I copied all of my license keys into a OneNote page, I can tell how
much of a hoarder I am by the keys I still keep around.

Allaire Homesite, Photoshop 4, Blue Wave, Eudora Pro, Filemaker,Office 2003, Telix...

Hey, speak for yourself; I still use a Eudora key.

Mind you, at some point I switched over to one I found on the Internet. But Eudora is still functional, and its mailboxes are in plain text, so much less a worry about things disappearing.

And, WHY did I keep Microsoft Vista license keys?

Why _wouldn't_ you hoard data when you can?

Though, realistically, probably best if it's in a list of outdated things you'd never consider using. But, hey, maybe, just maybe, there'll be a time when it's helpful.

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Re: Re: Screaming Into The Void
By: Mortar M. to Nightfox on Sat Jan 03 2026 10:08 pm

...with a lot more people using mobile devices these days, which tend to be
Android or iOS (Microsoft tried to get in the mobile game with their Zune,
for instance, which flopped).

Zune was a MS brand of portable media players, so is out of context here. A better comparison would be Windows Phone, which also flopped.

Yeah, I was trying to think of what that Microsoft phone was; I wasn't sure if it was Windows Phone or if Zune also applied to their line of phones.

Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.34-Linux
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

Adept wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Mind you, at some point I switched over to one I found on the Internet. But Eudora is still functional, and its mailboxes are in plain text, so much less a worry about things disappearing.

You're tempting me to go back to Eudora on the BBS, I don't need HTML
email and prefer mbox formatted email. Last time I tried, there was an
issue with SMTP ports, I think. I'll need to try again.

Though, realistically, probably best if it's in a list of outdated
things you'd never consider using. But, hey, maybe, just maybe,
there'll be a time when it's helpful.

Which is why I still keep a parallel port cable, in case I'm teleported
back in time to 1990. :)



--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
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Re: Re: Screaming Into The Void
By: Nightfox to Mortar M. on Sun Jan 04 2026 09:44 am

Yeah, I was trying to think of what that Microsoft phone was; I wasn't sure if it was Windows Phone or if Zune also applied to their line of phones.

There's an alternate universe where Bill Gates' biggest triumph was the release of the zPhone.

I liked the UI of the Windows phone, CE felt too much like they wanted the Windows desktop OS on everything, but WP felt optimized for phones. I was surprised Microsoft didn't make WP work better in Microsoft corporate environments (or more accurately, break performance with every other platform) to make WP the choice for corporate clients.
--- SBBSecho 3.33-Win32
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Re: Re: Screaming Into The Void
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Sun Jan 04 2026 10:40 am

I liked the UI of the Windows phone, CE felt too much like they wanted the Windows desktop OS on everything, but WP felt optimized for phones. I was surprised Microsoft didn't make WP work better in Microsoft corporate environments (or more accurately, break performance with every other platform) to make WP the choice for corporate clients.

Even though a lot of companies traditionally seem to use Microsoft stuff (especially large companies), I've noticed some companies seem to prefer Apple stuff. I briefly worked on a contract with eBay for their Portland, OR location -It was remote at the time (due to COVID), but they said most people working there were using Mac laptops (they gave us a choice to use a Windows or Mac laptop). I chose a Windows laptop because that's what I'm used to, but when it came to asking others for help with tasks, most people were giving me Mac-based solutions..

In 2010, I worked for another company where most of the devs there used Macs as well. To me it seemed odd, since most of my software developer jobs have been at places where most people used Windows machines, but I've heard Macs are popular for dev work as well. Maybe Windows machines are mainly popular for places that develop Windows software and use Visual Studio & such, and companies that just tend to choose Microsoft products by default.

Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.34-Linux
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

Hello Nightfox!

04 Jan 26 09:44, you wrote to Mortar M.:

Zune was a MS brand of portable media players, so is out of
context here. A better comparison would be Windows Phone, which
also flopped.

Yeah, I was trying to think of what that Microsoft phone was; I wasn't sure if it was Windows Phone or if Zune also applied to their line of phones.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune

Zune was a brand of digital media products and services that was marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until it was discontinued
in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, a music subscription service known as Zune Music Pass plus Zune
Marketplace for music, TV and movies, streaming services for the Xbox 360 game console, and the Zune software media player for
Windows PC's which also acted as desktop sync software for Windows Phone.




Vorlon


--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
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Re: Screaming Into The Void
By: Vorlon to Nightfox on Mon Jan 05 2026 09:47 am

Zune was a MS brand of portable media players, so is out of context
here. A better comparison would be Windows Phone, which also flopped.

Yeah, I was trying to think of what that Microsoft phone was; I wasn't
sure if it was Windows Phone or if Zune also applied to their line of
phones.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune

Zune was a brand of digital media products and services that was marketed

Yes, I remember Zune..

Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.34-Linux
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

You're tempting me to go back to Eudora on the BBS, I don't need HTML
email and prefer mbox formatted email. Last time I tried, there was an
issue with SMTP ports, I think. I'll need to try again.

Oh, there is -- you have to use stunnel, and then not use any security that's built into Eudora.

Which is how it should be, because, obviously, one should not trust a program with no updates in the last two decades to do well with security.

Which is why I still keep a parallel port cable, in case I'm teleported
back in time to 1990. :)

And, hey, never know if the zombie apocalypse comes, and that's the bit of tech that people can usefully make work.

Mind you, even _if_ there's a zombie apocalypse I can't imagine it mattering.

Still, just in case...

(Obviously, _way_ more likely that there's some retro computing reason, where some data is on some old bit of hardware.)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

Adept wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Which is how it should be, because, obviously, one should not trust a program with no updates in the last two decades to do well with
security.

Of course, totally agree. I don't run POP3 outside of my firewall, and
not interpreting HTML helps keep things secure. Securer?

I did a lot with Eudora in the '90s. I worked at a Mac shop that ran a
LAN-based email system called "QuickMail" that needed 5 systems to
support 70 people - one was a usenet gateway, one a Compuserve gateway,
one for supporting mail clients and a dedicated SMTP gateway.

I built a BSD/OS box on a 486 desktop, set up Sendmail, Qpopper and
Eudora clients. We found a Quickmail to mbox converter so we could
convert email. Then, we created a company address book and pointed
everyone's eudora.ini file to it.

Later, we set up a company NNTP server, which hosted departmental
groups, product groups, and one called "gossip" that ended up taking
the whole thing down. :)



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