On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 1:31 PM, Bret Johnson <bretj...@juno.com> wrote: >> Yes, they do. But my fundamental question is still valid. What is >> your use case? Do you actually *need* to boot DOS, or is a VM or >> emulator a better solution? > > In my case, I do it mostly for speed, but there are other reasons also. > Booting > "real" DOS only takes a few seconds. So, if I'm only going to be using DOS > applications (which I do the majority of the time, at least when I have a > legitimate > choice), I don't waste my time waiting for a "modern" OS to load. Many > times, I > can finish what I need to do in DOS and have the machine turned off again > before > Windows could even dream about booting. There are many DOS applications that > are just as good, or sometimes even better, than anything ever created for > Windows > or *nix (though not all of the really good ones are free, which is true of > Windows and > *nix as well).
Fair enough. But it's not a concern here because my machine(s) are generally on 24/7. They get rebooted if I need to fiddle with hardware or I'm multi-booting and want to switch OSes. So boot time is largely irrelevant because it doesn't happen all that often. I boot the machine and simply leave it up. (I'm in an area where power outages aren't an issue, and the costs of the electricity to keep the machines up is not significant enough to be a factor.) > I can say, though, that the one real problem with DOS (at least for me) is > web browsing. > Dillo and Arachne are extremely limited (rendering issues, lack of > "extensions" like > JavaScript, etc.), so are only really useful for "simple" web sites, like > forums. But, even > they keep me from needing to wait for a bloated OS to load at times. Dillo has JS support as a longer term goal. They need better DOM support before they can do it. I use Dillo here on an old notebook as a quick viewer for locally stored HTML, where JS support isn't an issue. Dillo comes up in a few seconds. More capable browsers like Chrome, Firefox, or Opera take a *lot* longer. But Internet usage is one big reason why I couldn't use DOS as my main OS if I wanted to. Too much of what I do requires Internet access and a full-featured browser. ______ Dennis https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second. Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You. Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user