Jump to content

Guyk

Members
  • Posts

    11
  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never

Guyk's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (1/14)

0

Reputation

  1. Actually, I'm increasingly a voice in the dark. If you use the right (small) programs, you do not need to upgrade at all. I'm still using a Pentium 2 400Mhz machine with 128Mb of RAM. A machine with a lower spec than yours. Because my page on this is down for at least a couple of days, I'll give the full monty here; I hope it encourages you to save the EUR700+ you were going to spend. Getting the most out of your investment in a PC is not easy. It is constantly changing as I try out new applications to make my life easier. First a couple of pointers. useful info to start: go to http://www.goosee.com/best/index.html for some of the philosophy, (ie the "why bother"), read http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,1583,a=12641,00.asp by Joel Durham on reducing boot time and visit http://www.tinyapps.org, from where most of the applications below have come. Miles Wolbe has put together an excellent collection of small, efficient and well-written apps. My recommendation is to use Windows 98SE. For a home/office PC you do not need to upgrade to XP or 2003, particularly if your PC is over two years old. You should then partition your hard drive into c: for windows only, d: for applications and e: for data. I used http://www.ranish.com/part/ Ranish's Partition Manager 2.44 (60k download). This means that you can reinstall windows without having to backup all your apps and data, and by keeping all data on e:, you can easily backup, I use http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm to fully utilise my Gmail account (free 1Gb of space). You need to be invited to join Gmail at the moment, but I have six invites if anyone would like one. Format c:, but read http://www.methylblue.com/windows/reinstalltutorial.php first, and reinstall windows using http://www.litepc.com/98micro.html 4.7 (319k download). This wonderful piece of software is by far the most useful application I have ever bought. It nails the lie that Internet Explorer is integral to windows, and using the "micro" install option, enables you to get rid of all the "optional extras" that windows automatically loads when installing. This creates an operating system that is small (under 70MB as opposed to 125MB for a typical install), fast, stable and just works. My machine boots in 16 seconds, closes down in less than 1 second and has not crashed in months. Once you have your clean machine, I recommend the following apps: backup http://www.softlookup.com/download.asp?ID=9372&DID=4J58YURT XClone 1.3 (20k download) will clone a whole drive or directory. I have cloned a clean, fresh windows directory on to d:\clone just after doing a 98lite install and having made all the tweaks to the file system and registry. This means I never have to install windows again, I just clone from d:\clone back to c:\windows. It takes under 3 minutes. browser and email http://www.opera.com/ Opera 8.0 beta (3550k download) is much smaller and faster than Firefox and IE and renders all sites perfectly (now, even secure sites). Opera has come on leaps and bounds in the past few months. The email system is excellent too. For those that know what they're doing I would also recommend Proxomitron to kill ads and pretend to be IE for those sites that insist you use it. (Ask if you want more info). firewall I use a simple, clean and secure firewall called http://www.looknstop.com/En/index2.htm Look'n'Stop 2.05 (473k download). word processor Try http://www.rssol.com/en/html/download/nova.htm Atlantis Nova 1.0.0.66 (760k download) You will be amazed at how close it is to Word without the size or expense. spreadsheet http://www.byedesign.freeserve.co.uk Spread32 1.20 (490k download) is the Excel alternative that will import and export on almost all platforms. It is a fantastic achievement by the author, Stephen Bye. zip files http://www.freebyte.com/hjzip HJ Zip 1.0 (310k download) is the all-round archiver, unzipping beautifully and creating archives that are much smaller the the competition. mp3 player http://www.mpesch3.de/">1by1 1.47 (57k download) is an mp3 player which is not only small, it plays whole directories without a playlist. video player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html VLC 0.8.1 (6700k download) small, fast, effective... works! acrobat reader http://foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php Foxit pdf Reader 1.2 0101 (893k download) I hate acrobat because it is slow, uses an unbelievable amount of resources and the later versions are full of spyware. This application is the solution. You do not even need to ever load Acrobat for this to work and it is very fast in operation. anti-virus http://www.f-prot.com/currentversions.html F-Prot 3.14e (1856k download) is the best anti-virus software in the world. It is free and updated religiously. diary, calendar, address book etc http://www.isbister.com/chaos32.html Time & Chaos 4.95 (754k download) is my fantastic PIM. The link will take you to the latest version, but I am using the 16bit version, as it is still the best PIM released and of course works perfectly in a 32bit environment. It is worth noting at this point that I do not necessarily use the latest version of my applications. In small apps run by individuals it is worthwhile as there are continual adjustments and improvements. But for large company apps, including Windows, newer does not necessarily mean better. I recommend you look at http://www.oldversion.com/ to find out more. Anyway, back to the list. IM http://www.e-messenger.net/ eMessenger (0k download) uses MSN messaging core and operates through any browser. This is doubly great because I had previously had to load the MSHTML core in order to run Easy Message or Miranda (both excellent apps btw), but now I do not even need that. drive cleaner http://www.casperize.com/dustbuster/dust_en.htm Dustbuster 2.8.1 (191k download) is a garbage removal system for windows that deletes over 1500 types of redundant and temporary files without effecting your data or installed apps. registry cleaner http://www.macecraft.com/brief_rs/ RegSupreme 1.2 (745k download) is designed to manage your Windows registry. You can search for items, uninstall applications, clear histories, clean your registry and more. What I tend to do is run regseeker and then drop to DOS and run regscan /fix and regscan /opt before exiting back to windows. This cleans, fixes and optimises the registry. (This is why my PC does not crash and why I have thankfully forgotten what a BSOD looks like). FTP, notepad and HTML editor http://www.editplus.com/download.html Editplus 2.11 (860k download) is an html editor, notepad replacement, spell checker and FTP client. I use it to design, build and run my websites. So, I hope this demonstrates that you can run a Windows 98 machine for the foreseeable future. These are the apps to create and maintain my PC, and the apps I use all day, every day. This list is not exhaustive, but if you download all of these programs, the total is 13.6Mb. This compares with a download of 19.8Mb for IE6 SP1 from Microsoft. I will leave you to make the comparison. Guy Kirkwood
  2. Thank you everyone - will try everything suggested and if no luck will get new card!
  3. Thank you Robbie for your response. The problem seems to have arisen after our daughter was trying to play an interactive game yesterday. Our digibox is always on and never unplugged. We did try to unplug it this morning and that did not work. The card is the up to date one which you mention and I hope that it is OK that we have taken out and re-inserted it. We put it on ITV and the message now reads 'initializing new sky card please wait.' What are your thoughts? Thanks again.
  4. Zone Alarm and AVG are both good applications. Personally I use F-Prot for anti-virus and Look'n'stop for firewall. They are both small, effective and free. My recommendation is that you check shields up! at https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 This will check to ensure that your firewall is working as it should.
  5. Like Leschenauds I've been using opera for many years. It is very fast, small, unbloated and has the best (imho) email client available. (If you have ever "lost" messages that are buried in outlook folders, you will really appreciate this). opera is available from http://www.opera.com/
  6. This morning we have no itv,4 or 5. When looking in system set up there is no viewing card number - I am sure that one was there before as we have the number written down. The card is a bbc freeview and was bought about 22 months ago.Any suggestions please?
  7. Hi forum For the past 48 hours we have been unable to get sky (at all). We get the message "No satellite signal is being received" yet the signal strength and signal quality are 85% and 75% respectively. We can also still access the planner - just no channels. Please does anyone have any suggestions. TIA
  8. Hi all I am sorry to have taken so long to answer. Why not XP? The answer is personal preference, (ie I prefer to spend my money on things other than upgrading my PC). If you use your PC for email, browsing, simple documents and the like, you *do* need the fastest internet connection you can get/afford, but you do *not* need a PC that runs the latest office suite and games. If games are your thing, you will undoubtedly require a fast processor, motherboard and graphics card - these things cost a lot of money and are simply not worth it if you are not going to use them. I use Windows 98 on a five year-old PC. I often work from home and find that in many areas my machine is actually faster in everyday use than my colleagues' latest whizz-bang tablet computers. Why? Because I use simple software that is not bloated with redundant features. This also means that the PC is immune to many of the virii and worms that are becoming more prevalent by the day. For anyone interested, I have written a page looking at this in more detail http://www.antiphon.co.uk/kirkwood/software.htm. Most usefully, the page has links to the software that I have found to follow the "simpler is better" rule. I may be stuck in the mud technologically, but if I can do what I want to do using cheap (and in most cases free), simple and well-written software, then that's what I'll continue to do. Hope that helps guyk
  9. I have written an entire page on the "upgrade" problem. It is at http://www.antiphon.co.uk/kirkwood/software.htm This should persuade you that the upgrade to XP is not worth it. Buy a new 40gb hard drive for about EUR40. It is easy to install and then use Xclone to transfer your data (not the OS) to the new drive after loading ME (or preferably win98SE if you have a copy). Hope that helps
  10. Nick The note, as everyone else has confirmed, is genuine. I had the same problem and on Mazan's suggestion moved accounts to 9online. I am not sure if it is a bug, but I can get 128k connection at all times (using the Numeris Duo I had installed). The charges are about EUR20 per month and I am online at least 10 hours a day working from home. the offer is at: http://www.neuf.fr/offres/rtc/offre.asp?classe=rtc&debit=illimite However, before you do this, check using you postcode on: http://www.agence.francetelecom.com/vf/navs/frame.php?fh=5&fg=5&cf=A/vf/internet_multimedia/haut_debit/index.shtml to see when ADSL is being switched on in your commune. ADSL will only work with an analogue line, so FT will need to convert your ISDN line back to analogue if that is all you have. Hope that helps
  11. Following excellent posts from Mazan and RichardBK, we have gone with 9online (http://www.9online.fr/offres/illimite/default.asp?classe=illimite) using dual channel ISDN - ADSL is a distant dream. The service, so far, is fine.
×
×
  • Create New...