CodeToast

Malware sucks, Anti-Malware sucks nearly as bad.

As for what it sucks, that would be system performance. It had been a long time since I’ve used Anti-Virus software on my Windows system, I hadn’t realized how bad the performance issue had gotten until I saw the benchmarks. I’d had more trouble with the Anti-Virus software itself than it could have possibly saved me, since well, it never found anything.

Part of the problem is that for quite a while now Spyware has been much more of a problem than conventional viruses, but the big boys like Norton and MacAfee have been slow to adjust and pick this up. Things are starting to change in that regard, but that leaves the issue of speed. More…

I’m bored of all this Smorgas.

It’s common in software that often the absolute basics get trumped by candy-coated interfaces and lists of features that mostly go unused (hmm.. MS office 2001-present?). In fact it used to be that the Operating System’s central role was actually memory and I/O management, can you imagine?  It is an easy mistake to make. It is fun making new features; tail-wagging dogs that help you search or desktop gadgets that crash in new and interesting ways. The saying that “every program will eventually expand until it can read mail”, is pretty insightful.  I swore off using Winamp on the dark day that it took over my video associations, but still couldn’t seem to handle ’shuffle’ correctly - it seemed at the time that every application was expanding until it could play movies.

There is way too much going on here.

More…

Ask not what your Operating System can do for you.

I recall first using Windows 3.1 and thinking it was pretty cool - but man they needed to do somthing about the file manager. I was a DOS user, accustomed to xcopy and the superb XTree and XTreeGold applications. I’m not asking for too much - just the basic abilities xcopy offers, like continuation after an error, copying files after a newer date, and the like. You know though, Windows 95 was just a few years around the corner - I was sure they would fix the basics by then.

Windows 95 didn’t do much for file management, other than eliminate the MDI interface we were just getting used to. In fact, the notoriously bad progress message during file operations just made things worse - it wouldn’t even tell us how fast the bytes were moving. I set to work on a shell extension to add some of the xcopy goodness to Windows Explorer. More…

The Zen of Operating Systems

I am a self-diagnosed O/S addict. If hardware is your computer’s body, then the Operating System is it’s soul. Makes you wonder what karmic mistake we made to deserve Vista, eh?

This vice of mine started with the various computers I use at home or work - I have an general rule that with all the choices out there, each system should use a different O/S. Sure, it’s a bit more administrative work - but it is fun, and gives me an excuse to keep up to date. And to read new posts on DistroWatch like a kid on Christmas morning. More…