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Post by petea on May 11, 2023 15:59:03 GMT
For many years, the environment I worked in (microbial ecotoxicology in the agrochemical industry - they cared in those days!) was Lotus 123 as a spreadsheet, Wordperfect as the word processor and Borland Paradox as the database (although most of the databases were on a mainframe computer accessed by terminals in the labs and offices - as was the statistics programme) - although for the first few years it was pen and paper and Letraset for graphs and graphics. I always thought that Quatro was the better spreadsheet, but there was too much invested in terms of macros etc to move away from 123.
When I changed divisions (surface coatings), they were using PS/2 workstations and so DisplayWrite was the word processor, but I cannot recall what spreadsheet (probably 123) we used as I mainly worked on data in StatGraphics. I adopted Excel when I started my company in '96, but went back to WordPerfect as the WP and used Paradox for databases until we started to create larger more complex ones in SQL and MySQL. I still think Excel 97/2000 is the best iteration in terms of usability (but don't use the stats functions, quite a few are just plain wrong and have only recently been fixed!), but I can cope with the recent release although I still use statistics add-ins like XLStat and Analyse-it rather that the rather clumsy and limited built-in functions.
Checking up on early spreadsheets, I never knew that MS first developed Excel for the Mac and then ported it to Windows!
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Post by Slinger on May 12, 2023 12:29:14 GMT
Hated Access, loved Visual FoxPro, which Micro$haft eventually bought, because it was better, then buried it, because it was better. Access still isn't better.
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Post by MartinT on May 12, 2023 12:45:07 GMT
I liked Borland Paradox but adapted to Access and even taught it for a while.
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Post by MikeMusic on May 12, 2023 18:16:45 GMT
Hated Access, loved Visual FoxPro, which Micro$haft eventually bought, because it was better, then buried it, because it was better. Access still isn't better. Point of order M'lud FoxPro 2.6 I think when MS bought them Visual was later Nope Microsoft bought Fox Software in 1992, one year after the latter released a FoxPro 2.0 update |
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Post by MartinT on May 12, 2023 19:27:16 GMT
So, back to Windows 11. Next year my big (final) project will be phasing in W11 to a fleet of 600 workstations, not all of which will take it, so we'll be needing capital budget for replacements, too.
We're already starting to think about it and will be building a couple of test workstations soon. It's not the building that's hard, it's the testing with all our Group Policies and InTune policies against every bit of software we use. Then creating an MDT install to create an out-of-the-box installation up to ready to login. Not to mention organising the training.
Because... we can't cope if the icon is in a different place.
The good side? It'll make our network even more secure and resistant to attacks.
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Post by Tim on May 13, 2023 18:46:58 GMT
Next year my big (final) project will be phasing in W11 to a fleet of 600 workstations, not all of which will take it, so we'll be needing capital budget for replacements, too. You'll deserve your retirement after that lot! |
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Post by Slinger on May 14, 2023 14:30:13 GMT
Anyone who tells you that these were the " good old days," is seriously deranged.   |
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Post by MartinT on May 14, 2023 14:44:01 GMT
Glad to see the back of floppy drives.
However, looking at the printer, worse was to come. First the inkjet printer with built-in failure such as nozzles getting blocked, pick rollers going shiny or the cheap carriage motor giving up.
And, then, the piece de resistance, the wireless printer. Never has an invention caused so much heartache and gnashing of teeth. Beelzebub would have been proud.
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Post by MartinT on May 19, 2023 18:56:30 GMT
Hoping Paul's project PC ends up looking better than this.  |
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Post by petea on May 19, 2023 21:11:56 GMT
You really do have to be careful with your choice of compression algorithms with Windows don't you!  |
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Post by Slinger on May 19, 2023 21:42:18 GMT
Hoping Paul's project PC ends up looking better than this. It'll be fine as soon as I fix the leak and pump it up again, |
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Post by Tim on May 20, 2023 22:15:44 GMT
That's what I felt like doing to my Linux PC today! It's trying very hard to piss me off and Windows is too, clearly not happy I'm leaving as it wiped out the boot loader so I couldn't boot back into Linux and Windows Secure boot wouldn't let me reinstall Linux either.
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Post by MartinT on May 20, 2023 22:23:04 GMT
Secure Boot is a function of the UEFI BIOS, Tim? Could you not just turn that off while fixing the Linux boot?
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Post by Tim on May 20, 2023 22:32:19 GMT
Yes, thanks . . . I found that out eventually but I didn't realise that's what was happening at first, just kept getting a weird MSI motherboard error message with no information to help, just a blue screen and 'Unauthorised Activation' visible. It's sorted now but it took me awhile to work it out. It is clever mind you as I could boot an Ubuntu installer USB, it had just blocked Mint for some reason after it had wiped the GRUB boot loader. They definitely don't play well together, well on my machine they don't.
And that was with swapping drives over too, not even both on the motherboard at the same time!
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Post by MartinT on May 20, 2023 23:02:36 GMT
I did enjoy visualising you in that pic above, though.
Been there, got the t-shirt etc.
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Post by Tim on May 20, 2023 23:19:03 GMT
I did enjoy visualising you in that pic above, though. Haha, I knew you would, I could see the grin from here! What's even more of a puzzle, the partition table was wiped too, so just by taking the Linux NVMe out, putting the Windows drive in to do something, then taking it out and putting the Linux drive back in, so not even booted together, when I booted Linux, not only had the GRUB loader gone the partition table had gone too, which I confirmed by using Gparted in Ubuntu, the whole Linux drive showed as unallocated space. Thats something I've never seen happen before, or read about. |
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Post by rfan8312 on May 20, 2023 23:24:16 GMT
So, back to Windows 11. Next year my big (final) project will be phasing in W11 to a fleet of 600 workstations, not all of which will take it, so we'll be needing capital budget for replacements, too. We're already starting to think about it and will be building a couple of test workstations soon. It's not the building that's hard, it's the testing with all our Group Policies and InTune policies against every bit of software we use. Then creating an MDT install to create an out-of-the-box installation up to ready to login. Not to mention organising the training. Because... we can't cope if the icon is in a different place. The good side? It'll make our network even more secure and resistant to attacks. Is this because of an attack that you guys suffered not so long ago? |
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Post by MartinT on May 20, 2023 23:30:34 GMT
No, it's because W10 is being phased out so next year will be the big W11 upgrade effort for us, trying to get it done before support runs out.
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Post by Slinger on May 21, 2023 14:03:09 GMT
No, it's because W10 is being phased out so next year will be the big W11 upgrade effort for us, trying to get it done before support runs out. You should get it sorted before they release W12 though, yes? |
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Post by MartinT on May 21, 2023 15:13:51 GMT
LOL, hopefully they won't go silly on hardware specs as corporates and education simply won't be able to keep up.
Anyway, I'll have stopped caring by then.
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