Knowledge is Power
Nov. 16th, 2006 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieDid you know that you can break Microsoft Word's ability to do anything with a file (except open it, and even that is shaky) if the Word doc in question is over 500 MB? Nope, I didn't either, until yesterday. But the photo group file is so huge (538 MB, or over half a GB, if you think that way) that you can't delete, copy, paste, save, or otherwise change the file. Word will open it - eventually - but all the menu options are greyed out, and that's it. Open and close. Nothing else.
Kind of cool, really, and makes me nostalgic, too. I haven't worked on files that were too big for Word since back in the 80's, when the novel I was working on at the time was too big for Word 1.0 and the dual-floppy IBM PC (with color monitor!) that sat in an honored spot in my parent's family room. I had to ask for something called a "RAM drive" for Christmas that year, so I could load the file into memory...and when I got it, I not only had to install it inside the case, but manually set the switches (remember those?) on the card... Still one of the niftiest and geekiest presents I have ever gotten, and one of the few I can remember working on putting together with my Dad. My parents, being sensible people, avoided giving us presents that had to be "assembled" until we were old enough to most-if-not-all the assembling ourselves. (It's possible they gave us things that they pre-assembled themselves when we weren't capable of putting said things together, but if so, we didn't know about it; and I still think they were really smart to NOT give us things that required assembly if we couldn't do it. Nothing worse than frustrated kids and/or parents under assembly pressure.)
One of these days I'm going to have to toddle over to the MS museum and see if they have an old IBM PC, if only to find out if my memory of our first home computer is even remotely accurate.
Kind of cool, really, and makes me nostalgic, too. I haven't worked on files that were too big for Word since back in the 80's, when the novel I was working on at the time was too big for Word 1.0 and the dual-floppy IBM PC (with color monitor!) that sat in an honored spot in my parent's family room. I had to ask for something called a "RAM drive" for Christmas that year, so I could load the file into memory...and when I got it, I not only had to install it inside the case, but manually set the switches (remember those?) on the card... Still one of the niftiest and geekiest presents I have ever gotten, and one of the few I can remember working on putting together with my Dad. My parents, being sensible people, avoided giving us presents that had to be "assembled" until we were old enough to most-if-not-all the assembling ourselves. (It's possible they gave us things that they pre-assembled themselves when we weren't capable of putting said things together, but if so, we didn't know about it; and I still think they were really smart to NOT give us things that required assembly if we couldn't do it. Nothing worse than frustrated kids and/or parents under assembly pressure.)
One of these days I'm going to have to toddle over to the MS museum and see if they have an old IBM PC, if only to find out if my memory of our first home computer is even remotely accurate.
