Saturday, June 30, 2007

Want to Join the Team?

Do you think you have what it takes to be a Snailware reviewer?

If you love software, have some decent writing skills, some free time to write short reviews of new software you find and try, why not give it a shot?

There are a few very important requirements though:

  • You must be the owner of an older slower (Pentium II or less) computer running some form of Windows 9x (95, 98, ME) and have less than 256 MB of RAM.
  • All software you test and review must be tested on that machine.
  • You must have some sort of screen capturing ability to make screenshots of the applications you test. If you need software to do this, Screenshot Captor is a good one to try.
  • You must have a Gmail or Blogger account.
  • You must agree to the statements in the Disclaimer and the Privacy Policy. (the us and we will be referring to YOU)

If you are interested, contact us and we can discuss it further.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

i think this a brilliant idea for a blog, app.

i'm using a pentium 2 laptop with 128meg ram - running win 2k.

it works but isn't that nimble. but i just didn't find 95 or 98 stable enough to use.

i wonder how stable other people find 95 and 98, i.e. was it just the software i was using that was bad.

also, how about a poll or survey to find out which operating systems people are using?

App said...

I had some bad experiences with 98SE on my snail, but it could have just been the software that was installed on it.

I received my pc as a hand me down, with everything preinstalled by my dad. I think he took a trip to Tucows and downloaded everything he could and installed it all on the PC before giving it to me. Sort of like the OEM trial bundle from Hell.

I have learned that any time he sets up a PC and gives it to you as a gift, fix it by wiping it as soon as you can.

By the time I bothered to wipe his disaster and start fresh, I had already used Windows ME on my P3 (which had a short life) and was pretty used to it and liked the extra features it had that Windows 98 didn't.

So when it came time to decide what I was going to put on it, I went with Windows ME, hoping that the drivers I had would work with it.

It worked out quite well, and the machine has been rock solid stable, not needing a format in over 5 years.

It rarely locks up on me and I almost never see a blue screen. I also have some pretty good uptime on it, rebooting it about every 6 to 8 weeks, or when the modem acts up and needs to be reset.

App said...

Oh...

the poll idea was a good one...done!

Anonymous said...

i never even considered trying win me.

maybe it will be perfect for my p2 laptop.

worth a try i suppose.

App said...

There is a reason why WinME users are jokingly referred to as the 'elite 6%' of Windows users.

WinME isn't for everybody. Some people experience Hell with it. Not every machine's hardware has drivers that behave well with it.

The average WinME user reboots their PC every 4 hours because of something going wrong that either causes the system to lock up, or a blue screen.

The most common source of problems is the drivers for some video cards. If you have an ATI card, I don't recommend WinME.

I didn't have great luck with it on my P3, which had an ATI card...I got lucky with the P1 because of the S3 Trio card it has.

Of all the versions of Windows released, WinME had the best hardware support with more drivers for more hardware included with it than any other version of Windows.

For things that the drivers were not included, if WinME drivers were never made available by the manufacturer, you can usually get away with using Win98 or even Win95 drivers, in most cases.(The modem in my P1 is running with Win95 drivers)

I am glad it worked out for me, as there are features in WinME that I really like. Stuff that isn't found in Win98 or even Win2k & XP.

System Restore, which is included in XP made it's first appearance in WinME. It has saved my butt quite a few times.

There is also the feature of being able to see thumbnails of .html documents in Explorer. Something that was later removed from 2k and XP for security reasons. I use it for things I don't have to worry about, like pages I have coded myself.

Unlike XP, you can edit the template for Explorer and add your own enhancements with HTML and CSS or select from some premade templates created just for folders that hold a specific content type, like images. This adds a really nice image viewer to the sidebar that is even capable of showing the animation in .gif files. (something I really miss on my XP machine)

There is also another consideration before moving to WinME that Win98 users have to think about if they are using one of those scanners that piggy backs with your printer, on the printer port. It won't work with WinME. You'll have to replace it with a USB scanner, and find an older working scanner that has 9x drivers. That might not be an easy task. And this won't even be an option if your PC doesn't have USB to begin with.

i said...

I would really recommend all Win9x users to upgrade to windows 2000 at least. Since XP came out, Windows 2k is quite cheap to get and in my opinion, its far more stable and trouble-free than even XP. Having NTFS is also a big boost over FAT32.

I have Windows 2k running on a laptop with 128 MB ram and 600 Mhz processor and it runs as fast as Windows 98, but is a lot more stable.

App said...

Not all 9x users can upgrade, even if they want to.

Hardware limitations stop many from upgrading. There just isn't Win2k drivers for all of the old hardware.

If you find working Win2k drivers for an Aztech Sound4, let me know.

Without the drivers, it doesn't make sense to even try.