Windows 10

Discussion in 'Discussion Group' started by robbie, Jul 1, 2016.

  1. robbie

    robbie Well-Known Member

    Have Windows 8.1 right now and I keep being asked by the computer to upgrade to Windows 10 for FREE.... Is Windows 10 worth upgrading to or should I keep Windows 8.1 ?? Thanks :)
     
  2. CraigSPL

    CraigSPL Well-Known Member

    If you told me you had windows 7 I would say skip the upgrade. However IMHO 10 is a good upgrade over 8 and 8.1
     
    Wayne Stollings likes this.
  3. spy109

    spy109 Well-Known Member

  4. Auxie

    Auxie Well-Known Member

    I took the free up-grade from Windows 7 to 10. Still haven't worked out all the problems that I've had since up-dating. Perhaps because I have a 64 machine and the update is for a 32 machine might be part of the problem.
    My first computer was a Commodore 64. At that time there wasn't any storage except punch cards, so every time I used my computer, I had to type in the complete program. I'd still prefer DOS over Windows but the only time that it is used anymore is as part of Windows. But
    LIFE WOULD BE SO BORING IF EVERYTHING WENT RIGHT ALL OF THE TIME!
     
  5. Hught

    Hught Well-Known Member

    Still beats the hell out of Fortran
     
  6. Wayne Stollings

    Wayne Stollings Well-Known Member

    Hey I still have my Fortran textbook from college. I use it to scare the young'uns .....
     
    Hught likes this.
  7. Rockyv58

    Rockyv58 Well-Known Member

    Next you'll say it beats Pascal and dBase III
     
  8. cynadon

    cynadon Well-Known Member

    I liked fortran better than cobol. Cobol won't logical unless you just new it and was good with syntax.
     
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  9. Wayne Stollings

    Wayne Stollings Well-Known Member

    If I really want to scare them I show them the Burroughs cards I used as bookmarks. The idea that each line of the program was a different card can put them into the fetal position quicker than anything else .... especially when you point out how easy it was to drop the cards and have to put them back in order, hopefully in the correct order because you had ons shot per day to run your program.
     
    cynadon likes this.
  10. Rockyv58

    Rockyv58 Well-Known Member

    I came home last night to find windows 10 trying to self install on my pc. I run windows 7 64 bit and I like it I don't want windows 10
     
  11. cynadon

    cynadon Well-Known Member

    Cards were before my time Wayne. My cousin however, is a NCSU engineer. He mixed up his cards one time. Me, my brother and him sat around one night putting them back in order. How did you punch them and know what you were doing?
     
  12. Hught

    Hught Well-Known Member

    I am so old, as a Cub Scouts we used to make Christmas wreaths with the old cards.

    It has been a while, but if I remember right the card punch device was pretty large and I remember correctly it was still a qwerty keyboard.
     
  13. Wayne Stollings

    Wayne Stollings Well-Known Member

    It was like a teletype machine .... again maybe a bit old for most. You typed just like a typewriter but there was a series of hole punched in the cards that represented the text of the program. Thus, each card was a line in the program and the length of the line was limited to the number of characters which would fit on the card. Our school shared computer time with the other universities in the state and our window of use was something like midnight to four in the morning. Heaven help you if you screwed up the program and caused it to run too long and not allow everyone to get theirs processed. I remember on girl who did just that on a n early project. We were to calculate the current value of the purchase price of New York island if it were placed in a bank with an increasing percentage paid compounded monthly over periods of time. Instead of printing the result she screwed up and printed each month and the old old dot matrix printers took forever to print. That tied up more time than was allocated for our class and there was a presentation of the stack of paper to her in class while telling some of the rest of us why we had no project.
     
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  14. Wayne Stollings

    Wayne Stollings Well-Known Member

    Yes, the console was huge. Ours had four in a "hallway" in the engineering building that had originally been designed as"buffer space" for the atomic pile from the more occupied sections of the building. They no longer taught any classes around it and it was "idled" down before the professor who had taught them left.

    Imagine the nuclear reactor there with hundreds of Iranian engineering students around it constantly. That would be a heart attack for some now.

    I used to write love notes to the female geeks on the cards. It was often a big hit.
     
  15. cynadon

    cynadon Well-Known Member

    I got an apple IIc in 1984. Like Bart Simpson, I always had to write sentences and turn them in on Monday. I told my teacher I had a computer and was trying to learn to type. She thought it was a fine idea to practice my typing skills.

    5 rem yall watch this
    10 for n = 1 to 1000
    20 ? n "I must not chew gum in class."
    30 next n
    40 end

    That worked til a friend told on me. Then, I had to copy the definition of "considerate" from an unabridged dictionary 3 times, by hand! After that, 3 of us got out of class regularly to help in the library. only 3 or four of us could write the init commands to format a floppy.

    Oh how times have changed. " 640K ought to be enough for anybody"
     
  16. Wayne Stollings

    Wayne Stollings Well-Known Member

    My first computer was a Commodore 64 with both the tape and floppy drive. The tape drive made it much easier to get into the programs. We used one of those room sized IBM mainframes at work and when they started to look at adding personal computers they found out I had experience with them so they sent me to class with some other employees. While the instructor spent the first couple of classes on bytes and the multiples I wrote programs to kill the time.

    My son bought me an original copy of Dungeon Hack for Father's day with the 3.5 floppies still sealed. Since the instruments at work are limited to a communication speed of no more than 166 due to their internal processors I have a spare inventory of old computers upon which this could be played. The original computer was an old 386 with a whopping 20 MB hard drive which came with a laser printer from a computer outlet in California for the small sum of 5K plus shipping. That was such a good deal at the time I got a couple of extras for associates to convince them to give free shipping. We are still running programs I wrote in Basic to generate reports from these things. Some of my staff give me grief for the old computers, until I point out that to upgrade them it would be well over 250K in additional equipment and s few months while I modified it to do what we needed it to do. It took about 6 months the first time. One had to go to UNC for a scan and noticed they too were using old PCs to control the equipment. When they asked they were told the same thing. The equipment would have to be replaced in order to do it and that was not cost effective because the equipment ran better than some of their newer pieces. Older is sometimes better, but it is always older. ;)
     
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