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Why I Still Use DOS

3 Comments | This entry was posted on Nov 27 2008

For some of you, the thought of DOS probably brings back horrifying memories of things like IRQ conflicts, MSCDEX, the config.sys, himem.sys, etc. Those days are over, but the best aspects of DOS remain a part of Windows, fortunately.

Knowledge of DOS has been critical to my geeky endeavors over the last dozen or so years. Back in the nineties, as the GUI became pervasive and people seemed to have completely forgotten the command-line altogether, I continued to use it for a wide range of tasks. Yes, part of the reason I haven’t “let go” of DOS is in part nostalgic. The other part is that it has in fact been and remains very useful. Especially in troubleshooting and fixing low level problems that can’t be solved any other way.

So, you’re wondering what I could possibly have used DOS to accomplish? These days, for most things DOS can do, there is usually a free or paid application for Windows that does the same thing a little easier. Thing is, knowing how to do various tasks in DOS can help you repair Windows and perform a whole host of other tasks a lot quicker and often more efficiently than installing a bunch of different programs.

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