Author Archives: drew1440

The Sims Unleashed

The fifth expansion pack to be released, Unleashed brings a significant change to The Sims, with the addition of pets, larger neighborhoods that can hold more sims and new game elements such as farming and commercial lots.

Whilst Unleashed brought new improvements, it noticeable made the game more unstable and brought some frustrating changes to the gameplay. One noticeable change is sims have issues moving and turning and will sometimes rotate multiple times when interacting with an object.

Some pets will occasionally come onto your lot and piss everywhere, leaving a bunch of puddles randomly outside your sims house, and will trash the outdoor room motive when your sim goes out for work. Also, any malicious animal that spawns will sound the burglar sound, which can startle or surprise some players, but given how frequently these will spawn the effect will eventually wear off and will become more annoying to the player as they play the game.

Neighborhood

One of the first noticeable changes is the neighborhood screen which sees an increase of playable lots from 10 to around 48. With it is a new lot zone type, commercial. The main difference is a commercial lot is intended to be visited by multiple sims where they can shop or explore. Commercial lots cannot be visited directly from the neighborhood screen, but they can be edited which gives access to buy and build mode. To access a commercial lot, your sim will need to phone up for the Old Town bus which will arrive, and all sims on the lot will be transported to the commercial lot that you choose. These lots cannot be edited whilst sims are visiting, the Build and Buy modes are disabled.

Typically commercial lots will consist of shops, such as a pet store where pets can be adopted, along with any pet accessories. Traditional lots are renamed as residential lots and is where sims reside as they did in the previous expansion packs. Additional neighborhoods still exist as they did in previous expansion packs.

Pets

Two types of pets are featured in the game, mainly cats or dogs which can be adopted by sims themselves. Other pets exist such as budgies which are treated by the game engine as objects, similar to the fish tank that was included in the base game where sims have to feed them every so often.

Skills can be taught to your pets to make them more obedient, this is harder than expected since pets will most of the time go off and do their own thing. The best thing to do is to use the Sit n’ stay command to build the obedience skill, which will make the other skills easier to build up. This interaction only works when your sim is near your pet.

Objects

The Aviary – A bird cage to keep birds that have been purchased at the petstore, You need to frequently feed the bird in a similar manor to the fish tank to keep the pet alive.

Sims can play with their pet birds which boosts their fun and social. Two types of birds can be stored here, Love Birds and Budgies. Cats will also try to play with the cage.

Speaky Scarlet – A pet parrot that can be purchased from buy mode. Sims can talk to it to boost their charisma skill

Ceti the Happy Whale – A playground item that child sims can play on, boosts fun and can be played in groups

Squeak-EE-Clean Pet Tub – Used to wash your pets, can be used with both dogs and cats, requires regular feeding

Forgotten Jungle Terrarium – Used to house a pet iguana

Other expansion packs featured pet objects like the gerbil featured in Livin It Up (Livin Large), or the fish tank from the base game. These remain unchanged although pets may interact with them.

Commercial Lots Only

SpueakNip Pet Toys

Only for commercial lots, sims can purchase toys for their pets. Requires a nearby cash register

Notable NPCs

Giuseppi Renni and Mr McCutch

A musical duo that appears on Old Town lots and will entertain your sims, can be tipped 5 Simoleans

Gardener Bob

Appears on Old Town lots that sell seeds and vegetables, sims can buy plant tonic for their crops and get advice on how to grow their own crops

Pet Judge

Appears on lots that have pet judging podiums, he can tell you further details on pet judging.

Pet Trainer

This sim will appear on the pet store or anywhere you can adopt a pet. Can be used to train your pet for an increasing fee, dependent on your pets skill level.

W.C. Friendly

A jazz player that appears on cafe lots (any lot that has a barista/coffee or pastry stand)

Farming

Sims can grow crops by purchasing seeds from an Old Town merchant and planting them, which can be used for food, or produce can be sold in Old Town for money. Growing crops requires a certain amount of effort as sims will need to water, weed and protect the farm from animals or gophers. A buyable scarecrow or a pet cat can help with this, depending on the hunting skill of the pet. Once the crops have been harvested, they can be stored in a pantry or sold at the farmers market.

Garden plots can be found in the gardening section of build mode.

Sims can also purchase produce on certain Old Town shopping lots, if the sim has no room to farm. To store crops for cooking, you will need to purchase a pantry to store the produce in.

Residents

Unleashed also introduces a few new pre-made families to play.

Burb: Brad and his wife Tiffany, with their son Johnny and their dog, Tucker. This family would later appear in The Sims 2.
Charming: Consists of Claire Charming, with her pet dog Luna
Hick: Mama Hick and her son Elden live in what appears to be a trailer, with their three dogs.
Goth Sr: Parents of Mortimer Goth.
Kat: A single female with four cats, Yup a spinster.

Other Additions

The phonebook has been expanded to a dialog box now appears when calling neighbors. Previously sims were called from the pie menu which would also include any known townies or vacation sims if those expansion packs were installed. Services remain the same as their own section in the pie menu.

Five new careers are included – Fashion, Education, Animal care, Culinary and Circus.

MacOS Version

The game was also ported to the MacOS platform, and makes full use of the Carbon library which gives it OS X and OS 9 compatibility. As this was released in the PowerPC era, you cannot play it on modern OS X versions (10.7 Lion upwards, as these versions of OS X lack PowerPC support) On modern Mac’s it’s easier to use Boot Camp and use the Windows version of the game, but for M1 Macs you may prefer to use an emulator like QEMU or Sheepsaver to emulate an OS 9 PowerPC environment, which the game will run.

Conclusion

Unleashed was a dramatic upgrade to the sims engine, adding new specific to the game, expanding the neighborhood and the type of lots that can be used. I would say this was one of the more important expansions of The Sims as whilst previous expansions added features to the existing game, and expansions like Hot Date added their own expanded areas (Downtown), Unleashed dramatically replaced many game mechanics and in some ways feels like a sequel rather than an expansion. This was also one of the first expansions to ship on two CD’s, highlighting the amount of changes and value being added to the game.

Tragically this expansion never made it to the console versions, which deviated int heir own direction with the release of The Sims Bustin Out and URBZ Sims in the City.

Apex (Racing Evoluzione)

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A fine Xbox exclusive racing game

Released in 2003, this was one of the few Xbox exclusive racing games that verges between the arcade racing as seen in Ridge Racer / Metropolis Street Racer and the simulation aspects of Gran Turismo.

The main game mode is the Dream Mode, and features a rags to riches type story where you start off in an old car garage workshop. You are required to race and tune up your vehicle in order to stay competitive. As you win and progress through the game, you are able to finance development of further vehicles that will help with later races. You are provided the choice of which car to develop, which varies based on handling, speed and acceleration.

Essentially you are developing a new series of cars that are financed through the winnings of your races, the better you do, the more funds you can put towards better cars.

You will also see your workshop change and improve over time, with the building expanding as further departments are introduced. The workshop serves as the user interface for the game, using the left. right buttons to move between the different sections of the workshop that are used to access parts of the game. Visiting the garage lets you change settings for the car, and choosing the shelf lets you change game settings (video, audio, controller) and to load/save the game. Its a very creative way of navigation and blends into the game play. Races are started by the LCD display on the wall, giving the impression these races are televised.

1^st place isn’t always required but is needed to get more funding for development of better vehicles. You can always repeat races to improve your standing. Some races are set in a Gran Prix series where you must finish a set of races in order. You also have an opportunity to complete a one on one race with a rival opponent, wining these races will give a boost to your research funds.

There are few characters that appears in cut scenes and serve as your staff. These serve a specific purpose in progressing through the game and will appear as you progress through the game.

Rick, The Mechanic – Pictured above, One of the first characters you meet, he’s responsible for making and applying changes to the car.
Carla, The Receptionist – Handles PR stuff
Rebecca – Responsible for managing production of cars which your company sells to also fund research.
Benjamin, The Scientist – Appears to the end, mainly responsible for researching high end supercars

The races themselves are straightforward, you start at the bottom and have to race your way to first place. There are typically 6 opponents that you compete with who’s vehicles will also adapt to changes from your vehicle, Keeping the game competitive. Theres a diverse amount of tracks in the game, with some being set in the daytime, evening and nighttime, along with their own background music. As with other Xbox tiles you have the option of using your own playlist if you have imported this onto the Xbox.

There are four main settings for the races, City, Mountain, Stadium and Racetrack.

The racing display is typical of the era, with a mini-map keeping track of your car and opponents, along with a lap counter and time display that shows the current racing time, your best lap and the track record which is shared between the different profiles on the Xbox.

Theres a couple of different camera views to select from, from third person to bonnet view.

No online play, not even system link which is strange for an Xbox exclusive from 2003. There is a head to head display that allows two players to race each other by connecting two controllers.

Sadly this game is not playable on the Xbox One or Series X/S, it is compatible on the Xbox 360 albeit with missing audio on some cutscenes. I suspect due to licensing issues we will never see this emulated officially on another Microsoft console.

Similar games

R: Racing Revolution – very similar in driving mechanics.
Midnight Club 2 -This is more set in an open world
Burnout – A lot more grounded in reality compared to the alter Burnout titles.
Ridge Racer V – The tracks and scenery have some similarities

Caldera OpenLinux 2.6

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Another 2000-era GNU-Linux distro aimed at business users.

86Box Configuration

Motherboard: ADLink NuPRO-592

Processor: AMD K-2+ 366MHz

Memory: 256MB

Video: S3 Vision968 (Phoenix)

Sound: Ensoniq AudioPCI ES1371

Network: AMD PCnet-FAST III

Install

The install process looks just like a modern install, like the second part of the Windows 2000 install.

Preparing HDD, this will take a while depending on the storage size

A nice feature is whilst the installer is gathering information from you, it continues to install common components in the background, speeding up the install. At the end as game of Pac-Man is provided whilst the rest of the system installs.

After install

We are introduced to the desktop, and to the KDE user environment. Very similar to other distros of the time like Storm Linux, Mandrake 7 and Corel Linux. This presents a familiar Windows like interface to the user. Upon first boot we are greeted with a literal wizard, who will introduce you to the operating system elements.
On the desktop we have shortcut to Caldera’s website, along with removable drive shortcuts.
No other desktop environments are included, like GNOME.

Included Software

Adobe Acrobat is bundled to enable PDF files to be viewed out of the box. This appears to be the native Linux version instead of the Windows version running in WINE.

Running various applications: xEyes, KDE Earth, Mousepedometa

VIM version 5.5 comes included

Personal Time Tracker application for keeping track of your schedule? Seems you have to manually enter the times yourself, even after enabling the clock.

XV – Some sort of image editing application. Here you can manipulate images like crop them, rotate them or add text/effects.

WINE is also bundled with the operating system which should allow Windows applications to run, somewhat. A few that I tired simply causes the X Window system to fail, resulting in a slight reboot that takes you back to the logins scree.
Either WINE in this build is broken, or 86Box is causing issues with running Windows apps.

Xfig 3.2 – Vector drawing application, lets you create vector images like shapes which can then be exported to an image.

Kpackage – here you can view and modify packages that are installed on your system, and see the disk size they occupy.

The OS also comes with extensive documentation that explains the various core elements of Linux, and PC arictecture in general.

Third Party Software

Simcity 3000 – had to install this under the root account as the installed refused to install due to a permission issue. Eventually I was able to get this to install and run.

Quake 3 – Installed but refused to run, possibly due to a misconfigured 3DFX Voodoo card

Sid Mier Civ – Works perfectly, had to install it onto another hard drive since I was running out of space.

COAS

Caldera Open Administration System an add-on for the KDS Control Center that lets to manage and change distro specific options. Options appear to relate to the systems timezone , hardware options for the keyboard/mouse/monitor. Most of these options require root access, and you will be promoted for the root password for each option you choose.

System/Filesystems lets you view the different drives and volumes in use, and to mount additional volumes like another hard disk. This does not seem to work correctly as when I tried to add a new second hard disk it would just error out and displays a message to prompt to run fsck. I get they tried to make some tasks more simple to the user, but clearly this didn’t go according to plan.
Best way to do it was to create and partition using the cfdisk bash command that lets you create the partition, then add it manually to the etx/fstab file. By default the Caldera installer splits the drive into three, the swap partition, the root partition and the home partition.

The kernel option lets you view the modules that have been loaded, which is typically the device drivers used by the system. If you have added new hardware then you might need to add the relevant module used by the system. Unused modules can also be removed from here.

Shutting Down

Like other KDS distros of the time, you need to log out of the current user first before you can shut down the system. If ACPI is supported by the motherboard, the system will turn off.

Ghosthunter

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A PS2 exclusive developed by Cambridge Studios, Ghosthunter puts you in the role of Lazarus Jones, a rookie detective officer along with his partner Steele, who is tasked with investigating an abandoned school. Unknowingly they unleashed a boatload of ghosts and his partner Steele gets abducted and its up to Lazarus to save her.

Main objective is to navigate your way around several different works, whilst capturing ghosts at you encounter them. Many ghosts require for you to shoot at them in order to capture them, and later on in the game there are multiple techniques needed to be mastered to capture certain ghosts. As you progress through the game you start to understand the backstory of the game.

Not all ghosts can be captured by the device, some you just need to shoot.

Graphics wise this looks pretty good by PS2 standards, although it has a weird effect where black lines start to appear at the side of the screen when the framerate starts to dip, this has been reported by different users, but it is unsure if this affects certain PS2 models, or if it only appears in the NTSC version (which I am using)

Also, it turns out there is a progressive scan mode in the NTSC version, but is hidden and can only be accessed by pressing a button combination upon startup. Nice of the developers to do that, could of at least given us the option on boot-up.

Aside from the graphics, the game also makes use of volumetric water, and cloth physics which can be seen on the swamp and mansion levels. Clearly this is a game that makes use of the PS2 VU0 (Vector Unit) processor to perform these calculations.

Version Differences

The Europe and American versions differ slightly since they had different publishers and due to the reception of the Europe version which was released first.

Seemly some of the puzzles in the game were made easier in the NTSC version. Considering I even struggled with some of these puzzles I’d say they made the right choice here, but a difficulty level could have fixed that.

Characters

Lazarus Jones – A rookie detective from Detroit and the main protagonist of the game, looks and sound’s like Ellis from Left 4 Dead 2

Anna Steele – No relation to the 50 Shades of Grey character, Lazarus’s partner who gets abducted early on in the game, and its up to Lazarus to save her

Professor Richmond – A scientist that was leading the project

Sir William Hawksmoor – The bad guy and the final boss

Astral – Some sort of blue spirit that bonds with Lazarus, she will help you navigate areas and puzzles that Lazarus cannot physically complete, on the count of her being a spirit. Astral has several abilities, of which only one is available at the start with the rest being unlocked s you progress through the game.

Levels

Once you are in a level you are free to navigate and explore the level, making it very open, But you cannot revert back to a previous level unless you load an earlier save file. The game only supports saving and loading from Memory Card Slot 1.

Haunted School – The first level that you explore, where Lazarus accidentally sets off a bunch of ghosts that start to wreak havoc. It s this art where you meet the AI computer that will assist you in the forthcoming levels.

Swamp Realm – This introduces the howler ghost where you will need to hide and enter cover to fool the ghost. This relies on stealth and the ability to enter cover whilst keeping track of it. The howler will typically move an object needed for you to progress, so it’s best to hide and see what it does before capturing it. As for the rest of the level, its a bit dreary with it being set on a swamp for most of the level. Eventually, you will encounter an abandoned Mansion that has an issue with its ghost inhabitants, here you must solve a series of puzzles and riddles to progress through the game.

On the swamp, and later levels you have access to the spectral binoculars, which will reveal the health of the ghost enemy when used.

Haunted New School – You are back in the school where there is much more to explore. Here you have to navigate around to the science block and through to the library where you have to collect a series of books. There’s not much in the name of navigation so will need to explore and check closely.

You will be introduced to smoke grenades which are needed to defeat some of the ghosts, you will need to fire these before capturing them.

Ship Realm – Now you are on an army/military base with ghost soldiers. Here you will need to navigate through he base and onto a ship. At some point you will encounter some sort of tentacle monster that requires you to navigate through the rooms stealthy to avoid being killed. You cannot shoot this monster will regular guns, instead you have to locate and find bombs and a detonator to keep it at bay.

Prison Realm – You’re now on a prison Island, where you have to navigate through the cells and corridors to progress. At some points you will need to use Asteral to take over certain guards in order to move or manipulate objects.

Conclusion

The game makes a good addition to anyone’s PS2 library and despite the mixed reception, there’s an immersive environment to explore. The game was later re-released on the PlayStation 3 store as a PS2 classic, and is an emulated version of the PS2 version.

Theme Hospital

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A hospital simulation game from The makers of Theme Park. Whilst its not an accurate simulator like Sim Healthcare, its still a lot of fun and has a lot of Bullfrog-type humor.

You start off with a blank empty hospital building, First thing to pop down is the reception desk, which is where patents will flock to when they first enter your hospital, of which they are then referred to the GP’s Office. Here you will want to build further diagnosis and treatment rooms as the patents demand for them.

GP’s Office: Used to find out what’s wrong with the patent. Usually a doctor in the GP’s office will be able to diagnose the patents depending on their skill set, but some will require the patient to refer to another diagnosis room to find out what type of illness the patient has. This room gets very busy as patients will return to this room until they are diagnosed, but not when they are cured. A good tactic is to build one near the diagnosis rooms like the X-ray or Scanner to help deduce the load. If you have a consultant doctor, you will want to place them in the GP’s Office as they are better at diagnosing illness than a regular or junior doctor.

Ward: Used for both diagnosis and treatment, this is managed by a Nurse. Wards can be sized quite large, and more than one bed can be placed. Patents will also rest here before entering the Operating Theatre. Beds can only be placed at a specific angle, so don’t make the room too big otherwise its wasted space.

Pharmacy: Used to administer a wide range of drugs used to cure patients. Operated by a nurse, you will need to build multiple Pharmacy’s later on in the game since this will cure a majority of illness.

Psychiatric: Like the ward this is also used for diagnosis and treatment. Requires a doctor with the Psychiatrist qualification. Bookcases and a skeleton can be added, not sure if this has any affect on the diagnosis?

Further diagnosis rooms consist of the Cardiogram, Scanner, X-Ray and Ultrascan, these are unlocked after research and require regular maintenance by an handyman. These machines get better through further research and can withstand multiple usage cycles and earthquakes. Since these rooms are only used to cure a single illness, you probably only need one per hospital, but in the case of emergency’s where up to 14 patients can arrive at the same time with the same illness, you may need to build another to satisfy demand.

Clinics are also treatment rooms that use machines to cure patients, again these are also unlocked as you progress through the game, the the inflation clinic being unlocked from the start. Slack Tongue Clinic and Fracture Clinic are two examples that are used to treat specific illness.

The Facilities are rooms that help your hospital to function and are required to progress to the next level: Toilets are used to stop patents from making a mess in your hospital, of which multiple toilets will need to be placed in larger hospitals. Usually one toilet per building is needed. A staff room allows staff to relax and replenish their energy with further objects being able to be researched like an arcade video game that reduced the time needed for staff to stay in the staff room. The Research Dept, unlocked from level 3 onwards allows your hospital to unlock new illnesses, rooms and machines, along with improving the effectiveness of your drugs which helps prevent accidental death by your staff. There is also an autopsy function that requires a sacrifice of a patient that will boost research for that illness, but carry’s a risk of a reputation drop if this is discovered.

Lastly there is a training room that allows doctors to learn new qualifications by a consultant level doctor. A problem here is doctors in training can also become consultants, which prevent them from learning new skills. This can be annoying when you are in the middle of training a new surgeon, only for him to become a consultant which stops skill progression.

Micromanagement

As you run your hospital, there are several elements that you need to manage

Staff Happiness: How happy are your staff, placing them in larger rooms with plants and heating will make them happier, otherwise they may demand a salary increase

Heating: Radiators need to be installed and set to an acceptable level, cold hospitals can affect the reputation and happiness of staff

Upkeep: Patients will litter the hospital as they remain in your hospital, ensure you have Handymen to clean up after them. Plants also require watering by handymen. Lastly, rats can infest the hospital and can be shot by quickly placing your mouse cursor over a moving rat.

Emergency’s: These start to appear from level 3 onwards, you must cure the specified amount of patients within the time limited to earn the bonus.

Research: as you build the first Research Department, you can monitor and focus on different aspects of research, if you prefer to have a focus on drug effectiveness or for diagnosis machines

Epidemics: These start to occur past level 6 and require you to treat all patients with the specified illness before the health minister arrives at your hospital.

Earthquakes: These can actually happen which results in the screen shaking rapidly, patients may fall to the ground but I don’t believe they die. The main issue is the damage to the machines, make sure they have been repaired by the handyman and they have adequate strength or the machines will be destroyed, rendering the room to be useless. I recommend replacing machines that have less than 5 units of strength.

Network Play

This requires a patch to be installed which adds network play support to the game which can then be accessed by choosing the middle part of the skull in the menu. The game is reliant on IPX or serial protocols to communicate with another player. For Windows 95/98 you need to ensure the IPX protocol stack is installed and enabled, which isn’t done by default. You can install it by clicking on the ‘Add’ button and selecting the Protocol, then IPX Comparable Protocol from the Microsoft group. You will have to reboot your system and might need the Windows 9x install CD to finish install.

I was able to get this working over 86Box using a PCap configured network using two 86BOX VMs, setting the VMWare network adaptors seemed to work the best. Both players have access to the same map and must complete with each other for land, when purchasing land a bidding war is started between all players on the map. Objectives are given every six months which determines who wins the game, the game continues until one player loses.

Original PC MS-DOS/Win32

A hybrid DOS/Windows 32bit game which can run under either environment. Whilst designed for Windows 95 it will happily work under Windows 98 and ME.

A patch was released for the game which fixes a few bugs, adds a difficultly level adjusted and support for IPX network play.

The game is also capable of running under DOS, which might be useful for low end PCs since its not reliant on Windows 95 running in the background.

No Macintosh version was release for this game, which is odd for a simulation game released in this era.

CorsixTH

This is a remake of the original game using a custom engine designed for more modern Windows operating systems, and has been ported to Linux based operating systems. Highly recommend as this allows the game to un in higher resolutions (tested up to 2560×1440) and fixes a lot of bugs that plagued the original game.

Sony PlayStation

The game was ported to the Sony PlayStation shortly after the PC release. Running in a lower resolution and missing the background music which removes a lot of charm to the game. Its also a bitch to play since the game has poorly adapted the user interface from the PC version. You have to use the controller to navigate the cursor onscreen to select the dialog boxes, instead of just mapping them to the PlayStation face buttons which makes it time consuming to perform simple actions.

Rooms are also fixed in size, which does make it easier to play via the controller.

This was also related as a PSone classic for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable.

Storm Linux

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Discovering the PC all over again

A Linux distro released in 1999, it as desinged to be commercial Linux distribution to complete with the like’s of Red Hat, and Windows to an extent.

86Box Hardware

86Box Version 3.7.1
Motherboard: Azza PT-5IV, later PC Partner MB540N
Memory: 128NMB
Processor: Intel Pentium OverDrive MMX @ 180MHz
Video: S3 ViRGE/GX2 – More on this alter
Sound: Nothing seems to be picked up, tried both ISA PnP and PCI

instillation went OK, and it gives you the option for text or a graphical installer. Main hurdle was with the video card, the Trident video card would not launch the X window system, Swapped to an ATI video card that had the same issue. Eventually changed to the trusty S3 ViRGE, which works and loads the X Window System.

The first time you boot the OS, it goes through settings up the various packages that have been installed, and then starts up the X Window System.

I ran into the same issue that had occurred with Mandrake Linux where the X Window system had problems starting up which was down to the video card chosen, it seems S3 graphics card work the best with these early Linux distros.

Logging on is simple, just entering the username and password that was created during setup. If you chose to install either KDE or GNOME, you are presented a choice on which desktop environment to use.

KDE

This was a common environment that was bundled with multiple distros back from this period.

Like other KDE distros, custom themes can be applied and there are a few included out of the box

Software

Most of the software here is already featured in existing Linux distros

Applications – Includes Text Editor and Advanced Editor (Kwrite 0.96)

Games – A few games are bunded, Abalone, Asteroids, KblackBox, Konquest, Mahjongg, Minesweeper, Patience, Poker, Reversi, SameGame, Shisen-Sho, Sirtet, Smiletris, Snake Race and Sokoban. Many of these have been included in other distros.

Graphics – Dvi Viewer, Fax Viewer, Fractal generator, Gimp, Icon Editor, Image Viewer, Paint (kPaint 0.4.3), PS Viewer and Snapshot

Internet – Archie client (Some sort of file sharing program?), Biff, Chat Client (Ksirc), Mail Client, Netscape and News Client

Multimedia – CD Player, Media Player, Midi Player, Midi/Karaoke Player and the Sound Mixer Panel.

Settings – Sort of like the Control Panel, this relates to the KDE user interface and can be used to set the screensaver, theme, wallpaper background and sound effects.

System – Appfinder, Arrange Icons, Desktop pager (manage multiple desktops), File manager, Font Manager, SysV Init Editor and Task / User manager. Some of these only function with root access.

Utilities – Features programs like the Address book, Archiver, Calcuator, Cut & Paste History (klipper), Hex editor, kFloppy, kLots, kNotes, Konsole, MoonPhase, Mousepedometa, Personal time Tracker, Printer Queue, Process Manager, Terminal and World Watch.

Disk Navigator : Quickly access and navigate through the hard disk and the directories on the system. Despite having two floppy drives and two CD-ROM drives, Storm Linux only shows one of each.

Unfortunately this is where I started getting problems with this distro, I was unable to browse the drives with removable storage, No CD-ROM I had mounted would show up which meant I could not install any additional software. Same occurs with the floppy drive.

Even after reinstalling the distro on a different emulated motherboard, I was still unable to mount and browse any forms of removable storage, for both IDE or SCSI drives.

Enlightment & GNOME

The interface is similar to what we saw with mandrake 7, and features GNOME bundled with Enlightment.

There are occasionally pop-ups that are generated by Enlighment that convey the shortcuts used by the desktop environment.
Multiple desktops are supported, and enlightment gives a smooth transition when switching to another desktop. You can use a mouse gesture to flick between the desktop’s, this behaves very erratic in 86box, with the traditions being too sensitive.

Shortcuts are provided on the desktop, with a 3D looking Netscape navigator icon, along with shortcuts to GNOME news, Debian Homepage and Slashdot.

Control Panel

Most options that relate to GNOME can be found here, options are divided into several categories. Version desktop – 1.0.51
When a setting has been changed, the text on the left turns to red to show a change has been made that has not been saved, pressing the OK button will save and apply that setting.

Options can be set:
Default Editor: Usually emacs by default, change the default text editor

Desktop: Change the background by selecting a supported image file, images can be tiled, centered or scaled. Alternatively a gradient colour can be set instead. Set a screesaver of which the OS comes with a large bundle of screensavers, you can also set the monitor standby time from here. Themes are also supposed which relate to the colour schemes used for the user interface, in GNOME only one theme comes included (Default) with the option to add more. Lastly there is an option to set the Window Manager, currently Enlightment.
Mime Types: Change the default file typles for selection file extensions
Multimedia: Change sound settings for event like when the user minimizes or restores a program, similar to the sound effects in Windows or the appearance sounds in Mac OS.
Peripherals: Configure settings for the keyboard and mouse, such as the keyboard auto-repeat, or have a clicking sound when a key is pressed. Here you can also amend the mouse sensitivity and acceleration, and if the mouse buttons are left or right handed.
StartUp Manager: Change programs that run on startup
URL Handlers: Change which browser a handler should open with
User Interface: Change the appearance of application windows, and for the status bar.

GNOME Applications

KDE programs that have been installed can also appear here within their own submenu

Applications: Includes shortcuts for popular software like Netscape, gEdit, Emacs, Address Books, GHEX, gnotepad and Gnumeric spreadsheet.

Games: Its empty, no GNOME games appear in the list

Graphics: Electric eyes and The GIMP

Multimedia: Includes EDS Volume Meter, Audio Meter and CD Player (TCD 1.0.51)

Settings: Shortcuts to the GNOME Control Center

Utilities: Includes a few utilities like the GNOME Terminal, System Monitor, Search Tool and a Stripchart Plotter.

Help System – Shows information on how to use the operating system

File Manager – Bring up the file explorer

SAT – Some sort of administration system, as this distro was intended for use on an enterprise network.

Storm Package Manager – The package manager for this distro, install and remove packages that correspond to applications

Logging out of the GNOME environment that returns you to the logins screen. From there you can start the shutdown process.

Also a bonus screenshot, here the motherboards BIOS antivirus detects Linux as a virus, possibly since its modifying the boot sector.

Lindows 3.0

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A follow up to Lindows 2, an popular Linux distro that was released in 2002, lets see what has changed in this version.
It’s also an operating system that’s a pain to search for since both Google & Bing think it’s a type and keep correcting it to Windows.

VM Specifications

86Box 3.7.1

Motherboard: Micronics M7S-Hi
Processor: AMD K6 233Mhz
Video: S3 ViRGE/DX 2MB
Sound: Ensoniq AudioPCI
Network: AMD Pcnet-ISA+
SCSI: Adaptec AHA-154xA

The install process is typically the same as before, with the install being booted directly off the CD

Upon bootup we still get the same selection process.

Desktop, not much has changed, but when clicking the Lindows menu we see a slightly altered font
The menu itself holds the same layout as the previous distro, with bundled programs being placed in their own category to make organizing much more easier. Not all applications will install into this folder, Simcity 3000 for example creates its own games directory instead of using the one located in the game folder. This can lead to confusion as you have two of the same folders unless the user manually changes the directory upon installation.

It also means whilst the menu looks relatively tidy, it will become cluttered as more applications are installed.

Click-N-Run applications are present, although there are no major changes, with only a few minor updates. Netscape browser comes as the default internet browser which is the exact same version as the preious release.

Missing from this build is the Microsoft Office viewers, with only the basic Text editor remaining in the Business & Finance category. I guess Redmond brought out the lawyers.

The KDE file manager is modeled after Windows Explorer which should make it familiar to switching users. Konqueror version 3.0.1 is used.

When software crashes in Lindows, a crash handler comes up explaining what has happened.

Software

Since there isn’t much that’s changed compared to Lindows 2, let’s see what period-correct software we can use.

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri – Seems to work well, installs successfully and the opening FMV plays with a bit of stuttering probably because of the CPU chosen. I do wonder if these early Linux games were well-optimized or just quick and dirty ports. There is a bit of slowdown at the start of a level which could be an issue with no graphics acceleration with the video card chosen ( S3 ViRGE)

Civilization Call to Power – Installs and works fine, this game seems to be less demanding than Alpha Centauri and runs a lot better.

Descent 3 – Installs fine, but when running it prompts you to insert disc 2 which is not recognized after mounting in 86Box. Clicking Ok seems to launch the game but the graphics are pixilated. Had to hard reset the VM to get back into the desktop, After rebooting the game loads and plays the opening FMV, but still has blocky graphics.

SimCity 3000 – Still non-functional

Star Office – An office suite by Sun Microsystems that installs and runs perfectly. It’s very similar to Microsoft Office or IBM Lotus SmartSuite in that it bundles a word processor, spreadsheet software and slide show into one package.
The interface tries to mimic Windows, there’s even a start menu present, along with a taskbar.

Postal – Installs and works fine but the menus run too fast. The demo sequence starts after 3 seconds meaning you need to quickly navigate the menu. Quitting the game seems to cause a graphics error.

Wordperfect – Installs correctly and appears in the application. Upon launching it shows a message advising not to run the application as root, and another in relation to a missing font server. Unable to progress past this point, even after a reboot it refused to run due to this missing font server.

Soldier of Fortune – Installed and ran fine, but required a CD key. I think this is the first time I’ve used Linux software that requires a CD key? Performance isn’t good, it runs so slow on this VM at nearly 1fps. Checking the readme file indicates it needs some sort of 3D accelerator, I guess it’s time to add a Voodoo card but I figure the CPU that we have (AMD K6 233Mhz) isn’t enough to cut it.

Shutting down

Sony Ericsson T610

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One of the first generation camera phones, with its built-in CIF resolution camera and a large for-the-time colour screen with a 128×160 portrait resolution. A new user interface is included to take advantage of the new display.

The phone itself also has a nice contrasting design of black with silver, and a few colours were made available including Black/Blue and Black/red. Released in 2003, it competed mainly with the Nokia 6610i, 7250i, Siemens MC60, and the Sagem My V-55.

Navigation is done through the joystick located near the center of the phone. After a few years but it seems to have lost its functionality which makes navigating the menus difficult. Thankfully we can get around this by using the numeric keys to quickly access menus as a shortcut, in the main menu you can press the 5 key to open the message or the # key to access the settings menu.

For any list menus, you can use the volume keys at the side to select a menu item.

The usual left and right soft keys are present that correspond to the onscreen context, but there is also a back/return key and a C button that deletes onscreen text or cancel operations. No send or end keys that you see on regular phones.

On the right there is a dedicated internet browser button that opens the WAP browser, even when the handset is in standby which could trigger it accidentally and incur additional WAP charges if not part of your plan, locking the keys will stop this.

On the left side there is a dedicated camera key that will open the camera to take photos, and the two-volume keys to quickly adjust the volume in a call. On standby mode you can press to see the handset status, and hold it to access the voice command feature if you have set this up.

On the home screen the mobile network is displayed alogn with the time and date. The soft keys default to calls and the More menu which lets you quickly access certain functions of the phone,

Main Menu

Images are a bit unclear since the screen on this model seems to have issues with its contract, possibly due to the age of the phone (Nearly 20 years old). I’ve tried to adjust the contrast in the phone’s service menu but there’s only so much that can be done, given this handset is approaching 20 years old and is an STN display.

From the top left, the First option takes you to the Sony Ericsson WAP site, which was intended for you to download ringtones, wallpapers & additional games. If you got your phone through an operator, then this will be replaced with the operator’s logo and will be a link to their WAP site if they customized the phones ROM.

Internet Services

Takes you to your WAP homepage, by default this will be the Sony Ericsson homepage or one set by your operator. Here you can freely browse the internet using the internal browser, and have access to features such as bookmarks and the ability to send the page as an SMS message link.

The phone supports both CSD and GPRS for data.

My Shortcuts

A customized menu that lets you quickly access various features of the phone within one menu. By default, we are given the option to write a new SMS message, adjust the ring volume, select the ringer profile, view your SIM card number, and edit shortcuts. The menu can be modified at any time with your own shortcuts.

Camera

Takes you directly to the camera viewfinder where you can capture a phone by pressing the Capture soft key. The viewfinder will then give you the option to save, or send directly to an MMS recipient.

The viewfinder will also show the remaining photos that can be taken according to the internal memory. You can also adjust the resolution of the photos captured, from CIF (228×352) to MMS (120×160), using a lower resolution reduces file size. A night mode allows for pictures to be captured in the dark, although this isn’t much use as the camera lacks a flash. You also have the option of adding effects such as black & white, negative colour and sepia. Lastly, there is also a self-timer option that counts down from 7 seconds.

With only 2MB of storage that is shared across the phone, you will quickly run into space limits and will have to delete content to save space.

Photos are the main feature of the phone, with a dedicated camera button on the left side of the phone which launches the image capture, another press will capture the image. Once saved, you can easily send photos via Bluetooth, Infrared or via MMS which Sony Ericsson promoted as Quickshare.

Messages

Various options for sending and viewing receiving messages

Text refers to standard SMS messages that can be composed using the text editor. Symbols can be added, and emojis (Then known as smileys) could also be added. Graphics can also be added which uses the EMS protocol, and the handset will show you the number of characters remaining within a single SMS message, and will show you if two or more SMS messages need to be sent. Canceling a typed message will automatically save it as a draft for you to edit or delete later. You also have the option of using an SMS template if you need to quickly text someone. Finally, messages can be saved to either the SIM card or the phone’s memory.

A picture message is essentially an MMS message, here you can attach photos or ringtones to the message. The phone does require an MMS profile to be created, which is done then your mobile network operator send you their APN configuration.

Emails can also be sent using the phones GRPS data connection, but this is not a push-based system like you would see on a BlackBerry. Instead, you will need to manually check and download any messages or attachments. Like MMS you can add attachments such as a photo to the email, and you can specify options for CC, BCC or priority settings.

Chat is like SMS messages but gives you a 1-1 interface with the sender.

Games

The handset also features support for both Java and Mophun, allowing for a large game library to be played. There is no limit to the amount of Java games that can be installed, with only the phone’s memory being the limit. The Games & More option is where the Java-based game are found, whilst Mophun games are under Other Games. Games can be downloaded and installed either through WAP or via PC, even through Bluetooth. The phone will automatically install the application once received.

Pictures & Sounds

Photos taken with the camera will be found here, along with the default wallpapers. Opening a picture file allows you to set it was the wallpaper, or the screensaver instead, or even assign it to a contact. Basic editing can also be done with rotating. There is a edit option in the menu but its currently grayed out.

Sounds is very similar, but you can set either the ringtone or the message alert tone. Any tracks created with MusicDJ will show up here.

The themes option lets you view any apply different themes, although only one comes with the handset, Classic.

There is also a hyperlink option to download more pictures/sounds from WAP, in case you missed the dedicated menu option. They really wanted users to buy and download, thought you would think they would have included more memory for storage.

Phonebook

Contacts can be saved to either the phone memory or the SIM card. Contacts saved to the phone memory can have additional attributes assigned to them such as work/home contact numbers & email addresses.

Contacts can also be synchronized with an external service or using the iSync utility in OS X.

You can also set a unique ringtone for each contact.

Calls

A menu to manage incoming, outgoing and missed calls, by default, there is a shortcut to this on the home screen. You can also view call costs and minutes used, useful for keeping track of your monthly usage. Options for call waiting can be set here also. You can also use the Manage Calls option to filter to only numbers in the phonebook, or in a certain group.

Connectivity

For connectivity there is Bluetooth, infrared and WAP support, supporting both GSM data and GPRS for faster network connections for the time. MMS is also supported which allows for pictures to be sent as a text message, one of the main selling points of the phone. Infrared does not require any additional software to use, you can freely send and receive files using the standard IrDA protocol.

There is also access to the Sim toolkit menu if your Sim card supports this. Lastly, there is also a synchronization option that lets you sync calendar and phone book contacts with a service provider.

Organizer

Calendar: Your standard calendar which you can set reminders and events for later notification, you can change the view to a daily weekly or monthly, which will also list upcoming events, or you can search for them using the search tool built into the phone.
Note: Similar to how the Windows notepad would work, lets you save text notes to the phone for later viewing
Alarms: Set a single or recurring alarm that repeats on certain days of the week.
Timer: Sets a countdown timer
Stopwatch: Supports lapping and can run in the background.
Calculator: A typical calculator
Code Memo: Same as notes but you can set a 4-digit PIN to access and save notes, this is not the same as the PIN for the SIM card.

Settings

Sound and Alerts – Set the ringtone, and message alert tone, you can set the ringing to be ascending and can also enable toe vibration alert. A key sound can also be enabled which sounds upon button press and a minute minder which will beep when you are in a call, allowing you to keep track on how long the call has lasted, ideal for PAYG customers keeping track of their usage.
Display: Change the wallpaper, the stary-up picture, the screensaver and set a theme. The backlight and screen contrast can also be set.
Profiles: Set and adjust the ring tone profiles, preset profiles are Normal, Meeting, In car, Outdoors, Port hands-free, Home, Office, & TTY Accessory.
Language: Set the language for both the phone menus and the T9 predictive input, options are English, French or German.
Time and Date: Set the time and date or have the phone update it automatically.
Voice Control: You can record and set voice commands for common phone functions, then you can trigger them by holding the volume key in standby mode and then speaking the command. Surprisingly this works considerably well, but struggles in noisy environments.
Locks: Set and change the SIM and Phone locks, and enable the auto keylock.
Master Reset: reset the phone settings back to the factory default

Downloads

A collection of themes that originated from the Sony Ericsson WAP download site, originally intended for the Z600 but will work on the T610 and possibly the T630.

T610/Z600 Themes

A set of Mophun games that can be transferred to the phone, many of them are trial & demo copies to show the capabilities of the platform, some are intended for the T68 and have a smaller screen resolution. Always look for the 129×160 version for the T610.

Mophun Games Archive

Mobile Captures

First two images are captured using the standard mode, with the last two using the Black&White and negative mode. All images are captured at 288×352

T-Six-Ten

To promote the phone, a website was launched called T-Six-Ten which was to promote the photo and image capabilities of the phone. users can submit their captured photos and share them online, as well as show tips and information to get the most from your T610 phone.

Lindows 2

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Windows from wish.com

A simple-to-use Linux distribution designed for the Windows migrant, with a familiar user interface to make them feel at home. Built on the KDE user interface and introducing an early form of an App Store, it would be one of the more popular distro for its time but would eventually lose its userbase to Ubuntu or Fedora.

Installation

Install was done using an 86box virtual machine, since these old Linux distros have issues running on more modern hardware. For memory give it as much as the virtual machine supports, generally 256MB or higher will ensure a smooth experience.
86Box Version 3.6
Motherboard: AOpen AP53
Processor: IDT WinChip 2 200Mhz
Video: S3 Vision968
Sound: C-Media CMI8338
Network: Realtek RTL8029AS

Install was started from the boot floppy which comes with the operating system, as many motherboard of the era has not mastered booting from the CD-ROM drive just yet.

When the install menu appears, a wizard-like interface is used to guide you through the installation process. You are presented with the opportunity to configure the install, and to set a user password. Once completed, the system will prompt you to reboot.

Post – Install

Booting up the system will land you at a boot menu first, giving you the option of booting into a recovery mode, if you choose the regular mode. The login screen will appear, here you enter the password that you created during the install.

A logon splash screen, seems various components of the OS are not even initialized yet.

Here we are at the desktop, which looks similar to your average Windows desktop install.

Click-N-Run

This was an attempt to bring an app store-like interface to the Linux desktop by offering applications that could easily be downloaded and installed to the user’s PC. This would consist of commercial applications and free software (Both gratis and price). The portal has long since been discontinued, so software can no longer be obtained this way.
Modern Linux distros introduced something similar like the Ubuntu software center and the elementaryOS store which offers paid for apps. All of these are designed to increase the software support of Linux, and to allow for an easy way for the user to install software.

Interface

First impressions are that it’s a bit cluttered, compared to a clean Windows install with various icons placed on the desktop (like the individual drives that were detected during startup) and a few sponsored applications like EarthLink. Still its clear to the end user which applications does what, and there are shortcuts to the internet browser that can easily be accessed, along with the email client.

Like Windows, there is a taskbar at the bottom of the screen which will hold currently open programs. This can be customized and additional panels can be added. One example is a resource meter that lets you see your systems memory and processor usage in a realtime graph (like task manager embedded into the taskbar,
Like Windows, you can right click on a running application on the taskbar to minimize it, or shade it. What this does is shirk the window to just its title bar, similar to what the classic MacOS does. I’m not sure what benefit this has over just minimizing the window, but I feel its intended for Mac users who may prefer that method. You can also send a program window to another screen, or desktop. Like many distros, this supports having multiple desktop panels that can be switched through easily.

Installed software can be accessed using the start Lindows menu, which looks a lot familiar to a certain operating system. Whilst it’s good to bring a familiar interface, it does feel like a rip-off of sorts. Plus this was already outdated, as Windows XP debuted the previous year with its revised Start menu, although it could be configured to show the classic start menu instead.

Clicking on the time will bring up the date, along with a mini calendar.

Lastly to the left is a series of icons that will bring up various menus and software applications. The large ‘L’ icon will bring up the equivalent start menu where programs and settings can be accessed. The yellow life jacket-looking icon will bring up the help menu and the blue file cabinet icon will bring up the file explorer window.
Other icons will act like the quick launch feature from windows, and applications can be pinned easily for convent use.

Settings

A submenu on the Lindows menu, this is the Control Panel of the operating system and is sorted into subcategories.

Login Manager: Part of the KDE Control Module, lets you create and manage user accounts and the appearance of the login screen. You can change the background, the font of the login window, the greeting message and the type of session to use (which will often be kde3) There are also options for auto login, similar to what TweakUi could do for Windows NT

File Manager: Change file extension associations and the appearance of the file browser window. You can set folders (directories) to open in a new window

Look & Feel: Change various settings in relation to the appearance of the OS. Includes the wallpaper, the screensaver, mouse cursor and the installed fonts. Very similar to what can be done within Windows. At lot of the built on styles can be set to mimic various other operating systems to make the interface more familiar to the user.

Network: Configure options such as TCP/IP and Samba file sharing. Appears to have basic WiFi support, possibly only 802.11a/b given the age of the operating system.

Peripherals: Options for the Monitor, Mouse, keyboard and Printers. Again similar to what Windows offers where the colour depth and refresh rate can be set for the monitor, the type rate and layout for the keyboard and scroll wheel settings for the mouse.

Personalization: Appears to the miscellaneous settings like accessibility and the region of the install. Also has a shortcut for the command console.

Power Control: More useful for laptops, lets you set the low battery notifications, and the energy usage. Can also set the monitor and HDD standby times

Sound: Adjust the volume and system notification sounds

Web Browsing: Similar to network, but has options for proxies, cookies and cache. Most of this only applies to the Netscape browser.

Advanced Settings: Options for Midi, Audio CD IO and Mixer, could these not have been included under Sound?

Installed Software

Software can be accessed using the start Lindows menu which looks a lot familiar to a certain operating system. Whilst its good to bring a familiar interface, it does feel like a rip off of sorts. Plus this was already outdated, as Windows XP debuted the previous year with its revised Start menu, although it could be configured to show the classic start menu instead.

Audio & MP3

CD Player: Typical CD player that uses the analog CD audio line for playback.

KreateCD: Some sort of CD burning applications, of limited use since 86Box does not emulate a CD burner.

MP3 Player: A typical MP3 player with the Mac OS X Aqua-like interface of the era. Works well with modern MP3 files even if the interface is a bit hard to read on the count of the text being too small. Supports the use of playlists and can play files from a remote network server. Appears to be a variant of XMMS 1.2.7

Business & Finance

Microsoft Office Viewer: Office 97 viewers actually come bundled with the operating system and look to be the actual Windows version that is included. Possibly this is running under a Win32 wrapper such as Wine. Either that or it’s a very well-made knock off, even plagiarizing the copyright notice from Microsoft.

Text Editor: Your typical notepad-like text editor, based on Kwrite 4.0

Games

Battleship: A multi-player battleship client

Mines: Minesweeper clone

Poker: Some sort of poker game, I’ve never played poker so I have no clue what to do here

Potato Guy: Not really a game, more like a kids activity where they have to drag the different parts in order to dress up, similar to Mr Potato Head where you have to give them eyes, ears and hats.

Tron: Tron game inspired by the movie, similar to the version included in Mandrake 7

Internet

Address Book: This opens the Netscape address book, here you can address contacts that are presented as ‘Cards’ which can then be saved.

Instant Messenger: Again this uses the Aim component of Netscape browser, which will sign onto the AOL instant messenger service.

Internet Dial-Up Tool: Connects and starts a dial up connection, intended for users who are using a dial-up modem which were still common back in 2002. This is a rebrand of the kppp utility.

Mail: Opens the Netscape client, which incorporates a mail client.

Multimedia & Design

Image Viewer: KDE Image viewer

PS/PDF Viewer: KghostView 0.13.1 – standard PDF viewer

Video Player: aKtion 1.99 – Video file player, supports AVI/Quicktime MOV/ MPEG MPG and FLI/FLC files.

Utilities

Archiving Tool: Ark v2.1.9 – An archive utility to create or open archive ZIP and tar archives, along with RAR archives

Clipboard Tool: Klipper – Runs in the background and allows you to manage items copied to the clipboard

There are various other utilities like the Console, Floppy Formatter, KDE Help Center, KDE System Guard and the Network Share Manager

Third Party Software (Wine)

Wine comes integrated within the operating system which is supposed to provide some sort of Win32 compatibility. In practice whilst it runs the included Office viewers, experience with other Windows software is very poor, if not horrendous. With many graphical glitches and programs closing for no reason (possibly crashing in background).

I did attempt to run a set of popular Windows software that was commonly used when this operating system was released (2002) like MusicMatch, Also tried to use a few CD-ROM titles like Adi, and Microsoft Encarta. When switching an ISO image within the emulator, the virtual machine has to be restarted before it will see the new disc. Trying to browse the CD-ROM directory results in a list of garbled file names. I’m not sure if there’s a specific command that I’m supposed to run when swapping the CD image but its defiantly annoying having to reboot the system each time a new CD-ROM is inserted.

Third Party Software (Linux)

So I tried a few Linux games and applications that were also released in the period, these are actual ports of Windows games that were released for Linux in general.

Quake 3: Installed but did not run, would not even load in software rendering mode.

Simcity 3000: This also refused to run after install. I tried switching video cards just to see if that was the issue, but no luck.

I seem to remember experiencing the same issues with Corel Linux, but I put this down to the distro being too old to work. It’s possible a component is missing that is not installed but the setup program.

Postal: This one actually works… barley. I can get the game to appear but its not much playable with the window not filling the entire screen and the game running at a slower speed.

Terminate Application

If a program becomes unresponsive, you can open the Terminate Application program, which is used to force close applications that become unresponsive. This is not without its problems, since clicking everywhere will terminate the process associated with it, even when you click on the taskbar or the desktop which will make it difficult, if not impossible to open applications. It seems like very poor design but I guess they didn’t think the user would find a terminal list of process appealing, still it means the user could accidently terminate a critical system process by accident, without any confirmation.

KDE Control Panel

Themes

A few themes come bundled with Lindows, with additional themes to be downloaded

Screensavers

A collection of screensavers that come with operating system, like Windows you can set a password to unlock after a set amount of time. There are 21 screensavers that come included.

Shutdown

The shutdown process is similar to Windows, where you click on the applications menu, then shutdown. A menu will appear, giving you options to restart, enter standby mode or shutdown your PC. Upon shutdown, the system will close all running GUI programs, will drop down to a command terminal and eventually display the shutdown complete screen. If your PC is ACPI aware, the PC may turn off automatically.

Dell Venue Pro

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The first and last Dell Windows Phone

Dell was one of the launch manufacturers for Windows Phone, back when it launched in 2010. The Venue 7 stood out compared to the other models thanks to its slide form factor which is reminiscent of the old Samsung slide phones of the era. A gentle push will reveal the phone’s keyboard, which looks similar to a standard PC keyboard in terms of layout.

Aside from that, it’s pretty much the same compared to other Windows Phone 7 handsets with its 5-megapixel camera, Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor with an Adreno 200 graphics core, and 16GB onboard storage. No micro-SD support so storage cannot be expanded.

This would be Dell’s last foray into the mobile market, Dell also had a few Android handsets like the Dell Streak and would produce a few tablet devices like the Dell Venue.

This handset originally ran the launch builds of Windows Phone 7 and was later upgraded to 7.8 which backported various Windows Phone 8 features.

Microsoft has slowly phased support for Windows Phone 7, with various services ceasing support. Bing no longer works, the app store has since been discontinued meaning you can no longer download and install applications for the device, limiting its capabilities as a smartphone. You’re pretty much limited to what comes with the device, which is very little in this case. The handset has pretty much become a basic feature phone with web browsing functionality but with Internet Explorer 9 the browsing is very limited with certain sites refusing to load due to how old the browser is and the lack of support for modern security protocols.

As someone who use Windows Phone from 2011 – 2017, it’s a sad state to see how this once fantastic but flawed mobile OS has been abandoned, kind of like seeing how deteriorated the Titanic wreck is.
Some things still work as of October 2022, like the search suggestions that appear when you type into the Internet Explorer search bar, and the Bing background wallpaper.

The games will certainly be missed as Microsoft actually put some effort into porting popular titles like Doodle Jump and Fruit Ninja, and also embraced new titles like Beards n Beaks and Wordament. All of these feature Xbox Live achievements and leaderboards which synced with your main Xbox profile.

There are very few applications that are preinstalled, which Windows OEMs could do so. Considering this is a Dell, I’m surprised there no McAfree security preinstalled. The only one I can see is a network operation settings app, that lets you set the correct internet and MMS configuration for your network provider.

Music & Video

The Zune software is used to transfer media from and to the phone and is required for this purpose. You cannot use MTP to transfer content as the phones file system is not exposed to the host in any form. Its a very similar approach to what Apple took with the iPhone, where iTunes was the only way to exchange media to the phone. (Although later ios released supported PTP for easier photo transfers)

The problem here is Zune is partially broken on later Windows 10 releases since the conversion function is nonfunctional. This was useful for when you had high quality MP3 files that you wanted to transfer to the phone Zune could transcode them to a lower quality, say 128Kbps, and copy them to the phone. The result is a smaller file size in a more efficient WMA format whilst maintaining some form of quality.

Using Windows 8, 7 or Vista is recommended if you wish to transcode your music through Zune.

This does make the phone a kickass music player, and back when if was functional Zune pass was revolutionary for the time as it allowed you to subscribe to stream music from their library, similar to Spotify or Deezer today.

Lastly the Zune software could also sync podcasts and applications/games downloaded from the Zune store. This functionality has since been removed and has not been replicated, making it impossibly to load apps from your PC onto the phone itself.

You at least get access to an FM radio, which lets you change the frequency by sliding your finger in the direction you want to scan. It can pick up station name indicators along with any supplementary information if broadcast by the station. You can also pin stations individually onto the start screen for quick access.

Conclusion

Well, it’s a shame to see that was once a smartphone has now been relegated to a feature phone, or even a dumb phone as compared to your typical Nokia or Sony Ericsson feature phone that has the ability to run third party Java programs, Windows Phone 7 now lacks this ability. Only merit it has is its Internet Explorer browser which is losing support by the day.