Fair enough. The company I worked for was relatively new (founded 2001 I think) so we didn't have a lot of truly ancient stuff stuck away. Optiplex GX1s, some Sun pizzaboxes (wish I'd been able to get ahold of couple those, but they were technically still in use), some Latitude pre-C-series Dell laptops, etc. A lot of it was mostly just people too time strapped and/or lazy to sort through it all.
I'd be curious if he has a way to differentiate active, in-use machines vs. old stuff that may just still be in the inventory roles. I helped a bit with my previous company's effort to clear out old storage and inventory and there was some pretty old equipment that had been in the closet for close to a decade, plus some stuff in their inventory records that had long since disappeared.
So I wonder if that Gateway Liberty 2000 is actually still sitting on someone's desk where the toil away with WordPerfect and Windows 3.1 every day, or if it got tossed/walked out of the building in the late 90s and no one bothered to update the records.
Networking, networking, networking. Probably the single most important skill to develop. When interns and young folks ask me about important things to do at work, I always stress the importance of it. I'm a naturally fairly introverted person who tends towards keeping to myself and limiting contact, but I made a point of getting around my companies and getting to know people. What this meant was when I was ready to leave a company I'd been at for 12.5 years, I had a couple good options on the table already from people who had left prior. When my next job didn't work out after a couple months (CFO issues, not mine) I went from laid off on a Friday to interviewing the next week and starting an even better job the next Monday.
This has its ups and downs - I'm pretty sure I'll never want for a decent job anywhere in this metro area I live. But my wife and I have discussed moving a few states away to be closer to her family, and the last time I tried it was difficult to get anyone to call me back that wasn't for an entry-level call center position (which granted was smack in the middle of the recession). It really sucks for new workers, people moving to a new area, and people maybe trying to make a career transition.
As for the subject of the article, it sounds like there's something to be said for both sides. A year in jobs before moving around seems to be standard now, and everyone coming out of school has to pay their dues to prove they're capable and dependable people at least until they have the beginnings of a network and something to put on their resumes. There are tons of people who dabble in really funny Twitter accounts and freelance writing and I'm not sure that's enough to skip a step by itself. But if the basic financial details in the article are accurate, it sounds like Yelp may not be paying enough for the area. There's a fine but important line between living lean and having to make sacrifices, and literally starving in a freezing apartment. Plenty of unanswered questions for both sides though.
I wish more Slashdotters understood this. Patents are ridiculously, specifically specific. I worked for a company that was known for owning several patents in a very specific, niche market and got to take part in writing up some proposals for new ones. I learned a lot about how to make the verbiage both specific enough to fit the idea, but also general enough to try to prevent someone from tacking on "on a mobile device" or "with a specific enclosure" and doing the same. There was also a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what stuck. I didn't work there long enough to have anything granted in my name, but it may still happen.
All this patent has to do is be sufficiently different from anything else patented to be granted. Doesn't matter that there's something else logically very similar, or even functionally the same, as long as the implementation and specifics are unique. Even if it comes down to "Exactly the same as previous modular computers, BUT WITH MAGNETS!"
I have an IBM PC Convertible in the closet, which did similar but stacked backwards. I only have the serial and parallel port addon, but there were several including an entire printer. Got kind of comically large with all of them.
As a kid in the 80s and 90s, "Applications" were the things Dad used to get work done, "Utilities" were boring things that you weren't supposed to touch because you could break the computer, and "Games" were the only fun things. They were all programs, though you sounded like an egghead calling them that.
Most of the wrong-street issues I've run into with GPS (mostly with Google Maps and/or Waze) have been situations where there's a Somewhere St. in two different nearby town names in a close area (suburbs of a city, maybe) or something like a Somewhere Street NE and Somewhere Street SE near each other that have the same address numbers. I've had a couple situations where I'm unfamiliar with the destination but the two addresses are close enough that they aren't obviously wrong unless I spend some time studying the location.
Ending up in the wrong city, wrong country, driving into lakes, or dead in a desert is just poor common sense and user error or people blaming GPS for their own stupidity.
I've also been surprised at how awful in-car systems are compared to even older smartphones. My in-laws had a 2013 Taurus with a miserably awful system that looked like the same thing I remember in 2005-era cars. On the other hand even my Galaxy S2 I had a couple years before did voice recognition fine. My wife and I just bought a 2016 Civic, and its head unit is actually running Android and uses all of its services for things like voice recognition, and it actually works pretty well.
I was 5 at the time, so I have some very vague memories of people being upset about it, but I don't remember any specifics. I remember more about the aftermath over the next couple years as my childhood memories start solidifying, plus my family was big into aerospace and the space program in general.
This is a tough balance to find, and one you often see Slashdotters (such as the post below this currently) erring on the wrong side because we like verbose error messages that tell us exactly how to fix things. Whether we like it or not, computers are used by far more Joe Users than geeks, and being told to check system information because they may need x86 or x64 is only going to lead to the "Computers are hard, I'll never figure them out" thought. I've seen a lot of discussion on oldnewthing and similar about whether an operating system should have an "advanced mode" that includes more detailed errors and such, but in general the risk of someone who shouldn't be in there getting it turned on is deemed a risk.
I don't claim to be a UI designer, so I don't really have a solution. My attempts at little webapps and things for work have mostly been middlin' at best, interface wise:)
Lotus 1-2-3 2.x is a DOS application. There're no DLLs, manifests, etc except for NTVDM, which as we already know doesn't exist in the 64-bit Windows world and as far as I know no one has hacked in. It'll need to be run either in a VM (whether a "light" one like dosbos or a full one like VirtualBox or VPC) or on a 32-bit version of Windows, where it'll run just fine as-is.
Windows safe mode gives you the same login options as a regular boot, just with minimal stuff loaded. On some versions (XP at least; I don't feel like rebooting my WIn7 box to check it) you'll also have the normally-hidden Administrator account visible. This can be a problem for computers on domains - if you boot in pure safe mode and have a domain admin, getting logged in can be problematic. This is where Safe Mode with Network Support comes in handy.
Windows 95 made a point of supporting virtually all existing 16-bit Windows 3.1 drivers. This would occasionally cripple the 32-bit enhancements to things like file access and hard drives, but they'd work. In fact, this was the biggest reason Microsoft stuck with the "significantly enhanced Windows 3.x" kernel instead of just going to Windows NT-based at the time. Silliest thing I did was manually install the EGA driver from Win3.1 on Windows 95 (or 98? Can't remember) and run it with an EGA card. I also had a parallel port CD-ROM that worked fine in Windows 95 with the DOS driver loaded, though I'd get some warnings about performance being impacted by using 16-bit real mode drivers. Still, it worked.
32-bit to 64-bit has been a much bigger problem. I've had little trouble using 32-bit XP drivers in Vista/7 and even 32-bit 10, but 64-bit does require all new drivers. So for older hardware you're often SOL. This is one of those things that Microsoft just can't win. Either they get slammed for old code that has old vulnerabilities, or they get slammed for making people replace old hardware by dropping backward compatibility.
The main use I've found for it are for games that came out in that time between Direct3D and Windows 2000 that assume that Windows NT == No Direct3D and pop up a "This program doesn't support Windows NT" error. Setting them to Win95/98 compatibility mode make them work just fine. I can think of Viper Racing for one, and it helps Grand Prix Legends' graphics work better. On the other hand, Homeworld works better in NT 4.0 mode because it disables the slightly buggy-on-new-Windows DirectX and forces it into OpenGL mode, which works great.
In more recent times I've had it help with a couple utilities and tweaks like Mute on Lock that break with Windows 7's (and Vista's?) updated audio engine.
I can't think of too many things I've tried it on that haven't worked, really. Most of the complaints I've seen about it are people trying to run DOS or 16-bit Windows apps on 64-bit Windows, which isn't going to work no matter how many compatibility modes you try.
I'm going to stay away from ad hominem, because it's not useful, but you pretty clearly haven't done even a little bit of research into the problem. If you get that error running a DOS program, you're likely trying to run it on a 64-bit version of the OS. This is a well-known issue (if you even want to call it an issue, because it's advertised as such) and the compatibility modes are only for 32-bit Windows programs. If the rest of your 50 programs are also DOS, I'd expect as much.
If you need to run a DOS application, and a VM isn't an option, use a 32-bit version of Windows 10. For funsies I found a copy of Lotus 1-2-3 (2.2, as it happens, because that was what I had handy. I don't expect 2.3 to run differently) and tried it on my 32-bit Windows 10 laptop and it ran fine. Even ran in a window.
Drop me a line and I'll be happy to claim my bounty;)
Talk about mindblowing. The original Star Raiders has been one of my favorite games for a very long time. This is a crazy thing to find after so long. my only concern is it looks like the framerate gets a bit choppy. I haven't had a chance to play it yet but I'm looking very forward to it.
I used Thunderbird pretty much from the first beta public releases until a couple years ago. I started having more and more problems with large IMAP folders. Very slow performance, 5-10 seconds to switch folders (even to folders without that much in them), etc. At one point I was also trying to copy some folders from an old POP account in local folders to the imap server and kept getting just "An unknown error has occurred." A bit later after I'd switched to eM Client and tried again, and got an error "Invalid character in imap folder name." Oh, ok. That explains that. Fixed that and it was fine. Would have been nice to know that.
Anyway, just lots of little annoyances in Thunderbird added up. I'm still sort of shopping around but haven't really found one that I really like. At least with imap migrating around to different clients isn't too big a problem.
I've had decent luck with The Bat! and eM Client. Neither is quite free and both have some annoying quirks, but so far they've worked a little better than Thunderbird for me. The Bat! looks a bit outdated and has bit of old-school Eudora going on, but it works well enough. eM Client is going more for the modern flat look and more modern design, but has some annoyances with their "free license" and multiple devices.
That's mostly up to you. I didn't upgrade to Windows 7 until I needed DirectX 10. The main advantages of Windows 10 is going to be DirectX 12 and things like Windows Store apps, which may not interest you. I suspect your box probably wouldn't be running much DirectX 12 anyway. It's not impossible to roll back if you don't like it, but might be kind of a pain. As far as a video card upgrade, just about anything discrete is going to be a big upgrade. I'm partial to nvidia myself. Mostly comes down to whether you want to put money into that box or put it towards a new system.
Incidentally, if you're the tepples I suspect you are, you should know that I just about have robotfindskitten finished in NES 6502 Assembly. Been a lot more fun than the C version I wrote. It's fully playable but the winning animation isn't done yet. Maybe I'll work on the variable-width font version next:) I'm terrible with web forums and forgot to get back and check on how things went, and now the threads are over a year old. Small world.
Video drivers are a bit of a special case since Windows uses graphics for the desktop so much more now. Windows 10 wants WDDM 2.0 graphics drivers where possible. I suspect it'd work fine, but you might lose some of the animations and eye candy. I've installed Windows 10 on a number of old computers and haven't had too much trouble with drivers, but I rarely try to use them for things like gaming or other graphically-intensive things. It's supposed to work with WDDM 1.3 as well, but all that gets complicated.
I recently picked up an old Thinkpad Z61t at a thrift store for a fiver. Perfect condition. Original Core Duo, 2gb of RAM. Tossed another Gig of RAM at it, and had no trouble getting the Windows 7 it came with upgraded to 10. No driver problems except for a little fiddliness with the bluetooth. But then I've had nightmares with bluetooth on Windows all the way back to XP. It's only marginally useful for video (SD Youtube works ok) but general use it's more than adequate*. Granted multimedia is sort of a requirement these days but if I were stuck using one for work or similar it'd be just fine. With the relatively big jump in hardware requirements between 7 and 8-10 (NX bit support primarily) just about anything capable of running Windows 10 should run it decently.
That said, I did order a $3 Core 2 Duo off eBay to drop in it because why not? I'll also likely go Linux on it soon, depending on a couple applications.
* I accept that my definition of adequate probably varies a bit from the average. I use it as a side-computer for IRC, looking up game wikis, etc if I'm doing something on my mainbox that doesn't do windowed mode well. And yes, I realize even Core Duos are a generation or two ahead of Pentium M.
For Android, you could do something like boot into Recovery, completely format all the partitions (except recovery), and reflash the ROM. If you wanted to be especially paranoid you could adb into it and dd if=/dev/zero the whole thing a time or two and then reflash it. Hell of a lot of work though, and typically would require some kind of rooting or alternative recovery for some of the options.
iOS devices you'd pretty much have to jailbreak to do something like that directly. I have no idea how thorough a restore in iTunes is forensically speaking. Might be good enough.
I'd be somewhat hesitant to resell/donate a mobile device. I tend to keep them around and use them until they're thoroughly used up anyway, so I don't typically have anything left worth selling/donating.
I too have bought a few random computers at thrift stores over the years, and have found enough personal data to make several peoples' lives miserable. Not really my style though; I typically wipe them as a first step. Although I did unexpectedly find an older laptop with a legit activated Windows 8 license on it that I just nuked the previous user account on and kept using, since upgraded to 10. It's still impressive to me the kind of things people leave on computers they're donating. I keep seeing the words "common sense" thrown around in this article, but I'm still surprised more people don't have it.
There are several articles out there that detail the rise and fall of RIM/Blackberry. The basic idea is that Mike Lazaridis and other executives refused to allow the devices to develop beyond excellent email machines with nice keyboards, and completely missed the boat on the kind of developments that people came to expect of not just smartphones, but cell phones in general. Cameras, music players, larger screens, even good web browsers. They also completely missed the BYOD culture - if a person is buying one device for both personal and company use, they aren't going to buy the corporate-focused one that isn't much fun. They're going to buy the Android or iPhone or something with good app support that also happens to talk to Exchange.
By the time they started grudglingly adding some of these features, it was already angling towards too late. By then iPhone and Android (and Windows Phone) were offering near-desktop-levels of web browsing support, decent cameras, every kind of music and video playing you could want, while the Blackberry devices hadn't really changed all that much.
Meanwhile they were at least making enough money on paper with existing contracts to at least stay afloat, which really just led to more head-in-sanding.
This, pretty much. I went round and round with AT&T trying to get an off-contract iPhone 4 unlocked for over a year before I ended up trading it in for double-credit on a iPhone 6 for my wife for far more than it would have sold for on eBay or the like even unlocked. They just kept declining it with no explanation, and the customer service reps were no help.
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Fair enough. The company I worked for was relatively new (founded 2001 I think) so we didn't have a lot of truly ancient stuff stuck away. Optiplex GX1s, some Sun pizzaboxes (wish I'd been able to get ahold of couple those, but they were technically still in use), some Latitude pre-C-series Dell laptops, etc. A lot of it was mostly just people too time strapped and/or lazy to sort through it all.
I'd be curious if he has a way to differentiate active, in-use machines vs. old stuff that may just still be in the inventory roles. I helped a bit with my previous company's effort to clear out old storage and inventory and there was some pretty old equipment that had been in the closet for close to a decade, plus some stuff in their inventory records that had long since disappeared.
So I wonder if that Gateway Liberty 2000 is actually still sitting on someone's desk where the toil away with WordPerfect and Windows 3.1 every day, or if it got tossed/walked out of the building in the late 90s and no one bothered to update the records.
Networking, networking, networking. Probably the single most important skill to develop. When interns and young folks ask me about important things to do at work, I always stress the importance of it. I'm a naturally fairly introverted person who tends towards keeping to myself and limiting contact, but I made a point of getting around my companies and getting to know people. What this meant was when I was ready to leave a company I'd been at for 12.5 years, I had a couple good options on the table already from people who had left prior. When my next job didn't work out after a couple months (CFO issues, not mine) I went from laid off on a Friday to interviewing the next week and starting an even better job the next Monday.
This has its ups and downs - I'm pretty sure I'll never want for a decent job anywhere in this metro area I live. But my wife and I have discussed moving a few states away to be closer to her family, and the last time I tried it was difficult to get anyone to call me back that wasn't for an entry-level call center position (which granted was smack in the middle of the recession). It really sucks for new workers, people moving to a new area, and people maybe trying to make a career transition.
As for the subject of the article, it sounds like there's something to be said for both sides. A year in jobs before moving around seems to be standard now, and everyone coming out of school has to pay their dues to prove they're capable and dependable people at least until they have the beginnings of a network and something to put on their resumes. There are tons of people who dabble in really funny Twitter accounts and freelance writing and I'm not sure that's enough to skip a step by itself. But if the basic financial details in the article are accurate, it sounds like Yelp may not be paying enough for the area. There's a fine but important line between living lean and having to make sacrifices, and literally starving in a freezing apartment. Plenty of unanswered questions for both sides though.
I wish more Slashdotters understood this. Patents are ridiculously, specifically specific. I worked for a company that was known for owning several patents in a very specific, niche market and got to take part in writing up some proposals for new ones. I learned a lot about how to make the verbiage both specific enough to fit the idea, but also general enough to try to prevent someone from tacking on "on a mobile device" or "with a specific enclosure" and doing the same. There was also a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what stuck. I didn't work there long enough to have anything granted in my name, but it may still happen.
All this patent has to do is be sufficiently different from anything else patented to be granted. Doesn't matter that there's something else logically very similar, or even functionally the same, as long as the implementation and specifics are unique. Even if it comes down to "Exactly the same as previous modular computers, BUT WITH MAGNETS!"
I have an IBM PC Convertible in the closet, which did similar but stacked backwards. I only have the serial and parallel port addon, but there were several including an entire printer. Got kind of comically large with all of them.
As a kid in the 80s and 90s, "Applications" were the things Dad used to get work done, "Utilities" were boring things that you weren't supposed to touch because you could break the computer, and "Games" were the only fun things. They were all programs, though you sounded like an egghead calling them that.
The difference is going "Wait, that can't be right" and fixing it vs. driving 2 days on a 2 hour trip.
Most of the wrong-street issues I've run into with GPS (mostly with Google Maps and/or Waze) have been situations where there's a Somewhere St. in two different nearby town names in a close area (suburbs of a city, maybe) or something like a Somewhere Street NE and Somewhere Street SE near each other that have the same address numbers. I've had a couple situations where I'm unfamiliar with the destination but the two addresses are close enough that they aren't obviously wrong unless I spend some time studying the location.
Ending up in the wrong city, wrong country, driving into lakes, or dead in a desert is just poor common sense and user error or people blaming GPS for their own stupidity.
I've also been surprised at how awful in-car systems are compared to even older smartphones. My in-laws had a 2013 Taurus with a miserably awful system that looked like the same thing I remember in 2005-era cars. On the other hand even my Galaxy S2 I had a couple years before did voice recognition fine. My wife and I just bought a 2016 Civic, and its head unit is actually running Android and uses all of its services for things like voice recognition, and it actually works pretty well.
I was 5 at the time, so I have some very vague memories of people being upset about it, but I don't remember any specifics. I remember more about the aftermath over the next couple years as my childhood memories start solidifying, plus my family was big into aerospace and the space program in general.
This is a tough balance to find, and one you often see Slashdotters (such as the post below this currently) erring on the wrong side because we like verbose error messages that tell us exactly how to fix things. Whether we like it or not, computers are used by far more Joe Users than geeks, and being told to check system information because they may need x86 or x64 is only going to lead to the "Computers are hard, I'll never figure them out" thought. I've seen a lot of discussion on oldnewthing and similar about whether an operating system should have an "advanced mode" that includes more detailed errors and such, but in general the risk of someone who shouldn't be in there getting it turned on is deemed a risk.
I don't claim to be a UI designer, so I don't really have a solution. My attempts at little webapps and things for work have mostly been middlin' at best, interface wise :)
Lotus 1-2-3 2.x is a DOS application. There're no DLLs, manifests, etc except for NTVDM, which as we already know doesn't exist in the 64-bit Windows world and as far as I know no one has hacked in. It'll need to be run either in a VM (whether a "light" one like dosbos or a full one like VirtualBox or VPC) or on a 32-bit version of Windows, where it'll run just fine as-is.
Windows safe mode gives you the same login options as a regular boot, just with minimal stuff loaded. On some versions (XP at least; I don't feel like rebooting my WIn7 box to check it) you'll also have the normally-hidden Administrator account visible. This can be a problem for computers on domains - if you boot in pure safe mode and have a domain admin, getting logged in can be problematic. This is where Safe Mode with Network Support comes in handy.
Windows 95 made a point of supporting virtually all existing 16-bit Windows 3.1 drivers. This would occasionally cripple the 32-bit enhancements to things like file access and hard drives, but they'd work. In fact, this was the biggest reason Microsoft stuck with the "significantly enhanced Windows 3.x" kernel instead of just going to Windows NT-based at the time. Silliest thing I did was manually install the EGA driver from Win3.1 on Windows 95 (or 98? Can't remember) and run it with an EGA card. I also had a parallel port CD-ROM that worked fine in Windows 95 with the DOS driver loaded, though I'd get some warnings about performance being impacted by using 16-bit real mode drivers. Still, it worked.
32-bit to 64-bit has been a much bigger problem. I've had little trouble using 32-bit XP drivers in Vista/7 and even 32-bit 10, but 64-bit does require all new drivers. So for older hardware you're often SOL. This is one of those things that Microsoft just can't win. Either they get slammed for old code that has old vulnerabilities, or they get slammed for making people replace old hardware by dropping backward compatibility.
The main use I've found for it are for games that came out in that time between Direct3D and Windows 2000 that assume that Windows NT == No Direct3D and pop up a "This program doesn't support Windows NT" error. Setting them to Win95/98 compatibility mode make them work just fine. I can think of Viper Racing for one, and it helps Grand Prix Legends' graphics work better. On the other hand, Homeworld works better in NT 4.0 mode because it disables the slightly buggy-on-new-Windows DirectX and forces it into OpenGL mode, which works great.
In more recent times I've had it help with a couple utilities and tweaks like Mute on Lock that break with Windows 7's (and Vista's?) updated audio engine.
I can't think of too many things I've tried it on that haven't worked, really. Most of the complaints I've seen about it are people trying to run DOS or 16-bit Windows apps on 64-bit Windows, which isn't going to work no matter how many compatibility modes you try.
I'm going to stay away from ad hominem, because it's not useful, but you pretty clearly haven't done even a little bit of research into the problem. If you get that error running a DOS program, you're likely trying to run it on a 64-bit version of the OS. This is a well-known issue (if you even want to call it an issue, because it's advertised as such) and the compatibility modes are only for 32-bit Windows programs. If the rest of your 50 programs are also DOS, I'd expect as much.
If you need to run a DOS application, and a VM isn't an option, use a 32-bit version of Windows 10. For funsies I found a copy of Lotus 1-2-3 (2.2, as it happens, because that was what I had handy. I don't expect 2.3 to run differently) and tried it on my 32-bit Windows 10 laptop and it ran fine. Even ran in a window.
Drop me a line and I'll be happy to claim my bounty ;)
Solaris was by the same author as Star Raiders, Doug Neubauer, and was indeed intended to be a sort of sequel.
Talk about mindblowing. The original Star Raiders has been one of my favorite games for a very long time. This is a crazy thing to find after so long. my only concern is it looks like the framerate gets a bit choppy. I haven't had a chance to play it yet but I'm looking very forward to it.
I used Thunderbird pretty much from the first beta public releases until a couple years ago. I started having more and more problems with large IMAP folders. Very slow performance, 5-10 seconds to switch folders (even to folders without that much in them), etc. At one point I was also trying to copy some folders from an old POP account in local folders to the imap server and kept getting just "An unknown error has occurred." A bit later after I'd switched to eM Client and tried again, and got an error "Invalid character in imap folder name." Oh, ok. That explains that. Fixed that and it was fine. Would have been nice to know that.
Anyway, just lots of little annoyances in Thunderbird added up. I'm still sort of shopping around but haven't really found one that I really like. At least with imap migrating around to different clients isn't too big a problem.
I've had decent luck with The Bat! and eM Client. Neither is quite free and both have some annoying quirks, but so far they've worked a little better than Thunderbird for me. The Bat! looks a bit outdated and has bit of old-school Eudora going on, but it works well enough. eM Client is going more for the modern flat look and more modern design, but has some annoyances with their "free license" and multiple devices.
That's mostly up to you. I didn't upgrade to Windows 7 until I needed DirectX 10. The main advantages of Windows 10 is going to be DirectX 12 and things like Windows Store apps, which may not interest you. I suspect your box probably wouldn't be running much DirectX 12 anyway. It's not impossible to roll back if you don't like it, but might be kind of a pain. As far as a video card upgrade, just about anything discrete is going to be a big upgrade. I'm partial to nvidia myself. Mostly comes down to whether you want to put money into that box or put it towards a new system.
Incidentally, if you're the tepples I suspect you are, you should know that I just about have robotfindskitten finished in NES 6502 Assembly. Been a lot more fun than the C version I wrote. It's fully playable but the winning animation isn't done yet. Maybe I'll work on the variable-width font version next :) I'm terrible with web forums and forgot to get back and check on how things went, and now the threads are over a year old. Small world.
Video drivers are a bit of a special case since Windows uses graphics for the desktop so much more now. Windows 10 wants WDDM 2.0 graphics drivers where possible. I suspect it'd work fine, but you might lose some of the animations and eye candy. I've installed Windows 10 on a number of old computers and haven't had too much trouble with drivers, but I rarely try to use them for things like gaming or other graphically-intensive things. It's supposed to work with WDDM 1.3 as well, but all that gets complicated.
I recently picked up an old Thinkpad Z61t at a thrift store for a fiver. Perfect condition. Original Core Duo, 2gb of RAM. Tossed another Gig of RAM at it, and had no trouble getting the Windows 7 it came with upgraded to 10. No driver problems except for a little fiddliness with the bluetooth. But then I've had nightmares with bluetooth on Windows all the way back to XP. It's only marginally useful for video (SD Youtube works ok) but general use it's more than adequate*. Granted multimedia is sort of a requirement these days but if I were stuck using one for work or similar it'd be just fine. With the relatively big jump in hardware requirements between 7 and 8-10 (NX bit support primarily) just about anything capable of running Windows 10 should run it decently.
That said, I did order a $3 Core 2 Duo off eBay to drop in it because why not? I'll also likely go Linux on it soon, depending on a couple applications.
* I accept that my definition of adequate probably varies a bit from the average. I use it as a side-computer for IRC, looking up game wikis, etc if I'm doing something on my mainbox that doesn't do windowed mode well. And yes, I realize even Core Duos are a generation or two ahead of Pentium M.
For Android, you could do something like boot into Recovery, completely format all the partitions (except recovery), and reflash the ROM. If you wanted to be especially paranoid you could adb into it and dd if=/dev/zero the whole thing a time or two and then reflash it. Hell of a lot of work though, and typically would require some kind of rooting or alternative recovery for some of the options.
iOS devices you'd pretty much have to jailbreak to do something like that directly. I have no idea how thorough a restore in iTunes is forensically speaking. Might be good enough.
I'd be somewhat hesitant to resell/donate a mobile device. I tend to keep them around and use them until they're thoroughly used up anyway, so I don't typically have anything left worth selling/donating.
I too have bought a few random computers at thrift stores over the years, and have found enough personal data to make several peoples' lives miserable. Not really my style though; I typically wipe them as a first step. Although I did unexpectedly find an older laptop with a legit activated Windows 8 license on it that I just nuked the previous user account on and kept using, since upgraded to 10. It's still impressive to me the kind of things people leave on computers they're donating. I keep seeing the words "common sense" thrown around in this article, but I'm still surprised more people don't have it.
There are several articles out there that detail the rise and fall of RIM/Blackberry. The basic idea is that Mike Lazaridis and other executives refused to allow the devices to develop beyond excellent email machines with nice keyboards, and completely missed the boat on the kind of developments that people came to expect of not just smartphones, but cell phones in general. Cameras, music players, larger screens, even good web browsers. They also completely missed the BYOD culture - if a person is buying one device for both personal and company use, they aren't going to buy the corporate-focused one that isn't much fun. They're going to buy the Android or iPhone or something with good app support that also happens to talk to Exchange.
By the time they started grudglingly adding some of these features, it was already angling towards too late. By then iPhone and Android (and Windows Phone) were offering near-desktop-levels of web browsing support, decent cameras, every kind of music and video playing you could want, while the Blackberry devices hadn't really changed all that much.
Meanwhile they were at least making enough money on paper with existing contracts to at least stay afloat, which really just led to more head-in-sanding.
This, pretty much. I went round and round with AT&T trying to get an off-contract iPhone 4 unlocked for over a year before I ended up trading it in for double-credit on a iPhone 6 for my wife for far more than it would have sold for on eBay or the like even unlocked. They just kept declining it with no explanation, and the customer service reps were no help.