Comments on: Cutting edge computer information

By: feral_librarian

feral_librarian — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:22:42 +0000

I like your idea of volunteer specialists reviewing specific collections. hhhmmm….

As for the incomplete SF and/or mystery series; I would like to speak up in defense of the collection. I bet your library owned the missing titles at some point in the past. Many times older fiction titles are not “removed” from the library by the librarians but rather removed due to condition. The title may be out of print making a replacement copy difficult to obtain. That’s why many public libraries use the inter-library loan system. So, if you don’t see the book from the series you want, ask a librarian. I bet they can get you a copy.

By: schwal

schwal — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:50:45 +0000

sorry to tell you Andi, but the Computer Museum in Boston closed 10 years ago. Most of their collection went to the Computer History Museum in San Fransisco or the Museum of Science Boston.

By: Tan

Tan — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:17:59 +0000

Wordstar, that old chestnut! Wasn’t it about the same time as putting that tape into a cassette palyer and listening to all that hiss and wondering if it would load?

By: Cathy

Cathy — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:31:30 +0000

Wow I have never heard of any of those programs. Then again this book was published the year I was born. I’d be interested to look through a book like this, but I agree it shouldn’t be in a library.

By: Syl

Syl — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:40:59 +0000

Mail merge is the only familiar one to me.

By: Morraeon

Morraeon — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:00:39 +0000

Boy, those program names bring back memories…

My first computer was a Kaypro 2, probably one of the first home computers ever (I think it’s the one that Matthew Broderick’s character uses in “WarGames”). Black screen with green type, no harddrive, just two floppy drives; you put the program disk in one and your work disk (ie. the one that stored your files) in the other. And if I remember correctly, these pr0grams came with it.

By: Mushroom

Mushroom — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:28:58 +0000

Wordstar was the ONLY word processor they taught at my college (on 40mb HDD 286’s), and somehow I managed in my five years never to take it. AppleWorks on the //e’s next to those 286’s worked much better and prettier.

Curiously I’m only familiar with MailMerge. Guess my school, not only being too cheap to get 386’s or WordPefect (or for more than the professor’s machine, that’s the one I used for its PostScript laser printer), also didn’t get any of the other packages.

By: Moon

Moon — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:23:28 +0000

Even the BEST libraries still have huge collections of completely obsolete computer books.

The last time I checked, the Harold Washington Library in Chicago had tons of these. Which is not a bad thing, because some of these programs hang on forever.

/I’m holding on to my two copies of Lotus 1-2-3 v. 2.o1! Still in shrinkwrap. They will be worth a FORTUNE some day, I tells ya! A FORTUNE!

By: JSleeper

JSleeper — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:07:41 +0000

The library where I work has similar problems with books like these. Three copies of a dbaseII guide from 1984? Check. Even in areas that don’t need to be kept current we still had a half dozen copies on speechwriting from thirty years ago. I dumped all but one copy.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:12:53 +0000

I cringe remembering WordStar. And DisplayWrite and the original Apple word processing programs. Which is why I always laugh when I hear how librarians now are supposed to be about “the new technology.” This WAS the new technology! It doesn’t last forever. Or even for a few years.