Posted on 04/06/2022 3:18:19 PM PDT by upchuck
30 years ago—on April 6, 1992—Microsoft released Windows 3.1, which brought the company to a new level of success, kept the PC platform competitive with Macs, and set the stage for Windows PC domination. Here’s what was special about it...
(Excerpt) Read more at howtogeek.com ...
Post 13-
Bingo! That’s right. Every upgrade is hell.
I remember purchasing Microsoft Encarta thinking it would be great for my kids. They never touched it. Then there was the 100 years of National Geographic. What a nightmare that was. It came with about 30 CD-ROMs. You search for an article on Antarctica for instance and it tells you to insert Disc 23. Then if you wanted to see the photos, it told you to insert Disc 7. Then you would have read errors and have to keep re-inserting the disc so it could spin up correctly.
It ended up in a yard sale with most of my other software programs from that period. It's probably been about 20 years since I bought a piece of software that I had to install with a disc. The internet changed everything.
On basic operations such as opening folders W/9x, using Fat32 mechanical HDs, they could be faster than later NTFS drives. However, you needed to keep an eye on system resources, and they could not much handle what the Internet loads today.
And a Dell (i think) once told me to place a problem disk in the freezer first! Reportedly worked for some HDs.
:-)
We have a computer at work that we still use that has Windows 3.1 on its 40 megabyte hard drive!................
I am not looking to go back, but one major change after XP is the divestiture of much of the appearance settings in later OS versions. W/11 (which i just upgraded to) is no different, and as with the Start menu the interface is worse. However, per usual, there is much tested freeware to enable extensive easy customization, such as,
Like Open Shell, download Open Shell (click on Releases>Latest on middle right side) to replace the mobile device W/11 start menu, and there is Explorer Patcher that restores the Windows 11 taskbar to be exactly like Windows 10, while Windows 7+ Taskbar Tweaker (I am using the beta ver.) provides more customization.
Then there are the over 200 tweaks available in Ultimate Windows Tweaker 4 and now there is Ultimate Windows Tweaker 5 for Windows 11 from the Windows club.
Add to this the many Winaero features of the Winaero Tweaker
Add to this is Right-Click Extender (add items to many right click menus), while T-Clock Redux works in W/10 (far better than the default) but not W/11 as yet.
I think that a simple right click on the desktop should provide a visible GUI menu with submenus listing access most every setting, but instead the trajecory seems to be to make desktops more like mobile devices (though I advocate quick GUI access to most everything on these also). But which is not the case in Windows, apart from customization, nor in the many Linux distros I have found (which can be more of a problem).
But thank God for the tools we have to be used for Good and the glory of God, and for those who provide them.
Try Audacity, it can be a little overwhelming at first glance but it will do what you want plus many other audio editing features, and it’s free.
Ugggh i know. I wish I had back all,the money I wasted on computer stuff. We got the Encarta too- hardly ever looked through it. And another mistake was we bought higher end computers each time, only to have them outdated in a short time. Should bought mid or lower end till the power sort of,leveled off, the bought higher end- we paid way too much for,our computers thinking we needed them, but if course we didn’t need the extra power.
I’ve heard about Audacity and may have even signed up for it at one time. Thanks for the tip; Audacity had slipped my mind.
I loved IBM-DOS 6. It had Rexx as a batch language. It was so superior to batch files, it was not even close. These days, Bash is as powerful, but it was cool at the time to be able to run the exact same batch file on your PC as you could on a minicomputer or mainframe. Too bad IBM couldn't market themselves out of a paper bag.
ThisIsWin11 1.1.170 https://github.com/builtbybel/ThisIsWin11/releases/tag/1.1.170 )see TIW11.zip) is another program that can be useful to those who want a quicker way to access W.11 own customization settings.
In May 2021, Audacity was acquired by Muse group.
On July 2, Muse Group quietly updated Audacity’s privacy policy with new terms copied straight from the Muse Group’s own privacy policy. The new privacy policy states that the app will collect limited personal information to improve the application, and notes the company may share your personal data with law enforcement and sell it to potential buyers.
Audacity doesn’t have accounts or profiles, so it doesn’t know your name, email address, or other personal information. But it will collect things like your IP address, OS version, OS name, CPU details, error codes, and crash reports.
In the “For Legal Enforcement” section, the policy says “Data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities’ requests (if any).” This is ambiguous and up for interpretation. Real IP addresses are stored for one day, and then they are hashed. But that may be enough for local governments to find your location using a data request.
The data is stored in European Economic Area, but personal data might be occasionally shared to the group’s head office in Russia and external counsel in the United States. This means the company will have to comply with data requests from both Russia and the United States.
Interesting. I haven’t been using 3.x Audacity and hadn’t heard of those changes. I use it on a Linux Laptop so I wonder if they can get the same data from that machine. To be honest I use it exclusively for ripping and editing vinyl that I already own, so I doubt I have any legal issues.
That said being a long time technology professional, I go under the assumption that I have no digital privacy and nothing is fully out of reach to LE. It has served me well over the years.
That definitely worked.
Windoze fix bump! ;-)
Thanks.
Ditto. A Wang SX386 40 mg HD and 2 mg RAM, Windows 3.0 and DOS 5. Upgrading to Windows 3.1 and then 3.1.1 was a big improvement.
I remember I bought MS Publisher for $100 and had to upgrade my RAM to a whopping 4 mg for it to function.
Like you, I never got around to reading the huge manuals.
That’s gotta be an industrial application.
Sorta, it has proprietary, in-house written software that runs tests on production equipment samples....................
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