WinZip - This is an excellent ZIP utility for Win-d'ohs.
DOS PKzip utilities - ZIP file management at the commandline. Only a fool would go without.

GoldWave - The BEST wave editor. It has an enjoyable interface, and supports the following audio formats: WAV, VOC, MP3, OGG, AU, SND, RAW, AIF, AFC, IFF, MAT, VOX, DWD, SMP, SDS, TXT. GoldWave also supports audio extraction from the following formats: ASF, MOV, AVI, MPG, WMA.

I use this for all my wave needs, including editing/cleaning up waves before sending them to the CD Burner.

LView Pro - This is a great graphics editor with a great interface. It does lots of special effects, and it supports the following formats: BMP, DIB, PCX, GIF, JPG, JPEG, JFIF, PPM, PGM, PBM, TGA, TIF, TIFF.

MaPlay - This is an freeware MP3 player/decoder. Its interface is simple, but I like it a lot!
WinAmp - This is mainly an MP3 player, but it also handles, well, most media types. Still, I prefer MaPlay. (What I don't understand:  Why is there no MIDI player that can play files in a seamless loop?)

Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, and Carmageddon may be “old” games, but they're still fun! Which a lot of today's games are not.

WS_FTP - An excellent FTP Manager. It's great for uploading files to your personal website or just browsing a public FTP server.

GetRight - You cannot survive the internet without this! It allows you to pause and continue inturrupted downloads. It does all sorts of neat things!

Nero Burning ROM - This is my favorite software for burning CD's. It's easy to use, and one important feature that most programs lack is that it lets you set the gap between tracks. (Sometimes I actually don't want an extra two seconds of nothing between my tracks. Or maybe I want two seconds of lead-in at the start of the music to prevent those horrible hisses.)

Netscape Navigator - Netscape Navigator sucks. But it's the least suckiest browser. I like it, when it works, because it inturprets HTML better than other browsers.

Except Netscape 7.0. They fixed a lot of problems, but also threw away several standard HTML codes.




Win-d'ohs [Suck] Me - My dad has this on his computer. It's a major pain in the butt! (I was so pissed off when I discovered that they tried to hide DOS by “removing” DOS-Mode. Win-d'ohs is nothing more than big fancy DOS program!)

Win-d'ohs Tripple-X - Not only is the software itself a pain in the but, but everytime you want to install it, you have to call some idiot at Mi¢ro$oft to activate it. The activation itself costs $$$, and everytime you want to re-install Win-d'ohs (which should be done every 30 days! according to the experts), you have to call Mi¢ro$oft and buy a new liscense.

After dissatisfaction with Win-d'ohs, many people have turned to Unix.

America Online - “SOL”'s crappy connection service aside, the SOL browser itself is bloody frustrating! It makes me want to bang my head against the screen! Stick with Netscape (which, unfortunately, SOL bought). Netscape may suck too, but it's the least crappiest browser out there.

That's another thing. My parents have SOL on their computer. If I want to surf the 'Net on their machine, I have to launch the big huge SOL browser just to connect. Then what do I do? I launch Netscape, so that I have two large programs running at the same time.

(Here's one for Rippley's Believe it or not: While surfing with Netscape, through an SOL connection, on my dad's Win-d'ohs [Suck] Me system, the System Resource went bye-bye, which is not unusual, but when I checked the amout of availible resource, the reported numer was -6%! I guess Mi¢ro$oft really does think they'll take over the world if they can pull 6% of something out of nothing.)

Internet Exploiter - Three words: Violation of privacy.

Funny thing happened the other day. I got a Mi¢ro$oft internet service disk in the mail. It was covered with comments like “Important!” “Confirmation of Delivery requested!” The offer was something like three months free then a fixed rate until the end of 2002. Oh, and let me guess, if I sign on I can only browse with Internet Exploiter.

I'll send confirmation of delivery as requested; I'll send that junkmail off marked “return to sender.”

RealPlayer - This is the only program that can legally do anything with “RealAudio” files (.RA), so if you encounter one of those, go ahead and use it for that. But otherwise, I find RealPlayer to be a RealNuisance, especially when it tries to controll the CD player. (I think the RealPlayer was developed with all those extra features like sports and stocks reports because the program is mostly useless!) Indeed, it can handle most media types, but horribly. Don't forget to start RealPlayer before trying to open a RealMedia file.

The thing about RealAudio is that it's meant to be “streaming audio.” The data is stored in a buffer as it's downloaded, you play it once, and the buffer dumps it. “Wait, I paused that music clip so that I could give attention to my child's needs. Now that his needs have been met, let's play it from the beginning so that I can hear the whole thing.” Sorry, you've got to download it again!

That would be fine and dandy if my speedy internet connection made it seem like the Internet were on my harddrive, but realistically, very few people have that good a connection, and it'll be a very long time before such a thing becomes common (and cheap) enough to make streaming audio practical.

Bottom line, the music industry is hoping that streaming audio will replace physical music storage mediums (such as compact disks), so that every time you want to listen to a song, you'll have to use a credit card to have the song streamed to you.

“Streaming audio” is rubbish.

Mi¢ro$oft SideWinder Game Device Profiler/Game Pad - My Pentium 200 was only a few months old when my parents got me this gamepad for Christmas. I've had it about four years now, and I still haven't found a use for it.

On the surface it looks way cool: Eight triggers that can be assigned to keyboard commands. But I don't have any games worth using it with. Except a few fighting games, but they're DOS games.

Because of the nature of the SideWinder, I just can't get it to really work with any game. It creates its own compatibility issues: Most games will only detect the SideWinder if “gamepad” is selected. So now the direction control is working, but the game is also looking for gamepad buttons, which the SideWinder's are not; they're keyboard inputs.

I tested the SideWinder with Quake once. I could get the buttons to shoot and stuff like that, but still everytime I pushed a button, Quake would spit out an error like “button not defined,” even though it was “working.”

(FYI, most of today's PC games need a dozen keys for a bare minimum of significant control. I can't play a 1st person 3D game with a non-keyboard anyway. I tried to play Duke Nukem 3D on the PlayStation, but I just couldn't get used to it. Besides, the controller only had eight buttons.)

I did try the SideWinder with a Win-d'ohs game (In the Hunt) that detected it and even listed it as “SideWinder Gamepad” in the controller profile, but I still problems with that two-button game.

If anybody wants this sleek, black paperweight, I'll sell it for real cheap.

Mi¢ro$oft “Compact” Ergonomic Keyboard - The avarage ”big” ergonomic keyboard is 21 inches wide. The compact ergonomic keyboard is 19 inches wide. A whole two bloody inches smaller. How do they do it?
Stupidly small Fuction Keys (F1-F10)
Arrow keys that only children with very small fingers can use
The following keys have been shrunk and rearranged:
Ins   Home   PgUp
Del   End     PgDn
They are now:
Home   PgUp
End      PgDn
Del       Ins

Yeah, the inconvienience of microscopic keys is really worth two inches. Why not move the stupid WinKey somewhere out of the way instead?

No reset button?! - For those times that the three-finger salute doesn't work, you need to give your computer the one-finger salute. Just swiching the computer off everytime Win-d'ohs crashes or freezes could literally crash your harddrive. DO NOT buy a computer without a reset button!

Iomega Hardware - Iomega is run by a bunch of greedy idiots. I should know because I have relatives that used to work for the company and got screwed. But that's a different story.

First of all, it costs maybe 25¢ to manufacture a ZIP disk. How much do they sell for? About $10, usually more. That's about a 400% profit. Now let's take a look at a few of the features (or two):
100 Megabyte storage capacity.
Archive your files (long-term storage).

Well, let's see, traditionally, 1 Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes, and 1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes. A standard ZIP100 has a capacity for 100,431,872 bytes. Let's break that down:
100,431,872 bytes / 1024 = 98078 kilobytes
98078 kilobytes / 1024 = 95.779296875 megabytes
Now let's be generous and round that up to 95.8 MB. It still falls 4.2 megabytes short.

Archiving makes ZIP drives sound ideal. If only it weren't for that 1-year shelf life before they start currupting. (I recommend you reformat your ZIP disks at least once a year.)

I must admit, I'm playing the devil's advocate, because I bought a(n internal) ZIP drive. But that was three or four years ago, when I still thought that a ZIP drive was terrific. But then, I must be an idiot, because a month after I got back from Germany, the head that reads the ZIP disk broke off, and so I bought a new drive.

So why buy another? Well, the only alternative is CD-RW. I don't personally have a CD Burner (or the money to buy one). And buring a CD isn't exactly quick'n'go.

Ever since I found out that ZIP disks are unstable, they've been nothing more than fat mover-floppies. So the things are still somewhat practical, but for a bloody high price. (Luckily, I only paid $60 for a 10-pack of ZIP disks at Sam's Club all those years ago, and my new ZIP drive only cost $50 at EBC Computers. I called Iomega and asked about replacement. They said it would cost $100 for repairs.)

My brother, who used to work for Iomega, helped me install the drive. We got looking at the two drives (and the vague installation instructions), and observed some design changes.

First of all, the old drive had tape over all the seams and holes. That's to help keep dust out. The new drive had no tape. (I guess ZIP drives weren't buring up fast enough for Iomega.) We taped it up ourselves.

Secondly, the jumper pin configuration had been completely changed. Wait a minute! How should I know what a jumper pin is, when this new drive didn't come with one? Not to mention cables to connect the drive to the computer. It's a good thing I've got this old one to cannibalize...

Actually, I've had that new ZIP drive since 29. September 2001, and I still can't get the damn thing to work. Ever since I tried to install it, my computer has gotten increasingly screwed. I finally got the harddrive to stop operating in DOS-Compatibility Mode and the CD-ROM to work again. I did have my new ZIP drive working once, but that was in Win-d'ohs Safe Mode, and it was listed as a 3½ inch disk on the B drive. (For a while it was simultaneously the D drive.) Now my computer is so fubarred, I see no other option but to reformat it. You wouldn't believe how “fun” it is to use 1.4 MB floppies to backup files onto another computer...

(Good News! Sorf of. As of May 19, 2002, my computer is reformatted, with Win-d'ohs '98, and mostly operating again. The ZIP drive works now, but Win-d'ohs locks up every time I shut down, and restarting into “Happy DOS-Mode” gives me a blank screen and a blinking curser; I can still do stuff--I just can't see what!)

Get this: When my brother worked for Iomega, assembling ZIP drives, in Roy, Utah, their then corporate headquarters, he asked if he could just take a ZIP drive home and have it taken out of his paycheck. They said, “No, go buy one.” So he went to a store across the street and bought one that was manufactured in the Philipines. Hm, good marketing strategy. It's no wonder Iomega is losing money...

Macintosh - Macintosh isn't really so bad. It is superior to any system Mi¢ro$oft can deficate upon us, even though it can't play any fun games. But that's beside the point. My beef is with the mouse and keyboard.

I hate using computer mice in general--I'll use the keyboard to navigate as much as possible--but the Macintosh mouse goes the extra mile to piss me off. First of all, there's no button to click; you just mash the mouse. Okay, that's a little bothersome, but one accomidates oneself to it.

The thing that really gets me is the movement sensitivity. I sometimes use a Macintosh at the university, and dragging the cursor across the screen is like trying to blow molasses out your nose. One day, I got fed up and said to myself, “I don't care if we're not supposed to adjust computer settings; I'm turning up the mouse sensitivity!” So I brought up the properties, and lo and behold, the sensitivity was already cranked all the way up!

The thing I hate about the keyboard is all those useful keys that do nothing, such as Home and End. Since these two essential text functions are absent, I have to either hold an arrow key for a loooong time, or use the molasses mouse to transfer the text cursor.

Did I forget any other software/hardware that's trying to make my life a living hell? (You may have noticed that Mi¢ro$oft has gotten not only up my nose, but well beyond my sinuses.)

Legal stuff:
WinZip ©WinZip Computing | PKzip ©PKWARE | MaPlay ©Jeff Tsay | WinAmp ©NullSoft | Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior ©3D Realms | Netscape Navigator ©1994-2003 Netscape Communications Corporation | Internet Explorer, all (crappy) versions of Windows, and SideWinder ©Mi¢ro$oft | AOL, America Online ©America Online, a Time-Warner company “for me to poop on.” Come on, what right does SOL have, taking over a television/movie studio? | RealPlayer ©RealNetwork | Pentium Processor ©Intel | Macintosh ©Macintosh |

If your feelings got hurt because I slammed your software, make it stop sucking and the lack of suction might make the door stop slamming on your fingers

This page ©1997-2004 Wally Waffles
2004 年 7 月 17 日