----- Original Message ----- 
From: "geoff carver" <[log in to unmask]>

> some of our powerpoint xp/2007 files didn't operate properly at a 
> computers & archaeology conference last week, using machines running 
> office 2000...

I've already encountered this problem, too. I believe this is by (evil) 
design ... Bill Gates wants everyone to (pay him for) upgrade.

> haven't seen many 5 1/2" floppy drives for ages,

I have a few in storage, but might be hard-pressed to find a working drive 
on the spur-of-the-moment (the rubber-band-like belts used on the archaic 
wheel-and-pulley systems to transmit rotary power from the mini-motor to the 
disc/rotor in these beasts have all deteriorated ... it's a pretty simple 
... but frustratingly time-consuming ... job to replace them with modern 
rubber bands made of synthetic elastic)

most of my old 3.25"
> floppies have degraded

Mine, too! But, fortunately the alarmists scairt me enough a few years ago 
so that I had all the data on them (worth keeping) transferred to new media 
(currently I like the little USB pen-drives  ... tiny ... permanent ...huge 
capacities ... no separate power-source necessary for use ... and now 
affordable ... plus, HP has a free utility that'll format these into either 
an emulated bootable floppy or bootable hard-drive).

most of my kids' games won't play on any of our
> hardware any more... i was trying to rebuild something to run Win95 just 
> for his games but W95 won't run on some of the harddisks (too big) or even 
> most of the oldest bits of hardware i have lying about the 
> house/basement...

there are HUNDREDS of groups/lists/blogs of gamer/hackers who have 
re-programmed/translated (their lingo is "ported") all the old games so that 
they will run beautifully on all the modern operating systems ... with the 
exact appearance & feel of the original ... you should be able to find any 
old game you might want in 5 minutes of Googling

> ----- Original Message ----- 
>>
>> The machines will fail us! Technology is evil!