I long for a decent OS.

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I need to vent.

Do you think people would be very happy if, when you turned on a tap it took a minute to give you any water? Or if, when you turned on the microwave, it locked you out for 30 seconds before heating your food?

Why is it that now, even with the best hardware money can buy, we are still expected to wait so long before we can actually do what we want to do? Boot times on Windows, Mac and Linux are still, when you think about it, unbearable.

I spend a lot of my time writing, and I will ocasionally get ideas in my head, and in a moment's notice I'll want to type them out and store them.  I continually curse my PCs for taking so long just to let me access a text editor and type in a paragraph of text. The act of turning on the PC can sometimes take longer than the work I want to do. By the time I've got a blinking cursor, I've forgotten half of the inspiration.

The same is true when all I want to do is copy a file, or download a photo from the camera. The amount of interaction from me is minimal and yet the job still takes forever.

I long for an OS that can boot up instantly, like switching on a TV or turning on a light.

And why not? I remember when my A1200 with a 85mb hard disk would boot up and straight into a text editor in about five seconds. Simple, functional, and extremely friendly. People may snort, but it's how the tool fits the job that counts.

Of course, pen and paper will outclass even a 10Ghz machine, but if you're a disorganised soul like me, it doesn't work that way . Until my A1200 broke, I used to type everything and it was a luxury. Now even with the most modern machine, it's an utter pain.

Will we ever see proper 'tools' like this again in computing? Or are we destined to suffer slow, clunky, eye-candy filled, advert ridden, patronising systems which are constantly under threat of being taken over by every bit of software you download?

I'm sure that even when we do get to the stage where processors are many thousands of times faster, and hard disks are replaced with some sort of fast solid state NVRAM, the product (OS) will still be filled with so much extraneous trash that there will be no performance difference from what we use today. The companies of course, will be richer and fatter.

David

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On a laptop/battery that may see days between use?

It's a solution, but it's inelegant.

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Homer wrote:
downward_s: sounds like u need a replacement A1200  :lol:

Yep, I have been sorely tempted, several times.

However, to go down that road again would mean having yet another machine lying around, and I'm already short of space.

Not to mention that most of my work is done on a laptop. How I'd kill for a laptop with a native AmigaOS!

Then there's my eyes.. I don't fancy going back to using a TV, and 1084s are not very common now!

I'm afraid I've been spoiled by the convenience. If I had a 1200 still around I'd use it, but it wouldn't be practical to set up a new one.

David

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EDanaII wrote:
You'll forgive some of us if we don't trust that particular function in so called modern PCs. :-)

Well, out of all the PCs in this house, including the laptop, there are none of them which will reliably suspend and then wake up. Some of them just shut down, some of them wake up and crash, some of them just go to sleep and never wake up.

Also, at my work I am constantly being called in to 'fix' PCs which have apparently gone completely dead. What has actually happened is that they have been set to suspend themselves after an hour, and no matter what they will just not wake up afterwards, and literally need the plug pulled. I had to go round about 60 machines one day and turn off the automatic suspend just to stop people losing work.

APCI just doesn't work, in my experience. A bit like most features that are supposed to make life easier.. it's just badly implemented.

David

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Tomas wrote:
These delays all add up during a day of usage and will in the end be wasted time... And dont get me started ono the process of shutting down a windows pc...

Yes, I think the definition of 'Realtime OS' has been stretched somewhat since the advent of Windows.

It is scary to think how much of my life has been wasted waiting for systems to boot. It's especially frustrating when you're fault finding. At least I get paid hourly for it..

David

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MskoDestny wrote:
Try Syllable: http://www.syllable.org/

Brilliant. I'm downloading as I type. Thank you!

David

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hamtronix wrote:
Or use a non electric typewriter.... sounds like you want too much. reminds me of the millions spent to develop a pen that could write upside down with no gravity by nasa all the while the russians used a pencil...

LOL

I thoroughly agree. This isn't entirely my point though. I had the almost perfect solution with the A1200. Quick boot, simple interface, stable, friendly, and small. The perfect tool existed.

It's just not so perfect after all these years. It's not physically portable, it doesn't support a decent screen, and the old hardware has become inherently unstable because of its age.

It's also difficult to quickly transfer files from a base Amiga to the PC without much messing about, and unfortunately this transfer is a necessity nowadays.

I know this is such an old thing to say here, but give me an Amiga laptop with, USB, SVGA output and a decent keyboard and I'll be incredibly happy.

David

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jorkany wrote:
Get an Atari 400 and don't plug a cartridge into it. It literally takes about two seconds to boot into the "textpad". Storage can be an issue though, for that I recommend keeping a VCR hooked up to record the session.

lol! Well that is also my problem with the A1200 now. None of my PCs have floppy drives any more, and a couple of them don't even have a serial port. I used to use a SCSI Zip250, but that died a long time ago with the click of death.

You can do it if you expand the Amiga with a NIC or USB card or CDRW, but then you're quickly removing the simplicity, especially on a vanilla A1200, which will quickly need expanded to cope.

I really love the all-in-one hardware of a laptop with a good screen and good keyboard. Reminds me of the A1200, it's just that the OS and software is so damn inefficient.

David

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Starrunner wrote:
Simply put...I've seen Workbench take a while to load.  

Yes, it can do if you heavily expand it. However, if you strip the startup sequence to go straight into what you will be mainly using the machine for, it can be usable in the time it takes the monitor to warm up. For me this was just an incredible feature.

However, it never seemed to take nearly as much time as Windows.

On some motherboards the POST is longer than the bootup time on my heavily expanded 1200T, when I had one.

I've used every version of Windows since 95, and they just seem to keep getting worse each time.

To be fair I personally think XP was a huge improvement in boot time and stability. However, it's still crap, in the real world.

I have done an experiment.. if I do a clean install of XP SP2, disable everything except critical features, disable all extra hardware (parallel/serial/NIC), turn off all autodetection in the BIOS and skip the memory check, and make sure everything is defragged; the quickest I can boot my fastest machine into a blinking cursor is still over one minute after pressing the power button.

David

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Write a script in your DOS autoexec.bat file so that when MS-DOS starts WordPerfect for DOS or a text editor is automatically run.

Hmm, this is definitely an interesting idea. However, I presume I'd lose NTFS access?

I may try it if Syllable doesn't work out.

David

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MskoDestny wrote:
Try Syllable: http://www.syllable.org/

Now posting this from ABrowse in Syllable :-D

I like it. Unfortunately it doesn't like 3 of the PCs I tried it on, and simply hangs.. even on failsafe. Will see if I can sort that out..

David

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KThunder wrote:
this isnt a very benficial thread imho

I did warn everyone about this being a rant, in my first line of text.

Besides, is it not beneficial to point out what would make things better? Or is it more beneficial to pay your money for top of the range hardware, and just quietly accept the problems you have with it?

amiga- no modern browser, office software, hardware support, but...

it boots fast!!!!!

You didn't understand what my problem was. I didn't want a modern browser, office software, or extensive hardware support. If I want to use these, I have my pc, and I put up with the boot times.

I am talking about having fast access to specific, small, simple applications which allow me to do my work without having to fight through layers of crap that I don't need.

I mean, it's like trying to watch TV, but the TV set has to wire up your coffee machine, your dryer, your microwave and your vacum cleaner before you see any channels.. "just in case" you might want to use them later.

If I want to send an email in a hurry with one line of text which will potentially take me seconds to write, I don't see why it should take me minutes to do it.

I also admitted earlier that my A1200 was not as useful to me in the modern world given its hardware limitations.

if i have alot of serious work to do i use the pc.

It really depends on what your serious work entails.

David

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CannonFodder wrote:
http://www.menuetos.net/

Interesting! Lots of stuff to play with now!

Thanks!

David

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Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the links to alternative OS projects. SkyOS looks particularly interesting.

Having great fun messing about with them, but more importantly, they are actually useful.

David

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Hi,

So get a Tandy model 100 or, even better, a Tandy WP2. Days to weeks on a set of AA's with use, months to years(!) off/standby. Even interfaces with Amigas using Term etc.

I have worked with such things in the past, but to be honest I find the screens are usually a limiting factor. Perhaps I have just become spoiled with good text editors, but I find it difficult to judge the flow of text and the general feel of things with a display that is only a few columns tall.

I'm finding that an old worthless laptop with DOS, a small hard disk, and a text editor installed is a really good tool for the job. It doesn't touch the friendliness or power of a good editor on the Amiga, but the fact that it is portable makes up for that somewhat.

David