Hi Gang! Bob, from the Southern Philippines here -
I've been lurking a while - and after looking at Paul's (ppw3)
sig / logo several times was going to send him a privateeemailt -
but figured maybe others may be able to help or may benefit from
the responses.
I live in a small city on a big island in the Philippines. And
there are hundreds of older computers here - from original IBM-PC
up. But most of these are either abandoned and gathering dust or
relegated to being game machines for the kids. At the same time,
there are thousands of people who would benefit from this kind of
h/w but who could never hope to afford the latest "recommended"
package at the computer store.
I'd like to get some of these machines into better use, get some
local businesses to have at least e-mail and maybe help out some
friends who sell used hardware but can't seem to sell anything
that won't run at least W95 ( they have oodles of nifty 386
machines sittin' on the shelf). I'd also like to make some money
in the process - cuz while I love the hardware I still have to
keep the family in fish and rice (and pay the ISP and phone
bills, I guess)....
It looks like you, Paul (of OWL fame) and maybe others - are
trying to do some commercial activity centered around the older
hardware. How's it going? Care to share any ideas with someone
thinking of doing same?
Right now I'm encouraging people to use Arachne and Net-Tamer and
have poked around at Fdisk.com, Dinosaur's Garden and TVDog. But
still not fully up to speed on the software side - what's
available and what's right for different situations. On using
older machines and DOS, people here seem to consider it SOP to use
DOS software which gets passed from hand to hand. It seems to me
that older versions of popular software - like Wordstar 4 or older
Lotus 1-2-3 may not be aggressively protected by the company - but
that copying them is still piracy. Am I right? Does a commercial
product ever become "abandonware?" If so, is there a list
somewhere? I DO NOT want to be involved in anything that even
smells of piracy.
Linux seems to be a solution to the legality problem - but getting
DOS people to move over may be a problem as well. I have much to
learn here - no full Linux installation running yet - but have
played with some UMSDOS packages while waiting for my CD order to
come in....
So - Anybody making a living largely or exclusively in the realm
of older hardware? If so, care to share any secrets of your
success?
Any ideas on how to 'market' older systems to businesses in
which the powers-that-be have just decided that they just can't
afford computers or the Internet?
Are you selling hardware/software combinations? Services?
Support? Custom systems?
What would you consider to be the "killer freeware or shareware
applications" for DOS / Linux on older hardware. Arachne,
various flavors of Lynx, Net-Tamer and Pegasus seem to be strong
in the Internet and E-mail arena. What about other areas like
Wordprocessing, Local Area Networking, etc?.....
Any ideas will be appreciated.
Bob
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General Santos City's Computing Alternative
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