T 'n' T: Turn Back the Clock Old-Fashioned Fonts, File Managers, and Fun Stuff Gregg Keizer
Mon 6/10/02 -- Around here, nostalgia gets a workout. Hey, I still have my first computer -- a 1982 Osborne-1 -- racked with a bunch of other long-ago losers.
In a sop to the past, this week's tips 'n' tricks turn back the clock (in one case, literally). Why settle for an ultra-fast system when you can return to the days of blinking "Wait" indicators for spreadsheet recalculation? How about the comforting clickety-clack of a typewriter keyboard? Or the stark -- and simple -- file manager you used way back when? Ah, for the good old days!
A file manager for the ages. Return to the days of yesteryear, when a file manager was a brawny piece of software, not some fuzzy, round-cornered cartoon with enough cute graphics to excite a four-year-old. Norton Commander, a long-defunct DOS file manager once made by Symantec, is about as old-fashioned as you can get; I ran Commander back in the dusty DOS days and still yearn for its side-by-side-directory-view simplicity. (We said "directory," not "folder," back then.)
No problem, as I found out: There are scads of shareware and freeware Norton Commander knockoffs available for every version of Windows. Among the ones I've tried: Windows Commander (shareware, $28); 2xExplorer (freeware); and Gyula's Windows Navigator (freeware).
Ding! Typewriters have gone the way of the dodo (or almost), and all I can say is good riddance. Writing on a typewriter meant more typing than writing. But I miss the sounds that typewriters made: the click and clack of keys; the grrr-whaaang of my old electric when I hit the Return key (which performed a real carriage return, as opposed to the blandly named Enter on computer keyboards); the cha-chunk, cha-chunk of the space bar.
Enough waxing nostalgic. Just do what I did, and download a typewriter sound-effects player. A quick Web search turns up several, from the adware Typewriter to Moose O'Malley's customizable, $10 Australian (about $5 U.S.) shareware Key Sound Generator. All that's missing is the Wite-Out.
Fuzzy fonts. What good is the sound of a typewriter when the font on the screen is a picture-perfect Times New Roman? No good at all, I say; a slick font ruins the effect. So when I'm in a back-to-the-past mood, I use old, banged-up, blurry fonts that emulate (though they can't duplicate, not with the crispness of laser and inkjet printers) the characters stamped on paper by a typewriter.
The best all-in-one source I've found is Free Typewriter Fonts, a page that presents downloads of more than 70 fonts that mimic everything from a brand-new Selectric to an out-of-alignment junker with an out-of-ink ribbon. My fave: Typical Writer, which is clear enough not to give me eyestrain, but distressed enough to look realistic.
Slowpoke PC. For the ultimate in "When I was a kid" reminiscing, go all the way -- but none too fast -- with a slowdown utility that chews up CPU clock cycles faster than Wimpy eats hamburgers. Want your 2GHz Pentium 4 Dell dragster to run like a 1981 4.77MHz 8088 no-go-mobile from IBM? Dig these two ball-and-chain shareware programs: the $20 Mo'Slo and $15 CPU Killer. They sit in memory, eat processor time, and slo-o-o-o-w down your machine. CPU Killer, for instance, promises to slow a PC by as much as 98 percent!
Actually, these programs have more use than as a one-time gag: they'll slow down a fast PC to the point where your ancient DOS games (or apps, if you're still using such a thing) run properly.
The beautiful blue screen. If your first session with a word processor meant typing white letters on a blue background -- hello, WordPerfect! -- you can bring back those good old days in Microsoft Word. (I know this isn't strictly a Windows tip, but I couldn't resist.) Select Tools/Options and click the General tab. Check the "Blue background, white text" box and then click OK. Match this with a font like Courier and you'll have the full effect.
