Why are software company's just supporting windows xp/vista now?

[M.I.5¾]

Hill and dale must be pretty old. Wonder when they (I mean most of them)
switched to lateral? Maybe in the 1920's?

Hill and Dale originated in Phonograph Cylinders. Disc records were lateral
cut from the day Emille Berliner invented them in 18whenever (it avoided
paying Edison royalty as his patent only covered hill and dale). The French
company Pathé adopted hill and dale solely because the French governmnent
wanted to prevent French citizens from playing 'unsuitable' foreign records.

Yup, as I recall now the generic diameter was 3 mil for a 78 stylus and
0.7 mil for a 33 stylus (although the good ones were elliptical, and not
conical), so using that as a rough estimate, the 78 stylus is in the order
of 4 times larger in diameter!

The official radius for microgroove vinyl is indeed 0.0007 inch in conical
stylus, but 0.0007 x 0.0004 (and 0.0007 x 0.0002 exists as well) for
elliptical (though the multi-radials tracked even better). Contrary to
popular belief, the idea behind elliptical styli was far from new as all of
the later Edison phonographs were fitted with a 'doorknob' stylus which was
elliptical in vertical cross section as well as horizontal (roughly from the
introduction of the moulded black wax records onwards).

The reverse problem faced those who succeeded in getting their hands on 16
2/3 rpm records. These were intended to be played with a 0.0025 inch
stylus, but many tried to play them with a standard LP stylus and wondered
why the sound was crap. This led many to believe that they were only
suitable for speech, but they were intended for music (and the idea was for
in car use using a smaller diameter disc).

If he uses that 33 stylus on a 78 record, I figure it will be very noisy
in playback, and not all that great for the stylus OR the record, in terms
of wear and tear.

It all depends on the radius of stylus it was intended to be played with.
It also depends on how good the stylus used to cut the original matrix was
(the playback stylus should contact roughly mid way up the groove walls and
not the bottom). If the cutting stylus was in good condition, a conical
0.001 stylus may just miss the bottom especially on the smaller grooved
records. The stylus wear will be quite low on relatively new or well
looked after records (new records had hardly any surface noise), but
obviously increase if the record is in any way worn. A modern cartridge and
stylus will not wear the record itself at all as the records were designed
to be played with steel needles with tracking weights of well over 100
grammes (think of the weight of the sound box on an old wind up
grammophone).

 

[M.I.5¾]

You are right in that is is "just your opinion", but your "assumption"
about the rest is incorrect. The software companies can "write for any
operating system they choose to". They don't need any permission from
Microsoft.

Although true, in practice, writing software for (say) Vista only is less
expensive than writing for Vista and XP.

 

[M.I.5¾]

Corrected below.



Hill and dale must be pretty old. Wonder when they (I mean most of them)
switched to lateral? Maybe in the 1920's?

Yup, as I recall now the generic diameter was 3 mil for a 78 stylus and
0.5
mil for a 33 stylus (although the good ones were elliptical, and not
conical), so using that as a rough estimate, the 78 stylus is in the order
of 4 times larger in diameter!

If he uses that 33 stylus on a 78 record, I figure it will be very noisy
in
playback, and not all that great for the stylus OR the record, in terms of
wear and tear.

Stereo?