A plague on all operating systems

[tacit]

I've seen black and orange monitors, and black and green monitors. In fact, I still own an Apple 9" black and green monitor for an Apple //c.

The amazing thing about that tiny black and green monitor is that it has--get this--a composite video input jack on the back. That means you can hook it up to a VCR and watch movies in black and green.    I watched The Matrixthat way once...it was really wild.

[Xairbusdriver]

ejc,

I don't think I touched on your 'digital bloat' topic earlier. I have to agree with you. But there are also 'fixes' in this area. I have never used Word (except when I could get it to run [on a PC] while taking notes for a committee at church!). I used MacWrite till almost the end. But I switched to Mariner Write way back then. It is now at version 3.1 (after some 10 years). It will write a Word file, for those who must have one, as well as many other formats. Of course, it also reads most formats, as well. And since it is not part of an 'integrated program' it doesn't carry their 'bloat.' Of course it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Word does, either. YMMV.

And since you mentioned working with numbers, the same company also makes a spreadsheet program called Mariner. I don't have a need for a spreadsheet, doing most of my number-crunching in FileMaker (since they are usually part of a database, anyway).

As for graphics, there is always Graphiconverter, and I have used ColorIt! for a long time. If you need more sophisticated stuff, even PS Elements has a lot of capabilities that are 'hidden.' But that is still a very large program, IMHO. For web work, I don't think you can beat BBEdit for ths price.

The only thing I see good about the 'bloat' you speak of is the increased production of RAM that it has caused!    

Jim C.

Didn't the lead in of Matrix use mono-colored text? I can 'see' that on a single 'color' monitor, but I'm not sure I could watch any movie on anything less than a grey-scale tube!

[Dreambird]

quote:Originally posted by Gary S:
My biggest gripe with the way in which computer technology is headed is still 'digital bloat". everything gets bigger and more complex instead of the other way around.

I know, it's the only way for the computer industry to make alot of money.

Unfortunately, it seems to be out of my control.      

Hmmm... I find myself in agreement with Gary... mostly since uncontrolled "bloat" was one of my own reasons for dumping Windows... got sick of 900 files in the system folder all .dll's and related crappola of which I understood little and took a lot of work to find out about so one knew what to weed out... not to mention one directory called C:WindowsInf which was cram packed with .inf (driver) files, about 300 of them for devices I didn't have... didn't plan on having and didn't want around... the pertainent ones related to devices I had were plain enough to find... they were in C:WindowsInfOthers in which I could find "most" of the ones I needed. Even so just trashing the whole lot of extra .inf files was risky since some might be in there too... so once again... off on a fishing expedition.

OTOH... I agree with Tacit in that different people will need a wide and varied bunch of software and drivers... but why not just install them yourself? Software generally puts in what it needs and a new device generally (this was my experience) came with it's own drivers, so that if "plug and pray" insisted on using those .inf files anyway... which it rarely did if handled properly, I could almost always find newer and more suited drivers on the install disk with the device and more often that not an update on the net as well.

If the .inf file was used, I usually ended up removing the device from the device manager and rebooted and then "leading" Windows by the hand to the proper files anyway.

My 2 cents... which aren't worth much anyway!  
 
 [ 04-23-2003, 05:34 AM: Message edited by: Dreambird ]

[Mrious_be]

quote:Originally posted by airbusdriver:

So all these book things have had it backwards for several centuries?!                  OK, just kidding, using the ink just for the text saves ink, I guess.
But there has been a lot of studies about this question and although I much prefer dark (black) text on white/very light grey) background, there are many on the oposite side. Oh well.

It depends on how reading makes you confortable Airbusdriver.
But... try reading a black text (not even gray) on a white background for a long time.
The difference is that tthere's a white background, causing a higher luminance to the eyes (sorry if i don't explain to well).
For me, reading like this might give me a headache, although i can clearly read the text on it.
Reading a white text on a black background however, kills the luminance and is much easier and cosier for your eyes.
The contrast betweent both (black on white or white on black) stays though, the letters will not loose any of their sharpness.

But ok... i guess this is more said out of my own personal experience, and i have to add that i can have headaches pretty easy at moments

[tacit]

White text on a black background is significantly easier to read over the long term; the reason that paper books and so forth areprinted the other way around is that (1) it would take too much ink to print white on black and (2) ink spreads when it hits paper, so printing a solid black page of ink with white knockouts for the text would tend to make the letters skinny and destroy fine detail, making the page...er, harder to read.

[Xairbusdriver]

No problem!

1. Just don't use so much bleach when making the paper and add a little more carbon.

2. Making the ink white!    
or maybe highly acid, then it could make real 'knockout' letters!    

I suppose the studies I've read were discussing video text. The visual effects of reflected light (paper) are slightly different from emitted light (video). Of course, all those studies may have been paid for by Apple ( or Xerox) so they could claim easier reading with their new systems!