What is importance of MS-DOS in developing countries?

Answer 1

MS-DOS or one of the many variations on it (DR-DOS, IBM-DOS FREE-DOS) as well as a Russian version are still available. There are programs still being developed for it and there exist programs able to do almost any task done by more up-to-date programs. And there exist a lot of copies of many programs that were developed earlier. In addition, DOS is very stable and runs on almost any machine, even Macintosh. In addition it is not so sensitive to current fluctuations and current outages. One of the problems in much of the world is unreliable electricity. Windows is sensitive to sudden power losses and automatically does a complete check (scandisk) whenever there is a sudden current loss. Linux and Unix are even more sensitive to current loss or even fluctuation. DOS just comes back on and many programs had automatic back-up and provide a "last saved version." One learns to save often in those types of situations. DOS provides a reasonable step from a non-digital world to a digital world-just as it did in the West earlier, operating simpler and logically, and reliably where there is a more difficult social situation. And the slight loss of efficiency in not having multi-tasking and slower printing (usually only older printers have DOS functuality) is offset by the lower wage structure in those countries. Also, note, that there were versions of DOS developed and support equipment including printers and fonts for all different alphabets (and sylabaries). Vietnamese fonts are offered along with word processors and also for several languages in India. Arabic, Russian and Japanese have their own versions of DOS capable of dealing with the pecularities of those alphabets.