Number 283 - December 2006

Unpleasant Realities
by Robert Hawes (r.d.hawes@hotmail.com) ACGNJ News October 2006
I thought about using the title; "How Gates Spent His Summer Vacation", but much as I enjoy blaming everything bad on Bill, not all of the ways in which the Universe has been conspiring against me lately seem to be completely his fault. Microsoft's discontinuation of all support for Windows 98, 98SE, and ME on July 11, 2006 definitely was, though. I have more to say on that subject, but I'm saving it for later in this article. I want to hit hardware first.    I like building things. I especially like building my own computers. I even like cutting into older computer cases and modifying them to accommodate changes in the design of newer components. Over the years, I've had access to sheet metal bending equipment in two professional establishments, plus one incredibly well stocked basement workshop. There, I was able to produce some extremely elaborately shaped brackets, spacers and supports, to hold everything together in whatever case I was working on at the time. Alas, the friends who owned those places are all gone now, so I can't do as much as I used to, but I can still accomplish quite a bit with hand tools, and I have a lot of fun doing so. However, the handwriting is clearly on the wall for the home-built computer, because Desktop and Tower cases are not long for this world.    The only reason for the cases to be that big was to accommodate IBM's original modular design, allowing users to add or change drives and expansion cards as they wished. I can't claim to have checked every one, but nowadays, I don't know of any commercial computer manufacturer that doesn't void their warranty if the owner even dares to open the case. Remove the internal access requirement, and the case size drops dramatically, or even disappears completely. (Essentially, in the laptop design, everything but the screen is built into the keyboard). It will probably always be possible to get small lots of any case design made. However, since most current name-brand computers now use their own proprietary motherboard designs for desktops as well as laptops (and those designs will inevitably get smaller and smaller), the time may come when it is just not economically feasible for any company to design and make a generic motherboard for use in such a small number of cases. At that point, the do-it-yourself computer market will truly be dead. I feel sorry for mechanically inclined enthusiasts when that happens.    Incidentally, have you seen all the functions being added to cell phones lately? They're well on their way to becoming the universal hand-held data devices that Star Trek called "tricorders". So don't assume that laptop computers have a guaranteed future, either.    Earlier this year, I wrote two articles bemoaning the fact that floppy drives aren't being included in many newer computers. While floppies are not much use for data transfer anymore, they remain extremely useful for troubleshooting. That, I think, is the real reason floppies are being excluded. The manufacturers don't want their customers to be able to do their own diagnosis and repair .They want that market for themselves. (The warranty-void-if-case-opened policy mentioned above also supports this scenario).    Now for some Microsoft bashing: Last summer (June 30, 2005), Microsoft cut down their support for Windows 2000. (They called it transitioning from the Mainstream Support phase to the Extended Support phase). This summer, as noted above, they dropped their other remaining older operating systems completely. Interestingly, Windows 2000 (which came out in 1999) still gets four more years of partial support, but ME (which came out in 2000) gets nothing. How fair is that?    That just leaves XP and the upcoming Vista. Why do I care? Two words: "intrusive" and "bloatware". Let's take intrusive first. I hate pop-ups. Just about the only pop-up message that I'd support would be something like; ..Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock have confused this computer with illogic, so it is going to explode. Start running away now!" Anything less urgent, I don't want leaping onto my screen while I'm trying to work. In XP, distracting drivel jumps up all over the place. And Great God Gates forbid you should change something from the way they want it to be set. You'll keep getting pop-up messages telling you what you did and offering to fix your "mistake". I can see where a special Novice Mode might be good for beginners, but to set this level of Big Brother-ism as the default in an operating system that has the word "professional" in its name is simply unconscionable. Knowing the mindset of the Meddling Minions of Microsoft, Vista can only be worse.    Now for bloatware: Windows 3.1 plus data files fit comfortably in a 30 MB DOS 3.3 partition. If you remember, one of the most annoying deficiencies in Windows 3.1 was the complete absence of any way to remove a program once you had installed it. (There were third party removers such as Norton Uninstall, but you had to pay for them. Otherwise, you had to edit the INI files individually, then guess which files came with the offending program and manually delete them. That was fun). Whenever I wanted to install a new Windows program that I wasn't sure I was going to keep, I would rename my current WINDOWS directory to something like WINDOWX, restore the WINDOWS directory from my last backup, and install the new program there. Then, if I liked the program, I'd delete WINDOWX. If I didn't like it, I'd delete WINDOWS and rename WINDOWX back. At one time, I had a hard drive with five	experimental installations of Windows 3.1 on it. I wrote a batch file that would display a menu, then rename and launch the version that I selected. I don't remember the size of that particular drive, so I can't swear that five complete copies of Windows 3.1 all fit in a single 30 MB partition, but one certainly did.    In a network situation, where no data files were stored on the local drive, a Windows 95 SR2 installation could run just fine on a 100 MB drive. (I worked with a whole bunch of computers like that in '97). Copying the entire WIN95 installation directory from the CD to the hard drive only took up another 81 MB. Even with data files, a complete Windows 95 SR2 system fit easily in 500 MB.    So did NT. I installed Windows NT 4.0 Server for another client on a 486 computer with one 500 MB hard drive. It ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for two years, serving five Windows 95 SR2 workstations. During that time, it never gave any problems or ran out of room for data. Finally, the computer itself died (naturally, at the worst possible time), leaving them with no data and (of course) no recent backups. Fortunately, the drive wasn't damaged, and it was formatted in FAT16 rather than NTFS. To get their network back up quickly, I put the drive in one of their workstations as a temporary second hard disk, copied the data files to a new directory on that computer's C: drive (in case the 500 MB drive decided to die, too), and shared the new directory with the other workstations peer-to-peer. Ultimately, the client decided that this setup worked well enough, and saved money by not replacing the server.    I never tried to install Windows 98 on a 500 MB drive, but I probably could have made it fit if I did. Windows 98 SE could fit comfortably in a 1 GB FAT16 partition, including a modest amount of data files and the 173 MB WIN98 installation directory from the CD. Windows ME could fit in a 1 GB partition, with some data files but without the installation directory. (The WIN9X directory from the CD required another 200 MB). Even Windows 2000 (which was actually NT 5.0) could fit in about 1 GB, without data or an install directory.    It is possible to install XP in a 2 GB FAT16 partition (the maximum size for FAT 16). I know, because I did it once. However, such a setup isn't really usable. XP requires room. Vista, no doubt, will demand roooooom!    If you keep the default System Restore settings on a new installation of Windows XP SP2, and add even one restore point, the size of the system (not including data) balloons to over 6 GB. "What's the problem?" I hear you say; "The average hard drive size is now several hundred GB". I reply; "Try to make an easily transportable off-site backup for one of those systems. Then get back to me". We all know that work expands to fill up the time allotted for its completion, but operating systems don't have to expand to fill the available space. We need that space for our huge data files. Operating systems should be lean and mean.    Linux has its share of bloatware, too. Even from the distributions that are actually trying to keep it down. A few months ago, DSL (Damn Small Linux ) announced that their latest live CD system could no longer fit on a 50 MB business-card size CD. It now takes up 70 MB. Outrageous!    Speaking of Linux, there is an amazing hardware/software project out there that could actually re-shape the future of computing. It's called OLPC (One Laptop per Child). Even though their design doesn't exactly reflect my own ideas about Paranoid Computing and read-only Linux-on-a-chip, it's a fabulous concept, and deserves all the support it can get. Look it up on www.laptop.org.    Another Linux project of note is DeLi Linux (Desktop Light), a distribution for older computers, using "lightweight" alternative software. Supposedly, a full install, including email client, graphical web browser, development tools, and an office package with word processor and spreadsheet, takes up only 350 MB of hard disk space. Their test computer is a 486 laptop with 16 MB RAM, and everything seems to run smoothly. Why would anybody want to set up such a system? Consider this concept; every time someone out there discards an old computer, they are actually throwing away more computing power than existed in the entire world when I was born (1948). I'd guess this probably holds true for people born in the fifties and sixties as well. It seems such a shame that those machines can't be used for something. Well, now they can.    The concept above is not original with me. I adapted it from a quote I read somewhere about one of those little greeting cards that plays a tune when opened. I don't remember who wrote that quote. I would have guessed Isaac Asimov. An Internet search I just did returned contradictory sources; some cited John Huey, some cited Price Pritchett, some just said "someone". I don't recognize those last two names, so I probably didn't get it from either of them directly. Whoever wrote it first, I hope I've given them the credit they deserve. I've passed 1,700 words, so rather than introduce the next item on my "bad things" list; I'm going to wrap up now. Although I titled this article "UNPLEASANT REALITIES", my last few topics were certainly not unpleasant. The OLPC project could even be called inspirational. It's good to end on a high note.
Number 283 - December 2006