[OKDXA] (no subject)

[Peter Laws]

On 9/18/07, K8fu at aol.com <K8fu at aol.com> wrote:
> Well I think I've figured out why some of my pgms won't wrk on Vista. I've
> learned that Vista upgraded to 32 bit while most of old pgms are 16 bit and
> incompatible with Vista. I'm wondering if that's not the reason I cannot use
> K3LR's cluster from our website.


I'm not a Microsoft fan and never have been (I'm a UNIX and network
admin by trade), but Windows XP SP2 is pretty darn solid.  I run it on
the Radio Computer at N5UWY (the Other Computer runs Ubuntu, a
distribution of GNU/ Linux).

I don't, however, buy software for Windows and have not since I
purchased a license for ARC780, a scanner control program (and a good
one).

I use OpenOffice for *almost* all word processing/spreadsheet type
operations (which I don't do a whole lot of, admittedly).  Free from
http://OpenOffice.org/ .  I do have an old copy of WordPerfect 7 or 8
that I bought about 10 years ago.  Works fine on XP and does some
things (like generate PostNet barcodes) that other programs *still*
don't.

I use MMTTY for RTTY ragchews.  Free from
http://mmhamsoft.amateur-radio.ca/mmtty/ .

I use N1MM Logger for contest logging (with the MMTTY "engine" for
RTTY contests).  Free from http://pages.cthome.net/n1mm/ .

I use the DXLab Suite for general logging (after first recording
non-contest QSOs on paper!), awards tracking, and QSLing.  Free from
http://www.dxlabsuite.com/ .  The Suite also includes software for
interacting with DX clusters, both real ones and internet-based.

Oh, and of course, Firefox for web-browsing.

And when I say "free", I mean that these are not shareware.  You're
allowed to use them for whatever you want.  OpenOffice's license goes
even further in that the source is available and you can do whatever
you want with that as well; the others are closed-source.

All the items listed above have active online communities and the
folks that work on projects are always implementing new features based
on requests from users.

BTW, true 16-bit Windows programs are leftovers from the pre-Windows95
days and really need to be rewritten!

-- 
Peter Laws | N5UWY | plaws0 gmail | Travel by Train!

"They that can give up essential Liberty to
obtain a little temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin