What do you do with your old PCs?

Stack them in a corner? Pay someone to take them away?

What about getting them to do some good, fast work?

No, we’re not joking. Old machines, even 286s and 386s, can be made to work really fast if you have the right software. In this issue, we bring you two such software—NewDeal and QNX (Quick Unix).

NewDeal is a fully graphical office suite that works on good old DOS, and delivers a full graphical interface and fast performance on very old machines. (We tested it out on a 386 that we haven’t used in ages, and were really impressed). A 45-day trial is available on the CD for you to check out. And yes, it works on Win 9x too.

QNX is perhaps even more exciting. A complete operating system, browser, word processor, e-mail client…all for free. QNX is actually meant for embedded systems, and as such can run with very limited resources.

Do check them out and tell us what you feel about them, and whether you would like us to carry more such stuff. 

• NewDeal Release 3
  How to set up this office suite and put it to use on your old machine

• Setting up QNX
  How to install QNX, either as a standalone OS or within your existing Windows installation

• Configuring QNX
  How to fine tune QNX and use its multimedia features

• File sharing with QNX
  How to share directories across QNX and Windows machines on a network

• Going Online with QNX
  How to configure QNX for browsing, mail, and chat

• The technology behind QNX
  QNX is a cross between a real time and a platform operating system. Here we examine this in detail

• Proxying with QNX
  How to configure the Squid proxy server in QNX