To reply to Johann first, I totally agree. Microsoft is a disgrace. In any other industry, it would be illegal to disclose so little information, when applying for intellectual property protection, and to make programs so backwards-compatibless (you know what I mean, even if I had to invent a phrase 🙂 ). Microsoft is lucky in that it was founded in the US of A, where most things go (are acceptible)in the realm of IP.
Quote:
“…I completely agree! Who do those darn eBay sellers think they are? Giving their buyers simple, working and proven solutions instead of needlessly complicated ones, the nerve! I think it’s just plain wrong that they deprive their buyers of an intellectual challenge! Don’t they know that the frustration of getting an old DOS game to work on XP is almost as much fun as playing the actual game?
I’m so 1337 that I run all my old Sierra games in a DOSBox that runs in Wine that I installed on Linux which runs on my VMWare installation on Windows XP! Do eBay sellers ever tell you to do that? No! Because they’re all stupid n00bs! Aaaarrgghhhh!!!!! …”
God, this guy is something else! But some of the comments I’ve made have been (almost) equally shocking, so I’d better be fair here..
Well, first of all, calling Ebay sellers giving tech support as “giving simple proven advice” is simply a falsehood. ‘Compatibility modes’ are NOT a means of tech support. If anything, they confuse the issue. They don’t actually DO anything, except change screen resolutions and colour palettes (which only helps a very small number of cases).
To that end, I’ve never seen a helpful comment made with regards to tech support, made by an Ebay seller on their auction. That’s my point, nothing else. I’m definitely of the opinion that wrong tech support is worse than none at all 🙂
The notion that by trying to actually make sure advice is fitted to the problem, and actually being correct as well (and that people giving it have a frickin’ clue what they’re talking about 🙂 ), is somehow wanting to deprive people of tech support, making it harder to get the games working, is just an embarrassing comment.
On some forum the other day I read someone actually telling a fan (in terms of giving them tech support) something they obviously didn’t understand themselves, and saying that ‘Sierra games were my [their] specialty’. Now, if someone’s dishing out advice that’s wrong, and calling that their specialty, that seems to be the type of notion that Barry here advocates. Which I assume would not be the case.
The second paragraph should just be ignored, by anyone reading.. too late for me, I had to read it. 😛
At any rate, I don’t advocate any of the methods (albeit sarcastic ones) Barry listed in his joke paragraph. Except DOSBOX (in limited circumstances), the rest don’t really have much use (as Sierra game-enablers). XP is always made harder than it is.. people usually make it harder on themselves to run the games. But I’m digressing. What the hell was the original topic? LSL7 bugs? I wonder why this thread got revived.
Regards,
– Alistair