Wordpad annoyance

[Leon Manfredi]

Thanks ... another option to try later today ... will let you know how
it goes

Notebook24/32 require a key. At least they did when I used them!
Haven't tried to work them here, since I use TSEpro44. A fully configurable text
editors, editor

 

[karebai]

Thanks ... another option to try later today ... will let you know how
it goes

Didn't work ... tried it twice to be sure ...

 

[Leon Manfredi]

Two points:

1. Sometimes a Vista driver for a printer will work under Windows 7
(but again, you need the correct "bitness" of the driver).

2. Printers are pretty inexpensive these days. If the upgrade is
important enough for other reasons, it *might* be worth buying a new
printer if you need to.

Probably the reason for not supplying new drivers

 

[Ken Blake]

Probably the reason for not supplying new drivers

My standard message on drivers includes the following sentence:
"Especially if your hardware is older, it may well be that the
manufacturer has decided that it's not worth his time and effort to
develop drivers for hardware that he is no longer selling."

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

On Sun, 7 Aug 2011 19:57:38 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"



Yes, there are a couple of generic drivers available. But what
printers they will work with, I don't know.

Do you still have a dot-matrix printer? My last one was dumped about
20 years ago.

I have a few somewhere, but the reason I asked was: not too long ago I
was trying to sort out an old BBC Master/Star LC-10 combination for a
blind friend. (The BBC Master is an old, pre-PC, 6502-based computer.) I
found that XP had a driver for the LC-10, so tried it; not only did it
work fine, it actually produced very good-quality output - it seemed
decidedly odd seeing an XP test page emerging from such a geriatric
device. (Not colour, of course, and slow and noisy, but couldn't be
faulted in quality.) So I was just curious - having been surprised
enough that XP had a driver - as to whether 7 (32 or 64) did.

It's fairly moot, since most printers of that vintage are parallel
interface, and many 7 machines don't have one. (Well, laptops and
netbooks anyway; do desktops?)

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I have a few somewhere, but the reason I asked was: not too long ago I
was trying to sort out an old BBC Master/Star LC-10 combination for a
blind friend. (The BBC Master is an old, pre-PC, 6502-based computer.) I
found that XP had a driver for the LC-10, so tried it; not only did it
work fine, it actually produced very good-quality output - it seemed
decidedly odd seeing an XP test page emerging from such a geriatric
device. (Not colour, of course, and slow and noisy, but couldn't be
faulted in quality.) So I was just curious - having been surprised
enough that XP had a driver - as to whether 7 (32 or 64) did.

It's fairly moot, since most printers of that vintage are parallel
interface, and many 7 machines don't have one. (Well, laptops and
netbooks anyway; do desktops?)

I haven't seen a desktop with a parallel port for several years (at
least 5 or 6) now, and I have owned or been near several in that time.

Serial ports aren't all that common either, though this 6-month old
motherboard has a header for one, even though it's new enough to have
USB3 and SATA6 on board.

 

[Ken Blake]

I have a few somewhere, but the reason I asked was: not too long ago I
was trying to sort out an old BBC Master/Star LC-10 combination for a
blind friend. (The BBC Master is an old, pre-PC, 6502-based computer.) I
found that XP had a driver for the LC-10, so tried it; not only did it
work fine, it actually produced very good-quality output - it seemed
decidedly odd seeing an XP test page emerging from such a geriatric
device. (Not colour, of course, and slow and noisy, but couldn't be
faulted in quality.) So I was just curious - having been surprised
enough that XP had a driver - as to whether 7 (32 or 64) did.

It's fairly moot, since most printers of that vintage are parallel
interface, and many 7 machines don't have one. (Well, laptops and
netbooks anyway; do desktops?)

Parallel ports on either laptops or desktops are pretty much gone. But
you should still be able to buy a parallel port card for a desktop.
And you can buy a parallel-USB converter. So parallel printers can
still be used.

 

[Joe Morris]

My standard message on drivers includes the following sentence:
"Especially if your hardware is older, it may well be that the
manufacturer has decided that it's not worth his time and effort to
develop drivers for hardware that he is no longer selling."

Many Vista users with scanners more than a couple of years old got that
message the hard way - when it first became available the newsgroups were
clogged with screams of anguish and amazement that vendors weren't willing
to rewrite the drivers for antique scanners that had been limping along for
years.

....and the strong push to move consumers to 64-bit systems for Windows 7 has
made the problem more acute since drivers must be written to match the
bitness of the operating system.

Joe

 

[Ann Watson]

Running 64bit Home Premium, driver is only available through Windows
updates, so I hope they gave us the 64 driver

Are you saying that the 64-bit printer driver for your printer
came from Microsoft? If that's the case, I would substitute the
printer manufacturer's 64-bit printer driver for it. They
probably have a newer version than Microsoft does.

AW

 

[Ken Blake]

Many Vista users with scanners more than a couple of years old got that
message the hard way - when it first became available the newsgroups were
clogged with screams of anguish and amazement that vendors weren't willing
to rewrite the drivers for antique scanners that had been limping along for
years.

...and the strong push to move consumers to 64-bit systems for Windows 7 has
made the problem more acute since drivers must be written to match the
bitness of the operating system.

Yes and yes!

 

[Steve Hayes]

Many Vista users with scanners more than a couple of years old got that
message the hard way - when it first became available the newsgroups were
clogged with screams of anguish and amazement that vendors weren't willing
to rewrite the drivers for antique scanners that had been limping along for
years.

...and the strong push to move consumers to 64-bit systems for Windows 7 has
made the problem more acute since drivers must be written to match the
bitness of the operating system.

Which renders a computer a useless piece of junk.

I bought a laptop with 64-bit W7 installed, and most of the software I used
would not run on it.

Fortunately it came with a CD with the 32-bit version, and once I installed it
everything worked perfectly. Well, not quite -- I had to do a lot of extra
typing until I found a utility that could set up the environment variables,
because W7 doesn't let you do it by hand, or if it does, the scanty
documentation doesn't tell you how to do it.

 

[Rob]

Parallel ports on either laptops or desktops are pretty much gone. But
you should still be able to buy a parallel port card for a desktop.
And you can buy a parallel-USB converter. So parallel printers can
still be used.

USB>Parallel converters are often OK for 'dumb' (uni-directional)
printers, but most likely will not work for scanners and other
bidirectional devices as the hardware emulation isn't fully
implemented on any of the converters I've tested.
Application software which reads and writes directly to parallel port
addresses is the point of failure.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Which renders a computer a useless piece of junk.

I bought a laptop with 64-bit W7 installed, and most of the software I used
would not run on it.

Most of the older software I use works fine on Windows 7. It's probably
a question of the luck of the (software) draw.

Fortunately it came with a CD with the 32-bit version, and once I installed it
everything worked perfectly. Well, not quite -- I had to do a lot of extra
typing until I found a utility that could set up the environment variables,
because W7 doesn't let you do it by hand, or if it does, the scanty
documentation doesn't tell you how to do it.

It's the same as in the previous versions.

One way to get there: Right click on Computer, choose Properties,
Advanced System Settings, Environment Variables.

 

[Ken Blake]

In message<[email protected]>, Ken Blake
On Sun, 7 Aug 2011 19:57:38 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
[]
Does 7 (64 and 32 bit, come to think of it) contain drivers for the old
"dot-matrix" (i. e. impact) type printers, such as lots of EPSONs,
Stars, and so on, or have they finally been put out to grass? (For that
matter, does it have a "generic text printer"?)


Yes, there are a couple of generic drivers available. But what
printers they will work with, I don't know.

Do you still have a dot-matrix printer? My last one was dumped about
20 years ago.

I have a few somewhere, but the reason I asked was: not too long ago I
was trying to sort out an old BBC Master/Star LC-10 combination for a
blind friend. (The BBC Master is an old, pre-PC, 6502-based computer.) I
found that XP had a driver for the LC-10, so tried it; not only did it
work fine, it actually produced very good-quality output - it seemed
decidedly odd seeing an XP test page emerging from such a geriatric
device. (Not colour, of course, and slow and noisy, but couldn't be
faulted in quality.) So I was just curious - having been surprised
enough that XP had a driver - as to whether 7 (32 or 64) did.

It's fairly moot, since most printers of that vintage are parallel
interface, and many 7 machines don't have one. (Well, laptops and
netbooks anyway; do desktops?)

Parallel ports on either laptops or desktops are pretty much gone. But
you should still be able to buy a parallel port card for a desktop.
And you can buy a parallel-USB converter. So parallel printers can
still be used.

USB>Parallel converters are often OK for 'dumb' (uni-directional)
printers, but most likely will not work for scanners and other
bidirectional devices as the hardware emulation isn't fully
implemented on any of the converters I've tested.
Application software which reads and writes directly to parallel port
addresses is the point of failure.

Yes, but we were talking about very old dot-matrix printers.
USB-Parallel converters probably work just fine with most, if not all,
of them.

 

[Miles]

* thanatoid wrote, On 05-Aug-11 18:28:

IMHO MS don't /really/ think many people, if anyone, use either
Wordpad or Notepad (since they snare people by a free limited
time Office) so they haven't done much with them. The only thing
that has occurred to me is that the grey background is printing
because one of colors of your desktop scheme is automatically
adopted by Wordpad as the background color for WP printing.
Idiotic, but that's MS.

But I find your posts interesting, because aside from the gray
background, you haven't mentioned any "problems" with using
Wordpad. So do you really NEED MS Office? (OR Open Office)?

Anyway - I know you may believe you and everyone else involved
(and possibly everyone en Earth) will die horrible deaths if you
don't use MS Office, but have you considered /real/
alternatives:

http://xtort.net/freeware/office-and-productivity/floppy-office/

(the name of the page has not changed, but is now ***USB
office***...)

And, if you think bigger is better:

http://portableapps.com/

It appears any of the included programs can be downloaded
individually, the whole package IS big, and is certain to
contain some things you don't need.

It, among what seems hundreds of great apps (ALL FREE), includes
another Office suite if you have had bad experiences with OO -
LibreOffice. It also has several other separate wp, spreadsheet,
and presentation apps. And a whole bunch of other great stuff.

Here's a review of both suites:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/usb-office-showdown-tiny-usb-
office-vs-portable-apps/

P.S. If you save all your "wordy" stuff as TXT or RTF, virtually
any text/wp application can use them and convert them if they
need to look "spiffier" fo a particular purpose. (PDF is also a
good option.)

If you save all your "wordy/numbery" stuff as csv files, they
can be imported into anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values

Not to mention your files/backups will be about a hundred times
smaller.

And don't forget WordPerfect which I've been using since DOS days and
it can't be beat, primarily for the view hidden screen viewable at the
bottom. And I find it easier and does more than Open Office. Don't
know the price these days to purchase the CD or perhaps ebay lists a
used version a couple of years old at a much lower price. (I'm still
using version 12 even though I've had X3 sitting around for a year or
more.)
Miles

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Most of the older software I use works fine on Windows 7. It's
probably
a question of the luck of the (software) draw.

The only software I've encountered that won't work on 64-bit W7 is
ancient 16-bit software from the DOS and Win 3.1/95 days. Even so,
you can run them in XP Mode since it is 32-bit.

 

[Allen]

* thanatoid wrote, On 05-Aug-11 18:28:

And don't forget WordPerfect which I've been using since DOS days and it
can't be beat, primarily for the view hidden screen viewable at the
bottom. And I find it easier and does more than Open Office. Don't know
the price these days to purchase the CD or perhaps ebay lists a used
version a couple of years old at a much lower price. (I'm still using
version 12 even though I've had X3 sitting around for a year or more.)
Miles

For a few years (up until early 1985)I used a program whose name I
_think_was Word Magic, if the dim resources of my mind are to be
trusted. This was a wonderful program for its time; it was WYSIWYG and
had a few other features that were extremely rare for the time
(pre-Windows). It was recommended by Jim Seymour, later of PC Mag but at
the time the author of a computer column in the Austin TX newspaper.
Everybody in my organization who saw it switched to it. The two people
who wrote and maintained it made the mistake of selling it to Simon and
Schuster, which knew a great deal about books but almost nothing about
software. (We bought our copies at a local book store; not available in
any of the software shops.) Its downfall for us was that my department
bought a HP Laser Jet in August 1984 and early in 1985 MS announced that
they had put LJ support in Word. I immediately bought a copy and let
people know that I was through with Word Magic; if you ever wrote any
escape codes for those early HPLJs you won't have to ask why. Those
codes used zeros and Capital Os, numeric ones and lower case ls with no
help from graphics. I believe that if WM had been sold to a software
company it would have taken over the word processing market.

C'est la vie.

Allen

 

[Miles]

* Allen wrote, On 09-Aug-11 11:51:

For a few years (up until early 1985)I used a program whose name I
_think_was Word Magic, if the dim resources of my mind are to be
trusted. This was a wonderful program for its time; it was WYSIWYG and
had a few other features that were extremely rare for the time
(pre-Windows). It was recommended by Jim Seymour, later of PC Mag but at
the time the author of a computer column in the Austin TX newspaper.
Everybody in my organization who saw it switched to it. The two people
who wrote and maintained it made the mistake of selling it to Simon and
Schuster, which knew a great deal about books but almost nothing about
software. (We bought our copies at a local book store; not available in
any of the software shops.) Its downfall for us was that my department
bought a HP Laser Jet in August 1984 and early in 1985 MS announced that
they had put LJ support in Word. I immediately bought a copy and let
people know that I was through with Word Magic; if you ever wrote any
escape codes for those early HPLJs you won't have to ask why. Those
codes used zeros and Capital Os, numeric ones and lower case ls with no
help from graphics. I believe that if WM had been sold to a software
company it would have taken over the word processing market.

C'est la vie.

Allen

Interesting info, thanks. And to correct my previous statement, it's
the Reveal Codes area I keep open at the bottom that allows one to see
*all* of the codes and simply drag out the one (or more) that is
causing problems -- not available in OOo or Word. And it's been owned
by Corel, southeast Canada, for many years.

 

[Roy Smith]

I believe that if WM had been sold to a software company it would have
taken over the word processing market.

Yeah and I believe that if anyone else but Commodore Business Machines
had bought the Amiga that it would still be around today as well. CBM's
biggest blunder was it's attempt to market the Amiga as a business
machine, but it just didn't have the "killer" business software to go
along with it.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 5.0
Tuesday, August 09, 2011 7:45:44 PM

 

[Steve Hayes]

Most of the older software I use works fine on Windows 7. It's probably
a question of the luck of the (software) draw.


It's the same as in the previous versions.

Not the same as in XP.

There I could do it with Autoexec.bat thus:

SET CLASSPATH=C:\Program Files\PhotoDeluxe 2.0\AdobeConnectables
SET PATH=%PATH%;c:\windows;c:\du;e:\xy;c:\belfry

In Windows 7 that did not work (I didn't put the first line there, only the
second).