It's hard for me to describe how much appreciation and affection I had for DESQview. It was such a joy, with really no negatives. Every dabbling I had with Windows in comparison just further cemented my love of DESQview and hatred for the unacceptably substandard tripe Microsoft were pushing.

DESQview -> Linux without X -> Linux with X -> OS X (10.2) -> today.

Well, just running the single DOS app under Windows, not even having anything else loaded, on a 486dx2/66 w/16MB RAM, resulted in users complaining about speed - on their 2400 baud modems.

Yep. Same here. I gave it a try, and wow was it ever bad - completely unworkable.

I never got into OS/2, having no copy available to me (I just couldn't afford it). I did my C in Borland's DOS based Turbo C++ inside DESQview and was blissfully ignorant of what life under OS/2 might be like.

By all accounts I heard soon after that time, OS/2 was a glorious thing, so I'm always mildly disappointed I missed out on it. I think I held out in DESQview land (and then Linux without X) until almost Windows 98 times.

Same experience here. Nothing at the time other than DESQview was offering decent multitasking for tasks like BBSes. Windows was a joke in comparison.

Eventually I gave up DESQview, but it was a painful transition and I bitterly resented Microsoft for winning in the market with their inferior product.

DESQview was brilliant. It was completely workable on the hardware of the time, functional, did what the box said, fast... It was the right solution for the time. It just happened that hardware moved on and left the phase in time that DESQview occupied behind.

I was running multinode BBSes under DESQview back in the day and getting fantastic performance. None of the graphical competitors were in any way workable alternatives for that sort of performance on the hardware available.

I agree. The sedentary nature of programming is very unhealthy. A mix of the two would be great.

As it is I balance it by not working long hours or that many days a week, and spending the rest of my time outside or at the gym.

Not trolling. I will not lower my life standards to spending my work life in a Windows environment.

Not the whole reason, but at least part of it was put well by someone recently:

"using a windows pc is like having someone at work who wants to whine at you about an unrelated personal issue when you ask a quick question"

I worked doing manual labour, and really heavy stuff at that, for maybe five years in my late teens, early twenties. It was, on balance, just as enjoyable, if not perhaps more enjoyable at times, than being a programmer. It just doesn't pay well enough.

I've worked in various different physical labour jobs, and I'd pick them any day over sitting inside at a Windows computer cranking out .NET code.

Hell, I'd pick them over sitting inside at a Mac cranking out C++ or Java or PHP any day too, if they paid better. But those dev environments at least are tolerable. Living in a Windows world is not tolerable, and crosses the line for acceptable work conditions.

I'm paying around $1135 USD a month in rent, including all utilities, furnished, and serviced.

Yeah, doesn't fall into the range you class as cheap, but it's half the price of what I was paying in Sydney. Although admittedly my Sydney place was pretty luxury, in the best building in town. But this place aint too shabby either.

The rent I'm paying here is still on the cheap side for Tokyo though. I could easily be paying two or three times as much for just a one bedroom/studio.

Anyway, back to the point: fibre to the building is very common in Tokyo, and very cheap. If you weren't getting it as part of the package, I suspect you'd be paying around maybe $30 USD a month for better than what I'm getting (probably something nearer 100mbit up and down, no limits).

I'm living in Tokyo at the moment, and my (rather cheap) apartment comes with broadband (fibre) bundled as part of the rent. I just did a speed test and I'm getting 52mbit down, 10mbit up. Absolutely no monthly limits.

Pretty much every apartment I looked at when picking this place had broadband (often fibre) bundled in to the rent cost, and all would be unlimited data.

Look, there's really no point in me continuing this discussion with you. You're not listening, and you're already convinced you know much more about love and relationships than you actually do.

When you've grown up a bit more, lived a bit more, and learnt more about how guys work (if you ever do), come back to me and have this conversation if you like. But right now, there's no point. I'm not your emotional coach. You've got a whole lot more naivity and ignorance to live through, a whole lot more experience to gather (again, if you ever do).

A broken heart doesn't come from a lack of nookie you insensitive bastard.

I never said any such thing. You've completely misunderstood. What's missing is the reciprocated love, but casual sex takes that pain away. It's a medicine, not a replacement.

Sex is not going to fill that hole if you have any kind of heart, okay? Every man seems to think it will and they go on a massive f*ck-fest. It doesn't work.

Actually, yes, it does. It's nothing like being in a loving relationship, but it fills the hole and takes the suffering away. It's the medicine that heals.

And please, don't condescend to me. You're way out of your depth here. You clearly do not understand how men work. We're built fundamentally differently from girls when it comes to emotions. What the emotional world looks like to you has no relation to how it is for guys.

I'm an old man who's lived a full life. There's really no point in schooling me on relationships, because I've lived through a whole lot more of them than you. Don't teach your grandmother how to suck eggs, as the saying goes.

Those are the two things I applied a year ago (and am still applying) to get over a broken heart. I left my country, started travelling and kept travelling, and have shagged lots of different lovely girls along the way. It really works. And I've met some great people.

That's probably because you suck at sex ;)

I'm only half kidding. For sex without love to be worth it it really helps to get it right. Crap sex with love is still worth having; crap sex without love is often just crap.