are looking at stepping beyond DOS. That will mean >> either a flavor of Windows or a flavor of Linux. Either way, there's >> a learning curve you're stuck with, and you need to learn more about >> and better understand what your options are. > > I can't help but wonder if a simple Chromebook (from Best Buy, etc.) > would fit the bill for him (or me or others). But without QEMU or > similar by default, it's probably less useful. Google probably thinks > emulation would be overkill for the "light" tasks that Chromebooks > support. You can "probably" install a full Ubuntu (instead of default > ChromeOS), but I'm not sure of the potential tradeoffs there (battery > life?). That will depend on your needs. Chromebooks explicitly assume you have a fast internet connection and will store your data in the cloud. If you have the first and are willing to do the latter, a Chromebook can be a good fit. If the answer is no to either of those questions, think again. And while there are options to install Ubuntu, you still face issues of local storage capacity. Battery like my not be your scarce resource. If I were to get a Chromebook, I wouldn't bother. It's a platform to connect to the Internet through broadband and do stuff via the Chrome browser. Stuff that can't be handled that way is Something Else's Job. (I can theoretically install Ubuntu on my Android tablet. I have no actual need to do so. Android and the apps I have installed do what I require. Ubuntu won't add anything I need badly enough to justify the effort of moving to it.) > A lot of issues with old DOS software have to do with printing, as one > guy on BTTR recently mentioned needing. Not sure what is perfectly > ideal here (VDosPlus??). BTW, QEMU 2.9.0 was just released today (but > I'm unaware of any relevant changes for us). I have vDOSPlus here. It's a possible solution for most print needs, since you can configure what happens when you try to print from a DOS app. I never actually do, but I would redirect to a "printer" under Windows that creates a PDF of what is sent to it, and print that using standard Windows methods. If you can *run* your DOS app in a virtual machine (which is essentially what vDOS and predecessor DOSBox are), you can generally find a way to actually print from the host OS. I very seldom need to actually print *anything*, and largely don't care. (I have several DOS apps and games running on my Android tablet courtesy of an Android port of DOSBox. One candidate for running that way was Eric Meyer's DOS WordStar clone, VDE. The problem was that extant Android ports of DOSBox weren't passing control-key combos through to the host OS, so WordStar <ctrl-key><key> assignments simply weren't recognized. I found a port that does let them through and VDE runs fine.) > Another long shot would be DOS emulation in the browser via > Javascript. Normally I would shun that for being too buggy or slow, > but there are TONS of Javascript emulators. It's shocking actually, > and some are amazingly good (and network-aware), e.g. OpenRISC. Of > course, DOS is not high priority, and copy.sh's V86 is still too > buggy, but we can dream, can't we? ;-) Hardware is increasingly smaller, faster, and cheaper. I've seen some of the DOS emulators in JavaScript, and if you *have* decent hardware, they perform surprisingly well. As time goes on, you are more likely to *have* decent hardware. (I have also seen compilers that compile C to JaAvaScript.) >> Proceeding without knowledge is a good way to shoot yourself in *both* feet. > > Shooting your foot off? Yes, C++17 was finalized recently. :-)) Switch to Rust... :-) ______ Dennis https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
