How can you afford it?

[how.about.another.slice]

After being away several months, I notice many of the same faces are still spending all day posting, despite their assurances that they work. One even spent a whole day waiting until 5.30 pm before posting just to prove she is employed!!! (only people unemployed or on benefits for years would assume the average work day is still from Nine-to-Five LOL!)

My question is, how do you afford to be here so much? Do you live off savings, an inheritance, divorce settlement, or do you simply chat from a library or a second hand notebook on limited internet usage?

To get a decent computer costs at least $2000 and without good internet connection, chatting on a forum isn't even worth it, so are these regulars going into debt over the boards? Would a bank even loan or credit them enough to supplement their activites and time usage here?

It's all very puzzling...

[*pepe]

all threads are secretly about you, you just need to read each post backwards, skipping every 3rd word.

[clair.de.lune]

I knew it!

[monman12]

FN: "I know that and the point remains that the old system would not be suitable today.  I don't use XP either.

Why the obsession with using old systems that don't work with all today's applications?"

What  a lack of knowledge  that indicates FN, my comments were apropos  MSDOS and the fact that XP  contains  a command-line interpreter that allows a hands-on control of a HDD which is worlds apart from blindly "using a system ( OS?) and user applications.

Recently a family member returned from 3 months in Antarctica with a crashed laptop HDD running WIN7.  It was not "fixable" according to the Antarctic IT division. I fired  up a  superb years old DOS  disk check/repair  program on my "ancient"  PC running XP using "Command-com"  (not that that matters) and using a 2.5" HDD adapter  ran the crashed HDD as :D. 17 hours later the program finished running, the crashed DD ran and only 3 files were "lost"

FN, I suspect that a Maserati is not what you need ( still waiting for an answer to that) and you have problems with a manual DOS, preferring  an automatic!

[poddster]

I have no doubt that the ones proporting to be avant garde in IT and loudly singing the praises of the "new technology" lack knowledge of the background foundations on which the "new technology' has been built

Not only in IT itself but all the supporting knowledge base that is a requirement fully understand IT such as electronics.

I guess that is one of the prices of "progress" 

[i-once-was-bump]

---

@freakiness wrote:

remember when a 56K modem was considered overkill?

---

i did some of my best work on a VAX / VMS system and I went really outlandish with my personal PC and had 8 mb of ram when the rest of the world only had 1 or 2 mb and a 320 mb HDD and I loved DOS because it worked without fail but sometimes I would have a 64 K total crash but that was more to do with poor programming and having an eternal loop in a programme.

[cherry*135]

---

@*elizabeths-mum* wrote:

Telstra still has a monopoly in some areas. We wanted to try Optus 2 years ago which had far better deals at the time and our address is in the Telstra grid so Optus couldn't take us. 

---

Yes, there are a lot of areas like that. We had Optus service then they wouldn't take anymore Telstra resale customers and offered any Optus customers to get out of the contracts with no penalty, they were so keen to get rid of them.  I stayed with Optus but the  broadband plans ADSL & landlines were at a  high cost (not as high as Telstra though).

cezm - noted you only live 4km from a city... I don't live far from a city either (ADSL2 there). 

Our exchange was going to be upgraded about six years ago to ADSL2 and it was scrapped also.

Poor service, no ADSL2, high plan costs isn't just happening in a few remote areas.

[*elizabeths-mum*]

You make it sound like they didnt want us, where Optus managed to sound deeply regretful. 

[freakiness]

---

@monman12 wrote:

FN: "I know that and the point remains that the old system would not be suitable today.  I don't use XP either.

Why the obsession with using old systems that don't work with all today's applications?"

What  a lack of knowledge  that indicates FN, my comments were apropos  MSDOS and the fact that XP  contains  a command-line interpreter that allows a hands-on control of a HDD which is worlds apart from blindly "using a system ( OS?) and user applications.

Recently a family member returned from 3 months in Antarctica with a crashed laptop HDD running WIN7.  It was not "fixable" according to the Antarctic IT division. I fired  up a  superb years old DOS  disk check/repair  program on my "ancient"  PC running XP using "Command-com"  (not that that matters) and using a 2.5" HDD adapter  ran the crashed HDD as :D. 17 hours later the program finished running, the crashed DD ran and only 3 files were "lost"

FN, I suspect that a Maserati is not what you need ( still waiting for an answer to that) and you have problems with a manual DOS, preferring  an automatic!

---

Yes, I did answer your irrelevant question about a Maserati, about 2 pages back.

Frankly I don't care about your patching of old computers using MSDOS prompts. The point is that our data usage is ever increasing and our demands on the old network are too.

As I said the old DOS computers of 20 years ago do not perform the tasks we require of them today. 

[freakiness]

---

@i-once-was-bump wrote:

---

@freakiness wrote:

remember when a 56K modem was considered overkill?

---

i did some of my best work on a VAX / VMS system and I went really outlandish with my personal PC and had 8 mb of ram when the rest of the world only had 1 or 2 mb and a 320 mb HDD and I loved DOS because it worked without fail but sometimes I would have a 64 K total crash but that was more to do with poor programming and having an eternal loop in a programme.

---

That may be the case but do you want everyone to use the same system today?

[cherry*135]

---

@*elizabeths-mum* wrote:

You make it sound like they didnt want us, where Optus managed to sound deeply regretful. 

---

They fibbed to you.   It wasn't worth it dollar wise to them, esp in areas with small population.

I used to get a free 12mth magazine subsription from Optus, if  I renewed our broadband contract (for 2 years running this happened), then they start writing letters saying basically we don't want you anymore.