🚀 go-pugleaf

Tom MacIntyre <tmacinty@ns.sympatico.ca> wrote in message news:37c12e02.214234310@news1.ns.sympatico.ca...
> Rod Speed <rodspeed@ozemail.com.au> wrote
>> Hyper <jimb@snip.net> wrote

>>>>> At the DOS prompt,

>>>> Hardly anyone uses the DOS prompt anymore. Dinosaur stuff.

>>> actually i use a dos prompt every single day, at least once,

>> Even you should be able to grasp that 'hardly
>> anyone' allows for a small number who do use it.

> True...

>>> as do almost all techs when having to troubleshoot
>>> drive problems and windows problems,

>> Even you should be able to grasp that they are a tiny subset
>> of the total Win users. Adequately covered by the 'hardly anyone'

> This "tiny subset" consists of those who solve
> others' problems with Windows, and/or their own,

Nope, plenty arent silly enough to be furiously bashing away on the keyboard
at the dos prompt for much of that stuff and only use the dos prompt for the
most basic stuff like doing a clean install or running scandisk on the boot drive.

Where the quotes start right at the top was preceeded by a discussion
about doing file manipulation at the dos prompt on a working Win9x system.
NOT whats done on a system that cant even boot Win9x in safe mode etc.

No point in hacking off the context and proceeding to rave on
about what wasnt even being discussed there. That only produces
dills like you claiming that I have changed my position on the use
of the dos prompt when I have done absolutely nothing of the kind.

> and is hardly to be dismissed in such fashion.

Sure is in the context that the quotes from me were made in at the top.

>> And its completely juvenile to be hacking off the quoting where its
>> abundandly clear that what was being discussed there was furiously
>> bashing away at the DOS prompt on a working Win9x system, NOT whats
>> done with an unbootable system or say when installing a new hard drive.

> This is where you have backed down from an unequivocal
> stance to a more flexible, yet still unyielding, one.

Utterly mindless bullshit. Even you should be able to use deja and see
where I have often suggested people use the dos prompt when doing
a clean install for example. And use a Win98 startup floppy as a quick
check that the cdrom subsystem etc is working too. Another example
of what is basically using the dos prompt when that makes sense.

Tho its often even easier to just try booting the cdrom itself if
the motherboard allows that and just use the Win9x boot menus.

>>>>> I can go from a directory three levels deep on one
>>>>> drive, to a directory five levels deep on another drive.
>>>>> I can go back and forth just by typing the drive letter.

>>>> And its even easier with shortcuts etc. The world's moved on.

>>> not really,

>> Yep, really. Single mouse click in fact.

> Only after both of these directories have been opened, and kept
> open, in Windows, is the back-and-forth possible with a single click...

Yes, thats why I included that reference to the shortcuts.

And his 'I can go back and forth just by typing the drive
letter' obviously has to be preceeded by typing rather
more than that to setup the cd to those directorys he is
switching between with just a single drive letter typed.

> the intuitiveness of the Windows interface compared to DOS will not
> be questioned/refuted by me, but a competent DOS practitioner/user
> can do this type of activity just as fast as any Windows user...

Nope, particularly if those 3 and 5 deep directory names havent
been memorised, and wrong even if they have, where you can
set the individual windows to those two instances in a few mouse
clicks instead of quite a bit more typing at the dos prompt.

And if they are used much, just a single mouse click
for each, from the Quick Launch toolbar or desktop.

> that's an opinion, as I've never seen it tested, except in practice, by myself.

Its completely trivial to prove that claim is wrong.

> My DOS is quite rusty, but I can still "get around" through a directory
> structure and with multiple partitions quite handily, and more quickly
> than with Windows in cases where these directories have many files.

Thats just plain wrong too. It isnt the number of files that matters,
its the number of folders in each folder that determines how quickly
you can get to the one you want just by clicking down thru the
directory structure, with the folders grouped at the top of the list.

True in spades if you cant remember exactly what they are called too.
Thats one area where the dos prompt gets quite cumbersome, farting
around working out what the directory name actually is, typing it in
at the dos prompt, doing that at every level of his 3 and 5 level trees.

> Windows wins on the energy expenditure issue.

Dunno what this is about.

> Someone made a statement somewhere in this thread about
> the uselessness of analogies (or something to that effect).

Me.

> I disagree,

You problem.

> and here's one.

Just as useless.

> My local library has been fully computer-referenced for quite
> some time, and yet the card catalog remains, and is still used.

Says SFA about that particular question being discussed, moving around
in those relatively deep directory trees with the dos prompt and Win.

And I never ever said that the dos prompt has no use, even if you
have never managed to grasp that. Its completely trivial to use deja
to see that I do use it quite a bit for the situations where its useful.
That is not for routine file manipulation on a working Win9x system
with long file names etc tho. Thats dinosaur stuff, the world's moved
on. And plenty had the sense to use much more productive approaches
long before Win with that file manipulation stuff than the dos prompt.

> This is, to me, a similar situation.

Nope, it aint.

> Are you saying that those who continue to use the card catalog have a problem?

Yep, dinosaur stuff. Makes a hell of a lot more sense to have
enough terminals so you dont need to use the card catalog.
And have those scattered thru the shelving bays too.

> Are you saying that those housewives who use a recipe box
> on index cards rather than having a handy, flour-encrusted
> notebook computer on their kitchen counter have a problem?

Nope, said absolutely nothing about them. I just said that those who use
the dos prompt for routine file ops on a working Win9x system are dinosaurs.

> Computers are tools/aids, and the way they
> are used is ultimately up to the individual.

Even you should be able to grasp that someone who is silly enough to hold
their nose at the new fangled DOS and who insists on doing it the way we
did things before theres was any OS at all, on a modern PC are fools.

As are those who insist on using mental arithmetic and a pencil and paper
instead of a spreadsheet for relatively complex dynamic calculations.

> I for one, am glad that I took the time to read Peter Norton's
> DOS Guide about 6 or 7 times when my brother loaned it to
> me back in 1990...like A&E. it was time well spent...

Not for routine Win9x ops it wasnt. Useless.