Ernest Kennedy

My computing life started in late 1979 with the Spectrum Z80 with it's 2 KBytes ram pack added,then in 1981 after much deliberation I moved onto the Oric 1 with 48 KBytes of ram and I may of been one of the earliest to make a computer multitask albeit it had to be running all the time or it had to set up again on a re-run (reboot) with a simple digital clock program that I programmed to poke itself into the upper registers of the ram blocks and ran above what was called the status line (bar) at the top of the screen, it used to run while running a game or when programming the next game I used to design and program. Onwards and Upwards to a commodore 64 machine and eventually getting an Amiga computer and an external scsi hard drive that was about £750 when new at a then massive 52 MB capacity to run the operating system from. Then it was onto the commodre Amiga 1200 with internal hard drive at a whopping 850 MB capacity, oh! how I loved that machine, it was a dream to use and to program on but I eventually had to go onto PC's after the demise of both commodore and my 1200 (Boo! Hoo!). I havent really done much programming since then except for some batch scripts for various functions like getting rid of what I called "Bill Gates' vanity crap" from my PC running win95 after first cutting my PC teeth on a so slowwwwwww! 286 processor based machine. it was with some delight I graduated to a 386 processor based machine that turned itself into a firey mess on my computer desk after initially giving me the dreaded blue screen of death which was the first time I had ever encountered the B.O.D. which eventually became a long standing joke of Microsoft and Mr Bill Gates and co. So I bit the bullet at that time and got myself a 486 P66 processor based machine which had just came onto the market with a massive and very expensive 8MB of ram and also seperate FPU and cache ram of 2MB which was massive at the time. That machine was the machine I felt was the best thing since sliced bread was invented but only to be quickly knocked from its place at the top of the market by it's bigger brother which was OK at running win95, win 98 (both editions of 98) and the scirge of microsoft that infamous "windows millenia" whis was the system that carried more "BG vanity crap" than any of it's predecessors and we all know what ensued from that era to the very common occurences of the dreaded B.O.D. when win xp hit the shops and even more "BG vanity crap" that always needed cleaning out from various places around the op system like the "Temp" folder and the like so an updated version of my cleaning batch file was born and I did a small reg file that I used to ;eave on the desktop so I could just double click on it and the system used to run my batch file while the machine was booting or rebooting from the runonce reg location, that was in real big demand again among my friends and other people that went to my computer club that I ran for a few years till severe ill health forced me to give that up but eventually undeturred by my new disabilities I continued to use my computers till now. I got rather miffed as we all did at the B.O.D. plagueing win xp and windows vista turning out to be the worst ever edition of windows op system to date so when win 7 came out I again started smiling again as that turned out to be what I considered what win vista should of been like and now I mailnly just use my ASUS G53SW Laptop with it's Intel i7 provcessor running at 2KHertzand peeking at well over the stated 2.6 KHertz burst speed running Win 7 Ultimate edition. I stumbled upon BitsDuJour.com while browsing the internet earlier this year and have come to checking the site a few times a day just to see what new software if any was coming to be on offer to satisfy my liking for installing new software that I think will make my computing life a bit easier to carry out and be more enjoyable to me in my now "quest for an easy lifestyle" and till now I have not been disappointed at my new found lot in life.
That concludes my "Bio" for now except to say that during my time with PC's I also used to run Linux on two(2) of my desktop machines and I have always had a deep regard for the tenacity and drive that the linux community have adopted to their beloved systems and I'm quite amored by linux myself as a real alternative to a windows system especially when it come to when windows doesn't like to play anymore and takes a crash dive into the depths of of the Abyss and fouls everything up as it usually does so I find a linux live disk is ideal for fixing windows or salvaging what is needed before reformatting and the inevitable re-installation of windows. Till now linux has not let me down and I look forward to always having a top place in my list of essential software to have around for when it's needed again.

T.T.F.N.
Ernie

Member since: Sunday, August 19, 2012