WordStar and Old Software Too Good to Stop Using

by
in linux on (#3KM)
story imageEvery day tech news is rife with stories about the latest and greatest, but some people don't want the latest and greatest; they want their old faves. The blogosphere is buzzing this week with the revelation that George R.R. Martin , the much-admired author of the A Game of Thrones and more, actually does his writing on a DOS machine running the old, 1970s word processor, WordStar .

Should that matter? I don't think so . Not one bit. In fact, WordStar and DOS have a couple of advantages over more modern hardware and software: probably no Internet connection, no icons, nothing buzzing or beeping or flashing at you. In sum, the perfect environment for focusing on your writing. Judging by the success of GRRM's books, it's working!

What old software do you use? Which old technologies do you hang onto even as the rest of the world chases the newest update?

GRRM explains it himself (Score: 2, Funny)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-05-15 11:31 (#1MN)

Awesome quote at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/15/game_of_thrones_written_on_brutal_medieval_word_processor_and_os/
Martin the says he uses WordStar 4.0 as his word processor, which elicits laughs from the studio audience, but justifies his choice by saying "I actually like it.""It does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn't do anything else. I don't want any help. I hate these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital. I don't want a capital. If I'd wanted a capital I would have typed a capital!"Martin says he also hates spell check, because the made-up words he uses in his work is often corrected for him.There's a certain symmetry to the choice of WordStar and DOS. Martin's work depicts a brutal time in which the available technology is clunky and unreliable and magic is still in limited use. WordStar and DOS come from a time in which PCs were brutal and digital technology was clunky and unreliable, but Macintoshes were in limited use. ®
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