Your IT guy is an idiot. He should have run an access point on the other side of the firewall/steel beam, and connected it using a wired GigE. Of course, he shouldn't have gone wireless except for the people that actually need wireless in the first place... 100mbit switched Ethernet to every workstation, and run access points for the people that actually have to work on laptops. It's not rocket science.
To maintain compatibility with older 9600 baud fax machines.
Though most fax machines you can buy these days are 33,600. There's technical limits for why it can't be faster than that which another user pointed out, but I'll also point out that there isn't much point in upgrading beyond 33,600 anyway because anything you can fax you can also scan and e-mail.
And everything you listed will benefit far more from having multiple slower cores than a single mammoth core. You could be running a 6GHz processor, and if it's single threaded single core, then my 1.2GHz dual core Celeron will be more responsive. That's the point I was making... you don't need single faster cores. 300MHz is plenty fast enough for every task you listed, if you're only doing one at a time. If you want the best responsiveness, you want tasks + 1 cores... one core dedicated to each task, and another core to handle the system calls and resource management. Since you're unlikely to find a 100+ core system on the consumer market right now, however, you make do with smaller numbers of cores with higher than needed clock speeds.
But if you seriously believe I can't have open multiple programs at the same time, all doing different things, and use them effectively on this system, you need to reexamine your operating system. I have 4 virtual desktops set up right now... on desktop 0 I have a web browser full screen (3 tabs open, this one, gmail, and facebook). Desktop 1 I have multiple IM conversations going on at the same time. Desktop 2 currently has the background chooser and theme browser open, because I'm working on a new theme for e17, and Desktop 3 has file manager and VLC providing some music to work by (currently playing The Story of the Clash volume 1, disc 1, from a network share... This is Radio Clash as I type this). I have no reason to have a spreadsheet or word processor open at the moment, but could easily add it to any of the above desktops if I felt so inclined without taxing my system in the least, as there's plenty of desktop space available to me, and if I really wanted to, I could add more virtual desktops with relative ease. Add on top of that desktop compositing and effects through e17's Ecomorph (a port of compiz/fusion). And yet my CPU fan isn't on, and the CPU meter tells me that the system has actually underclocked both cores to 600MHz because it doesn't need the extra horsepower at the moment. It's not a question of saving the battery, either, because I'm on mains at the moment, it's a question of having more than enough horsepower available to me for the tasks I'm throwing at the system... on a dual core 1.2GHz Celeron.
And what are you doing that actually requires that 3GHz? I am currently typing this on an Arrandale-based laptop with a core speed of 1.2GHz and it is plenty fast enough and responsive enough for everything I want to throw at it. If you'd rather wiki the exact specs of my processor, go right ahead. It's a Celeron U3600. I'm not doing any high end gaming on this system (and believe it or not, most computer owners aren't gamers), so it really doesn't need much more oomph than it currently has.
And for the gaming market... how many threads are you running on that 6 year old 3GHz processor? 2 at most? And that's assuming it's a Pentium D with Hyperthreading? I have a year-and-a-half old Core i7 laptop that runs 8 threads at the same time, with a core speed of 2.93GHz. Newer processors can run even more threads. For *most* computer use, it's not the speed that matters, it's the number of threads you can run at that speed.
Compiling and encoding/transcoding are the only tasks I can think of that are CPU bound, and to some extent both are limited by I/O throughput as well. Most graphics cards have hardware decoders for most common codecs, and most encoding isn't done by consumers. Transcoding usually isn't done by consumers, but I suppose if you're ripping DVD's or something you're doing transcoding.
That said, it takes 15 minutes or so to rip a DVD into a 1GB MKV file on my Core i7 laptop. In other words, we are well beyond the point where most consumers will see CPU speed being a limiting factor in everything they want to do. CPU speeds are actually following a generally downward trend at the moment (except in the enthusiast markets), as the general tendency is towards reduced power consumption and reduced heat, and the realization that processors from 10 years ago were fast enough to surf the web, chat, and write documents. Gaming is really the only mainstream use where the speed is generally trending upwards, and in that market, the power of your video card is far more important than the speed of your CPU... I would rather game on a system with a $200 CPU and a $500 Graphics card than the other way around.
Newfoundland is in a weird timezone, half an hour off. They're 1.5h ahead of Eastern time, which is 4h ahead of UTC in the summer, so I'm guessing the poster is in NF, which is currently 2.5h ahead of UTC, and that his hardware clock is slightly off.
Unix is a trademarked name currently owned by AT&T that you need to spend exorbitant amounts of money to license. Apple OS/X (which is the actual name of the system) is a Unix-like environment based on FreeBSD, but it is not Unix. It's POSIX compliant, sort of, which is where the Unix-like comes from. OS/X is as close to Unix as Linux is, but neither of them are actually Unix. If you compare the way OS/X works internally against something like Tru64, HP/UX, Solaris, or AIX, you'll see just how different it actually is from Unix.
Both FreeBSD and GNU/Linux were created in response to the insane licensing fees being charged for Unix back in the '80's and early '90's.
Case in point, I actually just (within the last week) retired my first generation netbook (Dell Mini 9), when I took delivery of a Dell Vostro v130n laptop. $379 + tax for a 13.3" laptop that weighs 3.5lbs and has a screen with a much more usable resolution (1366x768 instead of 1024x600) and a real keyboard (full size laptop keyboard... it's the same size and layout as the one in my 16" gaming laptop). The keyboard on the netbook was the real killer... small keys, and a weird layout so they could fit it in the small form factor.
I could have happily continued to use the Netbook for years to come: it had plenty of hard drive space for my needs (64GB), 2GB of RAM, 1.6GHz dual core atom, and even with Ecomorph (an e17 port of compiz) running, it was quite zippy and responsive. But for the keyboard, it's a plenty adequate computer for most basic computing, and since I have a second system for more serious work/gaming, all I really need in my portable system is, well, portability. And a keyboard I can work on.:)
The term Personal Computer has been tossed around since the ENIAC days. While back then nobody really saw a market for a personal home-based computer, by the mid 1960's some people were seeing the writing on the wall (most likely inspired by some of what was coming out of PARC, and also by looking at how mainframe terminals were comparatively small and allowed people to have a personal workstation right at their desk). Even within the realm of what we'd consider an actual PC, both the Altair 8800 and the Apple 1 were marketed as Personal Computers.
Been shopping at Dell lately? Their entire n-series of desktops and laptops come preinstalled with Ubuntu. It's not Unix, exactly, but then again, neither is OS/X.
In fact, I am typing this on such a laptop that I bought new from Dell, and was delivered on Monday.
Actually I do have an X11 server running on my Windows workstation... largely so I can SSH with X forwarding and open X apps remotely. It's called Xming, and it's free software.
Interestingly, those X11 apps I run through SSH inherit the window decorations from Windows, because there's a difference between a Window Manager and an X11 server. If I change the window decorations, then those changes get inherited by X11 apps as well. Amazingly, that's exactly how it's supposed to work, and the GP is an idiot for not realizing the difference between an X server and a Window manager.
He can't, because that was actually a papal decree in the 14th century intended to reduce the impact of a major drought that was causing livestock to die off.... (think it's the 14th century... but yes, the time may be wrong, but that is the origin of the "no meat on fridays" rule: reduce the amount of meat eating by 1/7th, and the economic impact of there being less meat available to the market is significantly reduced)
The modern rules you're referring to were specifically drafted in response to the Stanford Prison Experiment. A review board determined that they weren't violating any rules at the time, and suggested making new rules so it couldn't be repeated.
So... you paid (minimum) $430 for a 12.1" netbook that only lets you use Chrome and not do anything else with your system when you could have gotten one of these for less money, and gotten a system that's just as portable (I have been shopping for laptop cases... they don't make many 12.1" laptop bags, so you're probably buying one for a 13.3" screen anyway), has a better processor, a significantly larger hard drive, and comes with a stock Ubuntu preinstalled (to say nothing of the 1 year NBD onsite warranty)? If you got the 3G version that is *slightly* more understandable, but not really when you consider that you can get a USB data stick for less than the price difference between the two, and you're at the same place of needing to buy a data plan for it.
I loathe Ubuntu... the first thing I did was wipe the hard drive and install my distro of choice. But even then, I think I got much better value for money than you did.
I run an open wifi network in addition to my private net (forced through transparent proxy that limits what kinds of sites you can get to, and speed limited to 25kbyte/s)... I named the SSID "I promise you won't get any viruses, wink wink". Strangely, nobody has even attempted to log into it.:)
Most people who "hack" a wifi connection are just looking for a free Internet hookup. Give them access to e-mail and web, maybe IM, but make it too slow and too limited for them to do anything illegal, and they usually won't bother trying to go after your private network unless they have a reason to go after you. So name your private network something that has nothing to do with you, and could not be guessed as yours (open a dictionary to a random page and pick the longest word on the page), and you're pretty much safe. Still use WPA2, but you don't need a stupidly long passkey to protect it, just one that's long enough to make it not worth hacking (which is why you provide an open network for them to go after instead).
In other words, get your network security through social engineering. If you're going at it from a lock-everything-down perspective you'll be stuck in an endless cycle of upgrades, and you will ultimately lose. You still need to keep your tech current, but the need is nowhere near as pressing when you take a few steps to make your network unattractive to a potential hacker.
My credit union has offered mobile electronic payments for almost 30 years. I still have to carry a wallet, because I still have to have somewhere to put their card, along with my Visa and Mastercard. I used to do things purely electronically with my Interac card, but I actually went back to using primarily cash for everything that isn't a large purchase or gas, because it is easier to budget that way. That is a problem that Paypal will never overcome, because they don't want to overcome it: if you're not budgeting your cash properly, you spend more, and they make more commission.
Also, Microsoft's printed keys are actually pretty good. They are well-printed, and they use a font that is easy to read. Try decyphering the printed keys from anything by Atari or Infogrames from the early 2000's. I actually had to call tech support and send them a scan of my product key for Neverwinter Nights, because it was illegible... even they couldn't decypher it, and they sent me a new key by e-mail instead.
Actually, I've installed every version of Windows since 2.0, every version of MS DOS there is, and some variants like CP/M. I have also installed almost every version of MacOS since 7, and dozens of different renditions of Linux, starting with Slackware 2, and have even rolled my own (1.7MB floppy, for use in a diskless system as a gateway/router). For spice, I have also installed BeOS (the original, as well as Haiku), AROS, and QNX. The installer for Windows 7 is much easier than Ubuntu's btw... you put the CD in, boot up, click next through a few screens entering the information it asks for, and then it spits out the CD and boots to a working OS about 10 minutes later. There's no reason Ubuntu (or any Linux) couldn't be that streamlined... in fact, many other distros *are* that streamlined: Slackware and Zenwalk leap to mind, though some people may be put off by the ncurses-based installer.
So no, I am not somebody who's never installed Windows. I am somebody who has a lot of experience installing operating systems, and who is quite comfortable rolling her own distro, or starting with a system like Gentoo or Arch (though my current favourite distro is Bodhi... minimalist installation like Arch, but without the hassle of setting up a working X environment. added bonus: it defaults to an e17 that is actually maintained). I was making a suggestion to answer the question posed by TFS: what is a distro that is easy to use, easy to install, and would satisfy the needs of the poster's mother's coursework. While I would never install Ubuntu on a system I administer, I have no problem suggesting it as a distro that would fit the posted needs.
Other than that, I'd have to agree. Normally I loathe Ubuntu... for Linux, it's sluggish, and somewhat erratic in how it's developped. But from a new-to-linux perspective, there's really only a handful of distros I'd consider to be in the same category as Ubuntu for general ease of installation/use. A great many are as easy to install but aren't as usable, and still many more are far more usable, but nowhere near as easy to install. For a basic project like the one described in the original post, Ubuntu would be a perfect distro.
Unless, of course, she's feeling adventurous and wants to try something like AROS or Haiku....
I still have a working laptop from 2001 which has a stepping CPU and variable fan speed, both of which are controlled on basis of the temperature sensor, which I will happily donate to the defense as an example of prior art.
It's also worth pointing out that much faster modems were readily available by the time Linux was officially released for the first time... My cousin was using a 9600bps modem when Linus first released it, and less than a year later I was using a 14,400 external modem.
Using TWM doesn't date you as much as you think... yes, I've been using Slackware since 2.0 (which really does date me), but I used TWM on one of my laptops as recently as 2009.... I had a login that defaulted to TWM for use in fucking with people... every tab I had open was an instance of xterm, and was running a terminal version of some common GUI tool... emacs, links, irssi, etc..
I used it for messing with people at Starbucks... if people asked what it was, I told them it was a beta of the next version of OS/X that I was testing for a friend of mine in Cupertino.
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Your IT guy is an idiot. He should have run an access point on the other side of the firewall/steel beam, and connected it using a wired GigE. Of course, he shouldn't have gone wireless except for the people that actually need wireless in the first place... 100mbit switched Ethernet to every workstation, and run access points for the people that actually have to work on laptops. It's not rocket science.
To maintain compatibility with older 9600 baud fax machines.
Though most fax machines you can buy these days are 33,600. There's technical limits for why it can't be faster than that which another user pointed out, but I'll also point out that there isn't much point in upgrading beyond 33,600 anyway because anything you can fax you can also scan and e-mail.
And everything you listed will benefit far more from having multiple slower cores than a single mammoth core. You could be running a 6GHz processor, and if it's single threaded single core, then my 1.2GHz dual core Celeron will be more responsive. That's the point I was making... you don't need single faster cores. 300MHz is plenty fast enough for every task you listed, if you're only doing one at a time. If you want the best responsiveness, you want tasks + 1 cores... one core dedicated to each task, and another core to handle the system calls and resource management. Since you're unlikely to find a 100+ core system on the consumer market right now, however, you make do with smaller numbers of cores with higher than needed clock speeds.
But if you seriously believe I can't have open multiple programs at the same time, all doing different things, and use them effectively on this system, you need to reexamine your operating system. I have 4 virtual desktops set up right now... on desktop 0 I have a web browser full screen (3 tabs open, this one, gmail, and facebook). Desktop 1 I have multiple IM conversations going on at the same time. Desktop 2 currently has the background chooser and theme browser open, because I'm working on a new theme for e17, and Desktop 3 has file manager and VLC providing some music to work by (currently playing The Story of the Clash volume 1, disc 1, from a network share... This is Radio Clash as I type this). I have no reason to have a spreadsheet or word processor open at the moment, but could easily add it to any of the above desktops if I felt so inclined without taxing my system in the least, as there's plenty of desktop space available to me, and if I really wanted to, I could add more virtual desktops with relative ease. Add on top of that desktop compositing and effects through e17's Ecomorph (a port of compiz/fusion). And yet my CPU fan isn't on, and the CPU meter tells me that the system has actually underclocked both cores to 600MHz because it doesn't need the extra horsepower at the moment. It's not a question of saving the battery, either, because I'm on mains at the moment, it's a question of having more than enough horsepower available to me for the tasks I'm throwing at the system... on a dual core 1.2GHz Celeron.
And what are you doing that actually requires that 3GHz? I am currently typing this on an Arrandale-based laptop with a core speed of 1.2GHz and it is plenty fast enough and responsive enough for everything I want to throw at it. If you'd rather wiki the exact specs of my processor, go right ahead. It's a Celeron U3600. I'm not doing any high end gaming on this system (and believe it or not, most computer owners aren't gamers), so it really doesn't need much more oomph than it currently has.
And for the gaming market... how many threads are you running on that 6 year old 3GHz processor? 2 at most? And that's assuming it's a Pentium D with Hyperthreading? I have a year-and-a-half old Core i7 laptop that runs 8 threads at the same time, with a core speed of 2.93GHz. Newer processors can run even more threads. For *most* computer use, it's not the speed that matters, it's the number of threads you can run at that speed.
Compiling and encoding/transcoding are the only tasks I can think of that are CPU bound, and to some extent both are limited by I/O throughput as well. Most graphics cards have hardware decoders for most common codecs, and most encoding isn't done by consumers. Transcoding usually isn't done by consumers, but I suppose if you're ripping DVD's or something you're doing transcoding.
That said, it takes 15 minutes or so to rip a DVD into a 1GB MKV file on my Core i7 laptop. In other words, we are well beyond the point where most consumers will see CPU speed being a limiting factor in everything they want to do. CPU speeds are actually following a generally downward trend at the moment (except in the enthusiast markets), as the general tendency is towards reduced power consumption and reduced heat, and the realization that processors from 10 years ago were fast enough to surf the web, chat, and write documents. Gaming is really the only mainstream use where the speed is generally trending upwards, and in that market, the power of your video card is far more important than the speed of your CPU... I would rather game on a system with a $200 CPU and a $500 Graphics card than the other way around.
2.5h *behind* UTC. gods, it helps to proofread, but it would help to be awake when I post... NF is west of the prime meridian, not east of it.
Newfoundland is in a weird timezone, half an hour off. They're 1.5h ahead of Eastern time, which is 4h ahead of UTC in the summer, so I'm guessing the poster is in NF, which is currently 2.5h ahead of UTC, and that his hardware clock is slightly off.
Unix is a trademarked name currently owned by AT&T that you need to spend exorbitant amounts of money to license. Apple OS/X (which is the actual name of the system) is a Unix-like environment based on FreeBSD, but it is not Unix. It's POSIX compliant, sort of, which is where the Unix-like comes from. OS/X is as close to Unix as Linux is, but neither of them are actually Unix. If you compare the way OS/X works internally against something like Tru64, HP/UX, Solaris, or AIX, you'll see just how different it actually is from Unix.
Both FreeBSD and GNU/Linux were created in response to the insane licensing fees being charged for Unix back in the '80's and early '90's.
Case in point, I actually just (within the last week) retired my first generation netbook (Dell Mini 9), when I took delivery of a Dell Vostro v130n laptop. $379 + tax for a 13.3" laptop that weighs 3.5lbs and has a screen with a much more usable resolution (1366x768 instead of 1024x600) and a real keyboard (full size laptop keyboard... it's the same size and layout as the one in my 16" gaming laptop). The keyboard on the netbook was the real killer... small keys, and a weird layout so they could fit it in the small form factor.
I could have happily continued to use the Netbook for years to come: it had plenty of hard drive space for my needs (64GB), 2GB of RAM, 1.6GHz dual core atom, and even with Ecomorph (an e17 port of compiz) running, it was quite zippy and responsive. But for the keyboard, it's a plenty adequate computer for most basic computing, and since I have a second system for more serious work/gaming, all I really need in my portable system is, well, portability. And a keyboard I can work on. :)
The term Personal Computer has been tossed around since the ENIAC days. While back then nobody really saw a market for a personal home-based computer, by the mid 1960's some people were seeing the writing on the wall (most likely inspired by some of what was coming out of PARC, and also by looking at how mainframe terminals were comparatively small and allowed people to have a personal workstation right at their desk). Even within the realm of what we'd consider an actual PC, both the Altair 8800 and the Apple 1 were marketed as Personal Computers.
Been shopping at Dell lately? Their entire n-series of desktops and laptops come preinstalled with Ubuntu. It's not Unix, exactly, but then again, neither is OS/X.
In fact, I am typing this on such a laptop that I bought new from Dell, and was delivered on Monday.
Actually I do have an X11 server running on my Windows workstation... largely so I can SSH with X forwarding and open X apps remotely. It's called Xming, and it's free software.
Interestingly, those X11 apps I run through SSH inherit the window decorations from Windows, because there's a difference between a Window Manager and an X11 server. If I change the window decorations, then those changes get inherited by X11 apps as well. Amazingly, that's exactly how it's supposed to work, and the GP is an idiot for not realizing the difference between an X server and a Window manager.
He can't, because that was actually a papal decree in the 14th century intended to reduce the impact of a major drought that was causing livestock to die off.... (think it's the 14th century... but yes, the time may be wrong, but that is the origin of the "no meat on fridays" rule: reduce the amount of meat eating by 1/7th, and the economic impact of there being less meat available to the market is significantly reduced)
The modern rules you're referring to were specifically drafted in response to the Stanford Prison Experiment. A review board determined that they weren't violating any rules at the time, and suggested making new rules so it couldn't be repeated.
So... you paid (minimum) $430 for a 12.1" netbook that only lets you use Chrome and not do anything else with your system when you could have gotten one of these for less money, and gotten a system that's just as portable (I have been shopping for laptop cases... they don't make many 12.1" laptop bags, so you're probably buying one for a 13.3" screen anyway), has a better processor, a significantly larger hard drive, and comes with a stock Ubuntu preinstalled (to say nothing of the 1 year NBD onsite warranty)? If you got the 3G version that is *slightly* more understandable, but not really when you consider that you can get a USB data stick for less than the price difference between the two, and you're at the same place of needing to buy a data plan for it.
I loathe Ubuntu... the first thing I did was wipe the hard drive and install my distro of choice. But even then, I think I got much better value for money than you did.
I run an open wifi network in addition to my private net (forced through transparent proxy that limits what kinds of sites you can get to, and speed limited to 25kbyte/s)... I named the SSID "I promise you won't get any viruses, wink wink". Strangely, nobody has even attempted to log into it. :)
Most people who "hack" a wifi connection are just looking for a free Internet hookup. Give them access to e-mail and web, maybe IM, but make it too slow and too limited for them to do anything illegal, and they usually won't bother trying to go after your private network unless they have a reason to go after you. So name your private network something that has nothing to do with you, and could not be guessed as yours (open a dictionary to a random page and pick the longest word on the page), and you're pretty much safe. Still use WPA2, but you don't need a stupidly long passkey to protect it, just one that's long enough to make it not worth hacking (which is why you provide an open network for them to go after instead).
In other words, get your network security through social engineering. If you're going at it from a lock-everything-down perspective you'll be stuck in an endless cycle of upgrades, and you will ultimately lose. You still need to keep your tech current, but the need is nowhere near as pressing when you take a few steps to make your network unattractive to a potential hacker.
So does Apple.
Mine, too. My second thought was "good thing I use cash for everything but gasoline".
My credit union has offered mobile electronic payments for almost 30 years. I still have to carry a wallet, because I still have to have somewhere to put their card, along with my Visa and Mastercard. I used to do things purely electronically with my Interac card, but I actually went back to using primarily cash for everything that isn't a large purchase or gas, because it is easier to budget that way. That is a problem that Paypal will never overcome, because they don't want to overcome it: if you're not budgeting your cash properly, you spend more, and they make more commission.
Also, Microsoft's printed keys are actually pretty good. They are well-printed, and they use a font that is easy to read. Try decyphering the printed keys from anything by Atari or Infogrames from the early 2000's. I actually had to call tech support and send them a scan of my product key for Neverwinter Nights, because it was illegible... even they couldn't decypher it, and they sent me a new key by e-mail instead.
Actually, I've installed every version of Windows since 2.0, every version of MS DOS there is, and some variants like CP/M. I have also installed almost every version of MacOS since 7, and dozens of different renditions of Linux, starting with Slackware 2, and have even rolled my own (1.7MB floppy, for use in a diskless system as a gateway/router). For spice, I have also installed BeOS (the original, as well as Haiku), AROS, and QNX. The installer for Windows 7 is much easier than Ubuntu's btw... you put the CD in, boot up, click next through a few screens entering the information it asks for, and then it spits out the CD and boots to a working OS about 10 minutes later. There's no reason Ubuntu (or any Linux) couldn't be that streamlined... in fact, many other distros *are* that streamlined: Slackware and Zenwalk leap to mind, though some people may be put off by the ncurses-based installer.
So no, I am not somebody who's never installed Windows. I am somebody who has a lot of experience installing operating systems, and who is quite comfortable rolling her own distro, or starting with a system like Gentoo or Arch (though my current favourite distro is Bodhi... minimalist installation like Arch, but without the hassle of setting up a working X environment. added bonus: it defaults to an e17 that is actually maintained). I was making a suggestion to answer the question posed by TFS: what is a distro that is easy to use, easy to install, and would satisfy the needs of the poster's mother's coursework. While I would never install Ubuntu on a system I administer, I have no problem suggesting it as a distro that would fit the posted needs.
Use a LiveCD, rather than running it virtualized.
Other than that, I'd have to agree. Normally I loathe Ubuntu... for Linux, it's sluggish, and somewhat erratic in how it's developped. But from a new-to-linux perspective, there's really only a handful of distros I'd consider to be in the same category as Ubuntu for general ease of installation/use. A great many are as easy to install but aren't as usable, and still many more are far more usable, but nowhere near as easy to install. For a basic project like the one described in the original post, Ubuntu would be a perfect distro.
Unless, of course, she's feeling adventurous and wants to try something like AROS or Haiku....
I still have a working laptop from 2001 which has a stepping CPU and variable fan speed, both of which are controlled on basis of the temperature sensor, which I will happily donate to the defense as an example of prior art.
It's also worth pointing out that much faster modems were readily available by the time Linux was officially released for the first time... My cousin was using a 9600bps modem when Linus first released it, and less than a year later I was using a 14,400 external modem.
Using TWM doesn't date you as much as you think... yes, I've been using Slackware since 2.0 (which really does date me), but I used TWM on one of my laptops as recently as 2009.... I had a login that defaulted to TWM for use in fucking with people... every tab I had open was an instance of xterm, and was running a terminal version of some common GUI tool... emacs, links, irssi, etc..
I used it for messing with people at Starbucks... if people asked what it was, I told them it was a beta of the next version of OS/X that I was testing for a friend of mine in Cupertino.