Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

nostalgia hour: old software you loved

<< < (6/9) > >>

thomthowolf:
I got through college writing all my papers in a beautiful software called "Wordbench."  This was a wonderful tool for writers, which allowed you to collect notes on notecards, build an outline to which you connected them, and then generate a rough draft.  I also featured a couple of really great tools for getting unblocked.  It had a freewriting tool I still miss, which set a timer for 5 minutes, nagged you if you stopped pressing keys, and hid your typing behind x's until your time was up.  I have never found another software like it. :(

urlwolf:
Sounds extremely interesting, thomtowolf!
What OS was Wordbech for?

No dice running it in dos mode (emmulation)?

CWuestefeld:
I have to say, the best word processor for me in the DOS days was ENABLE. Anyone remember this one?
-Josh (March 03, 2007, 03:36 PM)
--- End quote ---
Remember it? I worked for the company! When I was in college, I worked part-time as a tester for their spreadsheet module. I once wrote a full-featured (insurance, double-down, you name it) blackjack game using spreadsheet macros, which inspired the rest of the department to write other games, until we had a whole spreadsheet casino. There's some interesting stories following that, like the random number generator bug that we found because of the craps game. I still think that the last version of Enable's spreadsheet is the best spreadsheet ever made.

The first shareware-type program I bought was long enough ago that I've forgotten the name. It was a terminal emulator for the Atari ST (remember the days of BBSes?). I expect that in the PC era, my first purchases were also a terminal emulator and a D&D-like RPG.

The oldest piece of shareware that I still use is probably Zoot (and we're still waiting for the 32-bit version, promised very soon now).

From the old DOS days, I also fondly remember Sidekick. The amount of creativity and hacking expertise (in the good sense) that went into that program is unsurpassed. Anybody remember the secret "Vogon Poetry"?

MerleOne:
There is one software I am missing a lot nowadays, even if it was designed for low speed connections  : Laplink.

You could install the software from a PC where it was running to another PC just using a crossed serial cable and typing the right commands on the target PC.  A minimal client was then downloaded and you could install the whole software on the second PC, then have hi-speed transfers between the two PCs by running Laplink on both of them.

Also, it had a unique feature for transferring files from PC "A" to PC "B".  When transferring a file from "A", if another version already existed on "B", Laplink would only transfer the difference between the "A" and "B" versions and managed to reconstruct the desired file on "B".

Todays, even with high speed networks, this might still be useful with GB size files.

Sara_Smiles:
MerleOne wrote: "There is one software I am missing a lot nowadays, even if it was designed for low speed connections  : Laplink."

Merle - I work for the modern-day Laplink, and we've just released a Vista-ready version of the software you're talking about. :) It's called Laplink PCsync. And the feature you're talking about - faster file transfers and synchronization by just moving the changed portion of documents - still exists as a feature of PCsync. It's called "Speedsync."

www.laplink.com/pcsync

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page