So, my opinion of Ed Bott is that he’s a shill and an Áœber Fanboy for Microsoft. Still, this is fucking hilarious.
And it has me thinking of Windows 3.1.
A while ago I watched this video of someone running Windows 3.1 on a Nokia phone.
Pretty neat trick. I have a very old monochrome Toshiba laptop with Windows 3.1 on it. It’s never really worth digging out and using because it’s a) monochrome and b) kind of broken. The power plug-in has a short in it, and the slightest touch of the cord when plugged in will make it lose the power connection. And the battery is dead.
But being a geek, and being a sucker for old-school 16-bit graphics, I have always like the look and feel of Windows 3.1. I’ve even trolled e-bay a couple of times looking for an old non-broken colour laptop that will run Windows 3.1 just so I could play around with it. I would actually (seriously now, no foolin’) use it for writing. And old games.
And check out this interesting bit of software. This is a “shell” for Windows 3.1 that gives the OS some of the functionality that was later added in Windows 95. Some of the screenshots make my geek heart beat a little faster.
And somewhere on the net there are tweaks that allow Windows 3.1 to access more of a modern systems memory, and display higher resolution desktops. I think that’s fascinating.
Normal people either don’t remember Windows 3.1, or they do and they would think I’m weird, even for a geek. But give me an old-ish laptop with the right specs, and a fresh install of Windows 3.1, and just watch me create things on it. I’d even give that old Netscape Navigator a spin and see what I could see on whatever net connection I could muster up on it.
Speaking of mustard, I had some delicious powdered mustard on top of some smoked salmon on top of some other things today for supper. Delicious.
And speaking of operating systems again, I think I’ll actually download and install the upcoming version of Ubuntu on my netbook now that I’ve brought it home from work. I skipped 9.10 entirely because of some rather bad things I read about it. And I’ve read a similar amount of different bad things about 10.04, so I know I won’t be bothering to install it on any other computers I own. God damn it Mr. Shuttleworth, the window control buttons go on the right! RIGHT!!!
That’s a moot point anyway for me since I’m not really a fan of GNOME any more. I like LXDE too much. I think I’ll look at the Lubuntu project home page again and see if there will indeed be a Lubuntu this time around.