Are there any good alternatives to Classic Shell for Windows?

lol That's ok. I don't think the program is known well outside of computer geeks. It was a simple program put together by a computer guru in his free time and he gave it away free for many years; only just recently stopping development on it because it was taking up too much of his time. I wouldn't have known about it if I hadn't been complaining that I couldn't adapt to the new Windows. Someone was kind enough to take pity on me and gave me the workaround. But, like I said, I'm afraid the program is infected now, since I've had multiple computers catch the same virus after install. Bah. It's the only thing that makes Windows tolerable for me. 

Technologically challenged minds think alike! :)

I had XP pro until 2 years ago.

I reckon XP Pro, and its contemporary Office suite, marked MS' peak of achievement, and they've been going downhill since. All MS seems interested in now, are the smart-phone, social-network and entertainments users; not anyone who might want to use a computer for anything more serious.

I still have them on an off-line computer I keep to be able to use older software or data files.

Yeah...and now you have to pay for 'Office". I'm glad I no longer need it.

Outright one-off purchase (as available for years now anyway) or an open-ended subscription?

Adobe and MS have for some time now, been trying this on with .pdf and .docx files, which I found a nightmare when trying to collate reports in assorted formats, from different committee members in my club. These are primarily images you cannot edit without appropriate conversion software - but when you select file type from the handy drop-down conversion menu and press "Convert", it takes you to Adobe's sales page instead. 

WinZip's gone the same way, and it is very expensive, something over £30/month for a programme you might use no more than a couple of times a year, if that.

I don't mind an outright purchase. I do not expect to receive goods or services for free. Nor do I mind a subscription to a service if it is honest and of fair value. I do object to the underhand way some software firms sell their products, especially when the products' quality and efficiency are falling.

The problem is as Just Asking found though, that whilst you can usually trust the programmes from the major manufacturers, if you try to circumvent their monopoly and enforcement of rigid choice limits, you cannot trust the alternatives you might find.

Thanks...but I am so tech unsavvie, I have no idea what you are saying.

I'm no expert, just a computer owner, though I was a regular user of Word and Excel at work, which had trained me in using PCs in the first place.

My primary point is not technical, but economic.

I fear the trade is moving to your having to pay a hell of a lot more money for the programmes you use, whether regularly like the Internet access or 'Word', or very infrequently like WinZip.

WinZip converts software published in a highly-compressed form, into one your computer can install; so not something you'd use very often. I receive frequent pop-up ads for WinZip, telling me my existing version is "out of date". That probably means it will no longer work, but the sales page opened by the pop-up shows the new WinZip is available only by uneconomically costly subscription.

I know .docx and .xlsx files only as forms into which Word documents (title.doc) and Excel spread-sheets (title.xls) are now converted automatically if attached to e-mails. The result is that along with title.pdf files (similar to basic photocopy files), they are locked against editing until and unless released by extra software rented at high prices from Adobe.

To be fair, I don't know if WIN10 includes release software as standard, but my own experience showed WIN10 to be a disaster, and its Office-type applications to be rubbish. I took the opportunity offered at the time, to revert to WIN7 Pro, but still had to spend hours rebuilding web-site registrations W10 had destroyed.

I encountered the "....x" files first when preparing to retire, and needed to send files relating to pensions from work to home PC. Subsequent encounters were in receiving them as e-mailed documents in different styles I wanted to collate into cohesive sets I could print sensibly.


So it's not a matter of technical knowledge, but of money! I think companies like Microsoft and Adobe are moving to expensive subscription sales methods, meaning either uneconomic rents in open-ended contracts totalling far more than outright purchase, or making do without the software.     

If you ever need it "Open Office" is a free version of Microsoft Office and will work with your MSOffice files.

https://www.openoffice.org

Thank you for the tip.

As it happens I tried Open Office a good few years ago, probably in WIN 5 days, and it failed so disastrously I was unable to recover one PC. When a second attempt on another computer failed, I saved this PC but only by being able to use its available, DOS command-lines method, to find and delete individually every one of the 150+ Open Office files.

 So twice bitten, third time shy!


Now, I have WIN 7 Pro and its applications work well enough, as do TurboCAD and a couple of other third-party applications.

A year after buying this computer, MS started bombarding me with pop-ups for the newly "rolled out" (inflicted) WIN10, so eventually I fell for it... What a mistake that proved to be! Luckily the free down-load did include a reversion offer. At least I had been careful to select NOT the great big "FULL INSTALL" or whatever it was labelled, but the titchy little button for "Custom", so I could reject swathes of gimmicks & surplus including I think Cortana, as well as blocking, or minimising, MS' data-mining. 

I also have an off-line PC with WIN XP, kept as I am reasonably sure it can read data and programme files W7 won't, and for its contemporary version of Excel (better than later ones). I think it might even take some old but useful, photo-faffing programmes I still have on their CDs. 

Wow. I have used OpenOffice for years....too cheap to pay for MSOffice. It is the first thing I install on a new computer. I have never had any issues. 

I use Kingsoft and it is completely compatible with Office and about the same to use.  I stopped paying MS for production software a long time ago.  Even working from home I use the Kingsoft with no problem.  And, it's free!  I used to use Open Office with no problem as well.

The option is built right into W10; I use it on two computers.  

Lol. I did not know that...I have W10.