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The 386

This is hobby computer. It's called "The 386" because well... because that's the processor it has. It is quit old (for a computer that is), the BIOS sez that it was made in 1991. Why would I waste my time with such an outdated machine? Well, the way I see it any geek can do anything with the latest and greatest hardware but it takes real finesse to use an older machine in a modern way (internet and everything). The sad thing is I have probably spent $100 or more on this machine (the coprocessor alone cost $25), but I probably couldn't get $15 for it if I tried to sell it for eBay. I don't, and wouldn't want to, use it as my main computer but all in all it's not a bad little box.

Software

in order to understand what working on such a low resource computer I have provided this list of software I commonly use on this computer

• GUI
• New Deal 2000 (DOS)
• OS/2 Warp
• Afterstep running on X (runs pretty good too! but don't try KDE it will never load ;-) (Linux)
• Word processing
• Word 6 for DOS (use this one the most)
• MS Works 2.0 for DOS
• New Office (the office suite in New Deal)
• MS Office professional 4.3 running under OS/2 (bought this at a computer show on 25 disks (still new in the wrapper, even) for five bucks!)
• Ted(Linux)
• VI and Jed (yes, I actually use these (once wrote a web page in VI). And, no, I don't care much for emacs)
• HTML Editors
• Webmagic
• HTMLed running under OS/2
• Image viewing/editing (I don't use this computer for this much as it is limited to 256 colors)
• Neopaint (DOS)
• seejpeg or web browser for Viewing
• The Gimp (takes about 3 or 4 minutes to load but works real good once loaded)
• Web browsers
• Links (use this one the most. I use Links 2 which has javascript and graphics (which I don't often use))
• Arachne (DOS)
• Dillo (When I go graphical this is what I use)
• Lynx (got to love it!)
• BrowseX(I open this as a last resort if I find a site Dillo won't load, it is kind of resource intensive)
• Email / newsgroups
• Pine (linux)
• I would like to try the news reader made by breadbox for Geos but they don't sell it separate from the whole package. I never really used New Mail but it's there
• email client in Arachne is there but never used
• Games
• lots of fun games under DOS ;-)
• Snake is always fun