If like me you are feeling a bit of a “3G iPhone!!” information overload, here is something to possibly counteract the high-tech marketing hysteria.

A story is told of sometime ago in the days of Windows 98, about a father who used to let his young son play games on the family computer. The father was quite proud of his son, who could find his way around the computer without a problem. Then one day the son cried out “Help me dad, I’m stuck in the black space”. Puzzled, and wondering what game his son could be playing, the father went to have a look. The son was really stuck, no amount of mouse clicks could get him out of the DOS Prompt. The Dad quickly typed “exit” and the computer was back into colorful GUI Windows.

Since then it has become harder to get into the black space of the DOS prompt, it will now open in a non-maximized Window which can be closed with a mouse click. It no long gives dire warnings about closing a Dos Box, since it is no longer DOS, just an emulation.

Out of interest I found a Y2K compliant version of IBM PC DOS right here on PriceGrabber.com. This is real DOS, it actually comes on a CD, like software sometimes still does.