[Spridgets] Computer Question, No LBC...

[bjshov8 at tx.rr.com]

I have been using PC's ever since the original IBM PC.  I upgraded my home computer to Win7 (32 bit), and so far it has run all of my software dating back years and years.  I haven't found anything it won't run.

WinXP used to have the options of running programs in different compatibility modes.  I don't know if Win7 has that or not.  You could right click on the shortcut used to execute the program and it had a way to choose if you wanted to run it as a WinXP program, Win98 or even Win95.

Depending on what version of Win7 you have, you can download from Microsoft and install WinXP in a virtual machine, and then it should run any PC software ever written.  I have seen consumer-level computers advertised with the 64 bit version of Win7.  I have no idea why they would sell a machine like this to consumers, first since consumers don't typically need the advantages of the 64 bit OS and second because the 64 bit OS will certainly not run any 16 bit software, whether that software was written for an old version of DOS or one of the early Windows versions like Win3.1.  That is why MS came up with the option of using WinXP in a virtual machine, because that is how you would run the older software in the new 64 bit OS.

If you have older IDE hard drives, they are old enough that they SHOULD NOT be used for anything important.  The era beginning about 10 years ago was one of the worst in terms of hard drive reliability.  The industry seems to have recovered and most newer SATA drives are better.  I don't know about your old machines but my newest computer still has IDE ports on the motherboard, so if I really wanted to I could connect an old IDE hard drive to it.  Our company bought 5 custom computers in about 2001, each with 2 hard drives, and within 3 years 9 of the 10 hard drives had failed and been replaced.  Four years ago we chunked those computers and bought 5 new ones.  No hard drives have failed in those computers.


> I really did not want to buy a new computer as I have 3 presently. Two
> have Win XP and one with Vista. All the new one have Win 7 and all my
> software would not work on that... Plus my extra hard drives are the
> old sytle and won't plug into a new computer without adapters!