OT: Why it is better to pretend you know nothing about computers

IIRC it was one of the requirements to be able to say "Windows compatible".

So what you are saying is that it's all _Apple's_ fault that Windows is apparently engineered so badly ...

The Wikipedia entry for PC-DOS says : "As a result of the antitrust agreement with IBM and the Department of Justice, IBM had to outsource the bulk of the computer components to outside companies. Microsoft was the successful applicant for the operating system. When they showed IBM their acquisition Q-DOS, it inspired IBM to write its own DOS, and back license it to Microsoft."

Does this need correcting?

I worked for IBM and I used an internal DOS written by Jack Gersbach. It was streets ahead of MS-DOS.

You might laugh. A friend borrowed a Windows laptop a while ago. Phoned me close to tears, couldn't work out how to switch it off.

Rob

Oh yes it will! Try it one day, I just did, and it allowed me to open a .doc in two editors.

Hint: not all editors are Microsoft editors.

MBQ

No it doesn't.

MBQ

It does in a properly written application, anyone can ignore the return codes and bodge things. It just falls apart later. Which editors are you talking about and which windows?

Microsoft fixed the non-network file operations by bringing disk caching back in Vista SP1. XP->Win7 network file transfers are still broken by design, although Win7->Win7 is probably fine.

I can't say that I've detected any fundamental differences between Win7 and Vista SP2, although there was a change to the video driver model that should help a lot with badly-behaved applications. Win7 is still awful on a netbook, while it's fine on a PC with decent hardware.

More fool you for using that email program.

Unless it's an excel file. Or a pdf. And so on ...

How about if it didn't have the restriction in the first place? That would be even more helpful.

Thats still a lot of Normal users;!..

Umm .. What definition BTW?..

In article , Tim Streater scribeth thus

I am in case you haven't noticed;;..

On which system is this then?..

OS X 10.6.4

Lots use it, its not a problem while yours appears to be.

Irrelevant just substitute the correct application.

All of which have an unnecessary send-to-email button, do they?

It sounds not quite right based on what I have read. Something like:

File locking is done by the OS where the files located rather than the application. IIRC the application requests it wants to open the file RW. That results in exclusive write access to the file (file lock).

Some windows applications do check & warn for a modified file even if they have that file open exclusively. It's possible to modify a locked file (say when it resides on a samba server).

Or on NFS as that has no locking at all. It uses stateless R/W requests. If you are lucky the application will create a lockfile so other applications can know the file is in use. If you are unlucky you have no idea what the file contains after a write unless you read it again and then you still don't know what it contains. Another of those quirky "unix" things.

snipped-for-privacy@d17g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...

XP Pro 64 bit

Wordpad, notepad, PSPad can all open the same file and write to it. PSPad will tell you if the file has been changed by some other app.

MBQ