What was the first version of Windows you ran?

[Rik]

I thought so at the time.

[JB]

You only had to touch it and the ZX81 would crash.

Remember those tape-drives?   

[Glenn]

The joys of waiting 30 minutes for a game or program to load, only for it to fail in the last few seconds.

[Rik]

And that horrible screen as stuff loaded...

[talos]

It was the de-bugging I hated on the ZX81, spending hours typing the prog in after which it invariably refused to run because of a "syntax error" or a missing comma in a line of data, and when it did finally run, it was nothing like the pic on the magazine cover.

[Rik]

Oh those happy days of magazines with pages of programs to type in - only to find that the magazine had a typo in it.

[Niall]

And that horrible screen as stuff loaded...

On a slight tangent, the DVD for the IT Crowd has the usual selection screen, but one of them is that loading screen (well, the Spectrum one) that you have to wait a few seconds before it loads. I thought this was a fantastic touch. I'm such a nerd

[Niall]

Oh those happy days of magazines with pages of programs to type in - only to find that the magazine had a typo in it.

I had that happen once with a 10 (or more) page program. I left the Ti994a while I went for a drink and came back to find a white screen. I switched it off at the wall and went out in a foul temper. My temper didn't improve when I discovered that this was the machines screen saver type of thing!

[Rik]

 

A lesson quickly learned, eh Niall.

[Sebby]

And that horrible screen as stuff loaded...

I remember that on my Commodore 64.

[Rik]

I wonder if any of us could tolerate such slow loading nowadays?

[Glenn]

Ask the WBC users with low throughput

[Sebby]

I doubt it. I think we're all guilty of expecting computers to be near instantaneous these days.

[Rik]

Ask the WBC users with low throughput

[Rik]

I doubt it. I think we're all guilty of expecting computers to be near instantaneous these days.

Me too, Seb. Back then, I was so gobsmacked with the whole concept that the wait was acceptable. Now... 

[Sebby]

I know what you mean.

[Glenn]

I think it has a lot to answer for though, people have less patience nowdays.

[Rik]

I'm sending you round a cassette with Firefox on it, Glenn. 

[Glenn]

OK I have a cassette player on my hifi, will it work on there?

[Rik]

If you connect the output to your sound card, it should.

[esh]

3.1, because the SDK in 3.0 was atrocious. As I remember it was something like 3 disks and then another 8 of printer drivers or something ridiculous. I installed it on a 286 in 16-bit mode with 20MB disk drive by stripping out all the help files. Windows then was still somewhat of a novelty though. It was something you dipped into from DOS occasionally as opposed to the other way around.

Windows 7 is pretty great so far, by the way.

[Rik]

Yes, Windows was where you went to do things graphical, I was still using WordPerfect in DOS, with all the arcane key sequences for markup.

[bobleslie]

I loved WordPerfect.

You could do all sorts of clever things and sort out all sorts of problems if you knew what you were doing.

Unfortunately, ......

[Rik]

I used to have people call me for the sequence of keys needed for particular formatting, Bob. The worrying thing was that I knew them all. 

I still think it's a much better WP than Word.

[esh]

I have WordStar if anyone fancies some real retro key-typing action!