DOS or a theme for using Windows

[Borgster]

i know that most of you guys here are pretty computer savvy and know a lot about the geek stuff, so I want to know how much of you still use dos to get around windows. i find myself using dos once in a great while because its all text, and if you know the commands its almost as good as using the windows interface.

but i personally would rather have a gui over a command line any day because im not to advanced in commands for dos, i mostly know how to delete files, switch paths, change drives and stuff like that.

so what do you prefer, a gui or a command line interface?

[zaphodiv]

I generally use explorer with a small selection of utilitys
such as clonespy. I used to use lynx for win32-console
a lot but now I use lynx on a shell on a linux machine.

Win2k won't let me rename "Documents and Settings" as _dox
navigating directorys ith spaces in the names is a pain
using cmd.exe

I'v got less for win32-console installed.
At a "dos" prompt I tend to find myself typing "ls" out of
habit and being annoyed by the lack of persistant command
history, tab completion, ctrl-r etc
Installing cygwin supplies a proper bash prompt on windows.

Oh and remember to load doskey if you are ever forced to used a command prompt on 95/98/ME

[cpugeniusmv]

the only reason i ever use the mouse, is for surfing the internet.

if the internet didn't exist, i could just use the keyboard for everything! there's a shortcut for almost everything.

I'd say i've grown attached to the GUI, if it was left out of the next version of windows...it would definately be missed.

[Theinfamousone]

GUI or DOS? What kind of question is that? One is 20 years old. You can't compare the two. Command line is very boring and GUI is more intuitive.

CPU, can you tell me all of the useful shortcuts you know? I wish I knew more.

[cpugeniusmv]

Originally posted by Theinfamousone
CPU, can you tell me all of the useful shortcuts you know? I wish I knew more.
oh man...there are so many, i couldn't even begin to list them all, here's a pretty in depth list of them...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;301583

the most commonly used 'shortcut method' i guess you might say, that i use is this:

the alt key, along with the underlined letter.

Alt+D address bar in IE
Alt+Space+X maximize
Alt+Space+C close
Alt+Space+R restore
Alt+Space+N minimize

and when filling in forms/property sheets, these are the two most helpful...

Tab for going to the next item

Space to toggle checkboxes and radio buttons.

these are just a few of the, dare i say, hundreds of shortcuts i use!

Startkey + D minimize all (Start+M does same thing)

ok, i'll stop now :)


edit:

sorry, i had to add...

Alt+Home homepage in IE
Alt+Rightarrow forward
Alt+Leftarrow back

NOW i'm done :)

edit again:

alt+tab cycle through open windows

i'm not going to say i'm done this time.

[Borgster]

if your using ie you can use ctrl+mousewheel if you have one, to make the text smaller and bigger. thankfully mozilla has most of those shortcut keys from ie, just another reason why i use it as my primary browser over ie.

[nasrules]

Ctrl + Enter/Return is a good one. Just type "zeropaid" into the address bar, hit Ctrl + Enter/Return and it takes you to http://www.zeropaid.com :-D

[cpugeniusmv]

Originally posted by nasrules
Ctrl + Enter/Return is a good one. Just type "zeropaid" into the address bar, hit Ctrl + Enter/Return and it takes you to http://www.zeropaid.com :-D
for some reason, that shortcut doesn't work on my keyboard!! it works on every other computer i've used...

i've been meaning to get a new keyboard, soley to use this shortcut! lol!

[isus]

if there was a way to use just the command prompt, but still be able to run my progs, i would do it... unfortunately, xp doesn't like ctrl-alt-del'ing explorer.exe for cmd.exe :(

plus, all the crap in the system tray you could never reach, like aol im or something.

or winmx, or kazaa lite... once you press 'x', they go to the systray...

i can't imagine having to use a command prompt on windows tho... just that it has too many gui progs... even osx has more progs available to it than windows has command line crap.

[Borgster]

how many versions of dos are there? i do know ibm had ibm-dos, theres freedos (i don't know if that falls into this category), ms-dos, and all the dos's in between. windows 3.1 was very good at having dos underneath it, you pretty much need dos for windows to run because all windows is is a pretty frontend to dos, which i find using explorer, and any other program with a gui easier than using dos, but if you know commands to dos, then dos is as simple using the gui frontend for windows.

but still, windows is good weather you use dos, or the playskool theme windows xp has (i personally dont mind the new look of xp) its better than windows classic in a number of ways imo.

[nasrules]

Don't forget Apple-DOS!!!

[Winphuk]

In Win 2k/XP it really isn't a Dos Prompt. It's just a command prompt. If you Type "ver" in the prompt it will not give you the DOS version because it isn't really DOS.
The command prompt is still valuable to perform 16 bit applications, and games and to navigate around the operating system, when you can't do it through the GUI and also recovery purposes, and I can defineltly relate for the desire to go back to a command language. That's why I want to look into UNIX systems.