15 October 2015

Off topic: an accolade for Windows 10

My 5+ year old "netbook" (remember them?) ran bargain-basement Windows 7. So much so that I couldn't change the wallpaper. But then there came the chance of a free up-grade to Windows 10. It worked on my main laptop, already running 8.1...

But the netbook was hosting my favourite—very basic—graphics package. Snapgraphics. I got it free on a cover disc on a magazine, and it produced most of the graphics on my original website. It's a Windows 3.1 package (aka "app").

Having had problems with everything since Windows 95, and occasional random successes, it was clear that Windows 10 would be the final kiss of death for this "legacy" software. But I already had Windows 10 on another machine, and was actually very pleased with it; easy migration, improved startup time, more intuitive operation. So I bit the bullet and installed it.

There were a couple of failures in the installation. I had set the download to run, and left it to do its thing—it is 2160 mb after all. I returned to get the failure notice, but that was probably because I had not clicked acceptance of the T&Cs within the required time limit. Once W10 was installed, I clicked on the Snapgraphics shortcut (my desktop was perfectly preserved). As expected, I got an error message, to the effect that this program required the (something like) NTVDM module. But then that changed to a notification of automatic download of that module, and the initiation proceeded seamlessly.

Credit where credit is due; Windows 10 is a great technical achievement, and more user-friendly than earlier versions to boot (so to speak). And free!

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