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I remember and cherish the ‘great in their time’ iOmega Zip drives
I used a series of IBM ThinkPads that included a custom bay that could accept a variety of peripherals. By default, I kept a CD writer in it. But I also had a floppy drive and, remarkably, a ZIP 250 drive.
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enable IIS, reboot, disable IIS (if you don’t need it)
Why install something if you don’t need it?
If Microsoft needs that folder in place, it should make clear why and impress upon users that the Internet’s long position that the folder is not needed is no longer correct. But Redmond didn’t document this – it just did it.
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The KVM switch is technically obsolete.
That depends upon the context. Physical KVM remains useful in many situations, including datacenters and server racks. And has been mentioned here, Amazon is full of inexpensive physical KVM switches, the most common being those for two systems. These are definitely priced for the consumer and small business market.
Logitech … MX line of keyboards
Yes, I’m aware. Unfortunately, I don’t like Logitech keyboards.
My KVM switch handles the mouse, keyboard, one display (I don’t switch the other), and audio. It also has controls allowing me to customize what is switched when. For example, I usually do not switch audio so that I can continue to listen to something from my primary system. If I had the model that supported two displays, I could customize the controls to handle them in the most useful manner. Inexpensive solutions are less flexible.
I admit to having no experience with software solutions. But my position is that a physical KVM sits outside the PCs it is managing and is thus not susceptible to a software problem on any given PC. It is also completely OS-neutral – it works with any computer that recognizes the peripherals.
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don’t trust optical media for long-term storage
For writable media, I follow the US Department of Defense’s recommendation from decades ago, which is to duplicate the CD/DVD every five years and destroy the original. I continue to do that. For manufactured media, such as movies and music dating back as much as 30 years, I’ve never had a media failure.
I have a set of about a dozen CDs I burned 30 years ago and which I keep as a test. They remain readable.
This may sound retro, but one reason I miss optical media is its physical size. I taught a course at a local university some time ago in which the students were to deliver a website to a real client. Most burned a CD. One delivered a USB thumb drive, which I approved but did not recommend. That client later hired me to enhance the site and when I asked them for their backup copy, they couldn’t find the thumb drive. I feel certain they would have found the larger disc in a jewel case. (I kept backups of all the student projects, so I was able to recover for the client.)
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Only if you still have a working CD/DVD player.
Of course. I have two internal DVD writers in my daily driver, both five years or older and both still working. I have an external USB DVD writer, also about five years old and still working. There are many of both types for $35 or less. I also own a Blu-ray player which is attached to our primary TV; it will play audio, video, or – if the media contains image files – slide shows.
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abysmally slow performance of HDDs relative to SSDs
That goes without saying – now. The cost was the delay. The PC I built 10 years ago with Windows 10 had an SSD for the boot drive. It was costly and had only 250GB (3.5″ SSD). 500GB was too costly; it took nearly four years before I doubled it and another three before doubling it again to 1TB.
This is not to say you are wrong about performance. It’s just that 10 years ago all of us had to weigh performance against cost.
responsiveness of most any Windows 10 PC with an HDD was absolutely terrible
That may be an overstatement. For my work, yes. For the laptop my son bought 10 years ago? No. About five years ago, when he was considering a new laptop, I put in an SSD and doubled the RAM. That was a much cheaper alternative at the time, and he’s still using it. But had he started with that configuration when he bought the laptop originally, the cost would have been dramatically higher.
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Delphi Community Edition is free.
I haven’t kept up. I’ll check further, but it looks like CE is fairly limited regarding use.
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I’ve lost count how many CD/DVD drives and players have failed in service
Me, too. However, the media has good life, and there are archival versions of the media that supposedly could last a century.
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I still use Visual Basic 6
So do I, but I used an extensive collection of third-party tools that were necessary to make VB3 a power tool. I had to buy those software add-ons for every generation of VB, at considerable expense. I ended up writing my own modules to replace about 60% of those bits. But that means I still use some 27-year-old components. Sooner or later, something is going to break.
I’m in no rush, but I’ve already done a bit of work in VS Community, which has everything I need built-in (I think).
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I think it’s safe to assume that it’s a faultless upgrade.
As it turns out, this morning (one day after Patch Tuesday), Windows lost control of my dual displays again. Another Intel driver update was required, but it crashed twice during installation. I finally got it installed on the third try, and everything was restored.
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I’ll wait til I can manually install a safe update of 24H2
I understand. It’s just too bad we can’t rely on Microsoft to deliver reliable, safe updates.
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