Eh, this was just an exercise in curiosity with a dose of insomnia tossed in there for good measure. To be honest I do not think JtS's suggestion of using DOSBox will improve matters but there's little to lose by trying. At a minimum I will come away knowing more than I did when I started.

Of course, I could just compile it under Linux with gcc and watch it fly, but that's a different exercise.

Have you tried Windows console 64-bit? (Assuming you're running a 64-bit version of Windows)

Hardware is 32-bit so I can't even upgrade to Win64 - so, unfortunately, 64-bit console apps are not an option for now.

Er, that was supposed to be I >3 Farscape. Sigh.

Eh, it's early yet. I knew what you meant, regardless.

Happy New Year back atcha.

Here it is, 2011. So far, not much different than 2010, except that I have a LOT of Farscape episodes to keep me occupied...

I have had good success with wxWidgets on both Windows and Linux. That said, it's the *only* cross-platform GUI development library I have used and I am used to it. Rather than use anchors for placing window components it uses something called sizers which are a lot harder to work with until you get used to them. It can be used with a variety of languages (C++ and Python are the two big ones, though there is support for hooking into Java as well) and the licensing is sane.

Though I do favor wxWidgets (as it's all I really know) I believe QT is a lot more complete as a library. Depending on what you're doing, QT may be a better fit for your needs.

A coworker left a desktop system for me when he took an international position, so I have a spare PC. I decided to try Fedora 14 and tonight's install night.

I bought a laptop for the family earlier this year and it came loaded with Windows 7. I think I am one of the very few people on the planet that actually prefers Vista to Windows 7.

That said, I would still rather have Linux loaded than either Vista or 7.

I didn't mention MoonOS in my journal as I was researching and found it as a result. I tried it for a couple of hours, then moved on. That said, it had the most attractive desktop I have ever seen.

You'd expect that they'd be more careful if someone tells them they had been dissatisfied in the past.

Considering all of the coolness kudos they get for their products, they may have just gotten indifferent.

The only way I would buy an Apple system right now is if I needed it to create cross-platform applications for Windows, Linux and OS X. I just don't feel a desire to support the platform. And, you know, in my Linux travels I uncovered a distro called MoonOS that was an Ubuntu derivative with some of the OS X feel to it - close enough should I decide to go that route.

I hope I was just an isolated case and that you (and the rest of Apple's customer base) get better care than I did. It's possible it was just an unfortunate screw-up, but it was enough to really turn me off to their stuff regardless.

I gave up on Apple years ago. I bought an iPod with the extended warranty that was supposed to cover battery replacement. When the battery was to a point where it would no longer maintain enough charge to be useful I contacted Apple and made arrangements to have it sent in for service. It came back a few days later with a service note - "Unable to reproduce problem". They did manage to wipe the memory though.

I don't care how "great" Apple's stuff is, I will never buy another Apple product. If they cannot honor a service agreement, then they don't need my money.