HN Explorer

Ask HN: What old, discontinued desktop software do you still run?

36 points by open-source-ux ↗ HN
What are your reasons for running it?

Is it because you've never found a superior alternative?

Is it because you know it inside out and it's the fastest way to do a task?

Is it because it runs fast and with low-memory requirements?

Or is it because it has the best interface for what you need to do, and it's never been bettered (in your view)?

61 comments

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HNNoLikey
Avafind Pro when native search doesn't work. It will scan even the system files(and hidden folders) which are typically ignored by default unless you're deliberate about enabling their inclusion.
vicmanster
KEdit an awesome text editor that has selective editing features no current editor has.
RUG3Y
Windows 7 - I like to play games occasionally but I think Windows 10 is trash, I hate MS spying and advertising in my start menu, etc.
Kuraj
Do you keep it up to date? Because I'm afraid MS has backported the spying part.
romanovcode
And if that is the case Win10 is much better then Win7.
Paianni
Not really, Win7 is still far more stable, and the UI is still far superior. Also, the spying doesn't come close to Win10 as MS can't violate the TOS.
romanovcode
OP just told that Win7 got updated to do the same spying as Win10.

> Win7 is still far more stable

Would like a source of this. I didn't see a BSOD in like 5 years now.

> the UI is still far superior

This is subjective.

Paianni
Win7 has not had to face a major update since SP1, and has seven years of bugfixes under its belt. Not to mention that it was merely a reworking of Vista, which is even older.

The consumer editions of Win10 are managed like Arch Linux, it is effectively rolling release and its users are perpetual beta testers. Since Nadella's ascension, QA/QC has declined considerably. I believe the KB3201845 update broke DHCP for a swathe of users, as an example.

The worst part of Win10's interface is in the Start menu, it dedicates too much space to Metro files for what used to be links to Computer, Documents, Control Panel etc. Speaking of which, there are two control panels with overlapping features, a confusing experience.

Hasknewbie
They have backported their spywa^H^H^H^telemetry stuff, but as standard Windows updates that are known and can be blocked/uninstalled.

More worrying is the fact that they dropped Win7 support if a new-ish CPU is detected in your setup, even though the OS is not anywhere near EOLd yet. Deeply dishonest move, or as we call it around here, "Microsoft is still Microsofting".

RUG3Y
I have updates turned off. I don't have any important data on that drive, I just use it for gaming. If I get some kind of virus, I'll just nuke the whole thing and start fresh.

I really wish an alternative to Windows would pop up for gaming.

simantel
Depending on what games you're interested in, SteamOS can be a decent alternative: http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/
RUG3Y
I'm already dual booting Linux on that machine, but it's just not good enough for the games I'm playing. I'd abandon Windows in a heartbeat.

I'm also using Windows to run Reaper (DAW).

jamesmp98
I have a copy of Visual C++ 6.0 just for fun
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
elijahwright
I bet someone is still using Harvard Graphics.

Not even kidding. It gets the job done.

RobGR
I can confirm, I know a teacher who used DRDOS 7, WP 5.1, and Harvard Graphics to make all their classroom handouts.

They use more modern Linux / Debian stuff for actually browsing the web and other computing tasks, but keep several reliable DOS machines for school prep, because of being burned on Windows and Linux having problems (mostly related to poorly timed updates, or fsck'ing a disk) which used up hours on a night when new material had to be ready by the next morning.

raybb
Picasa photos manager.

There really isn't anything that's as easy to use. It automatically finds all the photos on your computer and makes it super easy to scroll through them and make minor edits.

mattlody
Same. I haven't been able to find any decent alternative that will allow me to embed face data within the image itself (such as via XMP) and will deal with the photos all being stored on my NAS rather than locally.
kdamica
Winamp 5.1. The last great version of Winamp, released in 2005. After this version, they added lots of junk that reduced speed and usability.
romanhn
Same! It's one of the first applications I download on every new Windows install.
romanovcode
I totally agree that this is the last version of Winamp that was great and I love this program.

However are many people have mp3 files on their computers? Everyone I know just uses Spotify or similar tools nowadays and nobody stores actual files on their computers.

Vaskivo
I download everything. And much of the music I hear is videogame soundtracks or stuff from bandcamp and soundcloud. (OK, I listen from streamed music from soundcloud. But I don't use spotify)
aargh_aargh
Too much bloat. Winamp 2.95 all the way! Not even sure that I'm kidding.
dayve
Picasa (by Google), Especially because of the flexibility of the photo viewer. (zoom instantly with arrow keys, etc)
quickthrower2
Truecrypt. Yes I know! Been too lazy to find an alternative.

Also budgeting software YNAB 4. Because the cloud version doesn't support imports (wat?!) so I stick with the desktop version. Never mind privacy and cost reasons (do I need a budget line for the budget software!!)

nmbr213
> Been too lazy to find an alternative

VeraCrypt is basically a fork of TrueCrypt

dvtv75
Does Windows NT 4.0 Workstation count? Technically, I don't run it, my work does. They still use it for a few reasons, but mostly cost: it has one job to do, which it does well enough, it's there, and a new system would need some investment.
mariuolo
I assume it's network-isolated.
dtx1
I assume you're a highly optimistic individual with a positive outlook on the world.
tonyedgecombe
For me, Windows NT 4.0 with security updates and WiFi support would be an entirely satisfactory environment.
teapot7
Photoshop 7. It still works and it does everything I want it to do. And it's not subscription based.

I also agree with the poster who gets an old version of WinAmp. That's a program that started out fine and the just went bonkers.

gdulli
https://textpad.com/download/textpad45.html

I use the version released in 2004. It just does everything the way I want. I've tried many alternatives. IDEs have some cool features but are overall annoying. It's more natural to alt-tab to an ssh window and manage a server or see output there than manage windows/panes/whatever within a monolithic application.

jones1618
I've also been using Textpad since Windows 95 days, I think. But you didn't say why you are sticking with the 2004 version.

TextPad isn't technically "old" or "discontinued". It is regularly updated and released version 8.1.2 back in March.

gdulli
Hard to remember details, but the 5.0 version felt like a big rewrite or redesign because it lost some responsiveness or stability or features or other things I liked about 4.7 so I reverted.
pasbesoin
Me too, as far as remembering, as the years advance. It was version 5 or one of the major release points, where things really started to "go backwards". Among other things, they changed the way the UI worked, in ways I found not just different but significantly less effective and more cumbersome. IIRC, some of this might have related to changes in the underlying libraries or versions of libraries they were using.

Around the turn of the century, I was using Textpad as part of processing some relatively massive text inputs. It remained solid and much more performant than the alternatives I tried. This including its regex support, which was great for examining, munging/transmogrifying, and cleaning up text data. Particularly text data containing significant variability and some one-off scenarios; having ongoing visual oversight and the ability to rapidly, manually select areas to affect in various ways, was vastly superior to trying to come up with command line / whole file invocations that would create the equivalent impact.

Additionally, other editors choked on the volume/size of data files I was dealing with.

What's that "open" alternative that's so popular? Notepad++, I think. Years later, I needed to "beat up" some text and tried it. Despite this being years later -- more time for development and refinement -- it was nowhere close to Textpad. And while it had a bazillion features and functions built in, I found those I tried to use very "shallow"; get beyond the simplest use case, and they started to bog down and "glitch" with unexpected and/or inconsistent behavior.

I remember trying to use it for some regex manipulations, and having to give up on that feature.

Finally, now that I recall, Textpad was "nagware". You could actually use it substantially and really get a feel for it. I paid for my license gladly.

lewisl9029
The oldest piece of software I use is probably MP3Gain (looks like it hasn't been updated for 8 years): http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/index.php

It's a lossless mp3 volume normalizer. I use this over ReplayGain tags because ReplayGain isn't supported for all the devices and software I listen to music on, and ubiquitous support is the entire reason I store my music collection in mp3 in the first place.

I'm not married to this solution, but I just haven't found anything that works better for me yet. Interested to hear how others deal with the issue of music volume leveling.

hbcondo714
Windows Media Center in Windows 8 to watch cable tv via an ATI cable card provide by my HOA. They also include a set-top box but the remote control and guide is terrible.
dewey
Have you looked into Plex? They support cable now I think.
hbcondo714
Sort of. I did download it but then saw that their recent cablecard tv feature comes at a cost.
fuzzygroup
I still churn out 100% of my code and blog entries in TextMate 2. I've been using TextMate since 2006 and nothing else just "feels" as good.
nmbr213
I don't know if CDisplay would count for me. It still is my preferred choice for manga & comics on PC, but for the last couple of years I used PerfectViewer on my tablet for that.
nreece
ExamDiff, ColorCop, Notepad2.
sudoz
perhaps foobar?
ionised
That is still being updated.

Last stable version was 32 days ago.

le-flaneur
NikonScan scanner software for their professional negative/slide scanners (I have a Coolscan 8000).

It’s free, does a superb job and excellent for batch scanning. Never took to the alternatives, so it still has a place on an older iMac.

mrlyc
I'm still using an outliner called PC Outline 3.34. My manager gave me a copy in 1986, saying "Here, you're organised. You'll like this" and he was right. I bought a copy and have been using it every day since then for todo lists, shopping lists and functional decomposition. As it's an old DOS program, I have to run it in DOSBox on Linux or vDos on Windows 7.

I'm sticking with 3.34 as the 3.37 version has some bugs and the 1.00 version for Windows has a lot of them.

tcbawo
It looks like one of those blue 1980s text menu applications. Does it have nice keyboard bindings, or is it menu driven?
cagey
I'm a longtime outliner software user from the DOS days. One of the last outliner software packages I used was Grandview 2.0 by Symantec [1].

Amazingly, just a few months ago I discovered that it has been resurrected to run in Windows using vDOS; there is a package that automates the entire deployment process[2]. I've started using Grandview 2.0 again on Win 7 using this package (which BTW includes a OCR'd scan of the very extensive User manual). It works flawlessly. Unfortunately, data exchange into "modern" formats is challenging (and you're left with a screen no larger than 80x50), so I've not been able to use it as much as I would like. I wish there were a modern incarnation of this or similar software, but it seems DOS software is largely viewed as a dead-end not worth emulating in this era of GUI's.

P.S. I've tried MS Word's outline mode and find it wholly unsatisfactory.

P.P.S. my favorite outliner software was Borland's Sidekick Plus (for DOS).

[1] https://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/grandview...

[2] http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/6291

alok-g
Corel Paint Shop Pro 12. It still serves me well, and AFAIK, later versions have not added much anyways. I have a later version which refuses to work with Windows 10, however, this version is working fine!