running underneath.

Still, old habits die hard, and a surprising number of people still run DOS applications even today. Some of them are tailor-made applications like point-of-sale programs that do just one specific task reasonably well—and cheaply. Others are more general programs

TWENTY-SIX years ago, Microsoft negotiated to buy an obscure piece of software that would transform it into a computer industry powerhouse.

The software was called QDOS, short for Quick and Dirty Operating System, and Microsoft needed it for the personal computer that IBM was developing. Various accounts say Bill Gates’ partner, Paul Allen, bought QDOS from programmer Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for between $50,000 and $100,000. Microsoft then parlayed that into billions of dollars by charging IBM a license fee of up to $50 for every copy of the operating system—renamed MS DOS— that was sold with millions of its new PCs. The billions that DOS funneled into the upstart company gave it the financial muscle to develop many other products that followed, including MS Office and Windows, and allowed it to dominate the PC software business in decades to come.

Of course, many young computer users who grew up using Windows never experienced DOS or character-based computing.

In 2001, when Gates launched Windows XP, he also declared the end of the DOS era. Unlike all earlier versions of Windows, XP would no longer have DOS running underneath.

Still, old habits die hard, and a surprising number of people still run DOS applications even today. Some of them are tailor-made applications like point-of-sale programs that do just one specific task reasonably well—and cheaply. Others are more general programs l

ing. Various accounts say Bill Gates’ partner, Paul Allen, bought QDOS from programmer Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for between $50,000 and $100,000. Microsoft then parlayed that into billions of dollars by charging IBM a license fee of up to $50 for every copy of the operating system—renamed MS DOS— that was sold with millions of its new PCs. The billions that DOS funneled into the upstart company gave it the financial muscle to develop many other products that followed, including MS Office and Windows, and allowed it to dominate the PC software business in decades to come.

Of course, many young computer users who grew up using Windows never experienced DOS or character-based computing.

In 2001, when Gates launched Windows XP, he also declared the end of the DOS era. Unlike all earlier versions of Windows, XP would no longer have DOS running underneath.

Still, old habits die hard, and a surprising number of people still run DOS applications even today. Some of them are tailor-made applications like point-of-sale programs that do just one specific task reasonably well—and cheaply. Others are more general programs

system—renamed MS DOS— that was sold with millions of its new PCs. The billions that DOS funneled into the upstart company gave it the financial muscle to develop many other products that followed, including MS Office and Windows, and allowed it to dominate the PC software business in decades to come.

Of course, many young computer users who grew up using Windows never experienced DOS or character-based computing.

In 2001, when Gates launched Windows XP, he also declared the end of the DOS era. Unlike all earlier versions of Windows, XP would no longer have DOS running underneath.

Still, old habits die hard, and a surprising number of people still run DOS applications even today. Some of them are tailor-made applications like point-of-sale programs that do just one specific task reasonably well—and cheaply. Others are more general programs

ades to come.

Of course, many young computer users who grew up using Windows never experienced DOS or character-based computing.

In 2001, when Gates launched Windows XP, he also declared the end of the DOS era. Unlike all earlier versions of Windows, XP would no longer have DOS running underneath.

Still, old habits die hard, and a surprising number of people still run DOS applications even today. Some of them are tailor-made applications like point-of-sale programs that do just one specific task reasonably well—and cheaply. Others are more general programs

running underneath.

Still, old habits die hard, and a surprising number of people still run DOS applications even today. Some of them are tailor-made applications like point-of-sale programs that do just one specific task reasonably well—and cheaply. Others are more general programs like word processors that users have grown accustomed to.

When I first came to Manila Standard Today, for example, one of the senior editors was still running Wordstar in a DOS window on a Windows PC. From the editor’s point of view, the solution made perfect sense—he could write and edit efficiently using a word processor that he had mastered long ago. Instead of fiddling with new formatting commands, he could concentrate on typing.

On the Web, I found a 1996 essay by science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, extolling the virtues of Wordstar for DOS. Ten years later, he’s still using Wordstar 7.0, running in a DOS window in XP—and writing his 19th book with it.

I know where he’s coming from. I, too, was a Wordstar for DOS (Version 5) holdout many years after it became fashionable to use MS Word for Windows, though I finally had to give it up.

If you’re running XP, you can still get a taste of DOS. Just go to START, RUN, type COMMAND and hit Enter to get a simulated DOS window.

I was pleasantly surprised to find you can also run old DOS programs on a Linux or Mac OS X machine. An open source program called DOSBox e