Reader Jonathan Sturm, reflecting on the Microsoft ten reasons to
upgrade, referred to last week, had some further views about the question
"Why upgrade from NT4 to Win2k"...
A few thoughts:
Win2k is subjectively faster with 128 MB or 256 MB of RAM than NT4
with the same amount. Least I've run it in is 64 MB, but I never ran NT4
on that machine. It's a long time since I ran NT4 on 32 MB.
I managed to crash NT4 3 times from the release candidate to when
I switched to the first Win2k beta (as distinct from when it was called NT5).
Win2k hasn't crashed yet. But then again, 2 of the 3 NT4 crashes were directly
attributable to my own stupidity. I'll live with 1/17th of that. Don't know
about reducing my stupidity by that amount :-)
No mention in the top 10 of how Win2k allows replacement of critical
files overwritten by crappy applications. It's great!
Installing USB devices is a dream. Run the installer, plug the device
in and it goes. No reboot!
I fiddle with my network a lot. With Win2k that's no drama. Just load
and unload protocols etc and again no reboot required.
The indexing for fast file finds is a boon. I'm constantly looking
for files I've written based on content.
Offline folders are a joy. If I have to bring my server down, I just
carry on working. A pity it doesn't work with *.pst files.
I could wax lyrical. Win2k lets me get more work done, or skive off
in the garden. I like it! A lot!
My Win2k experience goes back 18 months or more I suppose. I have
found nothing to dislike except occasional driver issues. And they are no
longer a problem. Going back to NT4 would mean dual booting to Win98 to access
my scanner and removable HDD. Unless I wanted to live inside Win98 full-time
and put up with incessant crashes and crappy multitasking. Now why would
anyone want to do that?
http://www.sturmsoft.com/
To which I reply...
Thanks for the nice overview, Jonathan. I find little to disagree with here.
Much of W2k functionality is stuff that would have been nice in NT4, especially
the less frequent reboot requirement. This is perhaps a result of the core
rewrite more than anything else (and some study of how e.g. Unix and Linux
handle reconfiguration on the fly). Whatever, I've always thought the Windows
reboots excessive and annoying in the extreme, so was pleased to see most
such situations vanish.
Subjective speed is a funny thing. When I first installed W2k (the beta)
it seemed to me so much slower to boot than NT4, but really it wasn't. It
was all a perceptual trick of how the splash screens came and how boot progress
was indicated. Then in the desktop, the default setting for unrolling menu
made overall system response seem sluggish, even when in actual fact the
click to action time was often faster than NT4.
I still work mainly in NT4 for a variety of reasons, the most important being
a number of legacy (unsupported since the NT4 version) hardware drivers/apps
that don't play under W2k (BSOD). Then again, I have similar problems under
Linux (no drivers for the hardware), and this is due to my relatively locked
hardware setup using a notebook as main productivity system. I'm also less
than thrilled with the 600+ Mb footprint of the basic installation and would
love to dump much of the wizardry fluff.
Really, I find that I have no compelling reason (yet) to fast-track a migration
from NT4 to W2k, but I can understand the overall positive experiences of
those who have fully moved into it. I mean, I've run it, and I like many
parts of it. The parts I dislike are fortunately configurable and can be
made to go away, once you find the dialogs for the relevant settings. It's
rather like the situation with the Office package. There are no
compelling reasons to move from say Office97 applications to Office2000
unless document format requirements dictate it, but that said, there are
many nice features and fixes in for example Word2000, which I've used
extensively. (I do still prefer to do serious writing in Adobe FrameMaker,
but that's maybe just me and the significantly lower resource-hogging it
entails. Even so, the outline engine and the reviewing markup in Word are
both very nice tools in special circumstances.)
The bottom line is that if I was (re)installing from bare medium, I'd probably
go with W2k today as the productivity system since I have the CD, but it's
just not worth my time to bring down a functional NT4 system and rebuild
a working system as W2k. For much the same reason, my gaming dual-boot is
with W95B rather than W98SE (which I also have on CD) -- it's there, functional,
and not too badly broken <g>. For the Outlook book, I rebuilt the
productivity core around the Office2000 suite, but after over time checking
out all the applications, I cut this installation down to the essential three:
Word, Excel and Outlook, plus a few minor utilities like Photo Editor. A
few times I've had to reinstall Powerpoint when I've gotten translations
in ppt format, but this doesn't stay past job completed.
I know, this should perhaps have been put on the wiki, but I'm unsure of
how many follow such a link given the discussions of yore about the "bother"
of having to click extra times when trying to make the Daynote rounds.
(Jonathan, you could always make a personal page for yourself as
JonathanSturm, thereby
introducing yourself to the readership and making some PR for your
site.)
Washing day today, which kind of put a wet blanket on any ideas of using
the continued good weather for walks. Shame, but so it goes. The forecast
is for more, however, so there's hope. The rest of the day goes to shifting
bags&boxes, this time moving stuff into basement storage. More floor
space is recovered as the afternoon progresses.
Over the weekend I got around to glancing through the Headhunter
magazine from last week. My mother had picked it up on her flight. I thought
it'd be interesting to see what kind of top management was in demand these
days. I don't often see that Swedish adzine. There was surprisingly little
as it turned out, and many of the full-page ads were simply repeated once
again on the facing page. All together just a handful of pages for the national
demand for new leadership. Huh...
The fuel blockades continue, although the Norwegians seem to have called
off their version today. Now Sweden and Finland "hauliers" (as they're
generally called in the European reports) are setting up blockades of major
(oil) harbors, demanding lower diesel prices. Very unclear what the result
of this will be, apart from consumer and corporate bother, and some traffic
problems. How about something that really hits home in government instead,
like a complete tax-and-duty-payment moratorium? That's easy enough: everybody
in the chain just stops passing along the tax costs.
A footnote follow-up on the Öresund Bridge... It was reported on Friday
that average traffic flow over the Malmö-Copenhagen bridge is dropping
and had fallen to its lowest yet: only 6000 vehicles per day. This is less
than half of what's needed for financial break-even. So much for the
projections...
In real life, there are always exceptions. One of the first
things you learn about task analysis is that no case follows the average
rules to the letter -- Jakob Nielsen
Ah, finally, the tech review comments came in, en masse, an even
dozen, so now the rest of the week's activities appears well-defined:
read-consider-edit; re-read, reconsider, re-edit, and so on. The timing is
about right -- moving chaos almost cleared up, other commitments not quite
imminent yet. These were all articulate and caring high-level reviews, which
really help put the current text into sharp perspective from the reader point
of view. Just what I needed for the final push to submission. The wiki book
looks to be a real winner...
Anyway, it ended up being very late, suddenly, and I find that I have little
comment left for the day, which was mostly spent in some catch-up reading
when I had time for the computer. Next is to enforce a more disciplined schedule
for the editing work that starts tomorrow.
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
-- Mark Twain
Another great day. In fact we had dinner outdoors, despite the sun no longer
fully on the patio. Ok, so it wasn't height-of-summer temperature, but it
was still acceptable.
I've noticed a number of discussions of privacy, or rather lack of, on various
US-centric forums lately. Living in the kind of society I do, with
long-established, centralized registries and supposedly secure guarantees
that such information won't be misused, I can't say that any of such discussions
brings up anything new. Much "private" information is in fact easily available
to just about anyone -- you can start with an arbitrary fact, say with a
car license plate, and with little or no trouble uncover just about anything
worth knowing about any individual -- safeguards or no. And just to spice
things a little, police or other authorities have this recurring habit of
faxing sensitive personal information to incorrect phone numbers from time
to time. Alternatively, restricted personal investigation files turn up at
the municipal dump or on a park bench, quietly blowing in the wind. So much
is still paper-based, even though the original registry records are all
computerized. As for e-file copies, who knows? -- the evidence is then somewhat
more volatile.
I had a thought about misguided security measures the other day. As mentioned
in an earlier posting, I changed the address records for our bank accounts.
Now the banks here, being somewhat paranoid (for their own sake, not ours),
require us to make the address change in person at our branch office. But
in fact, they already know about the change through the national
registry change effected through the Post Office form for address change
and forwarding -- like many places, they get automatic updates. Once the
record is changed, the bank then sends a notification to the old
address in case the change is fraudulent. On the other hand, since the change
is vetted against the registry/forwarding change, the bank must know that
the notification mail gets forwarded, so what's the point? A number of scams
every year are based on identity theft and fraudulent forwarding of mail
-- all it takes is a week or two to clean out the victim, individual or small
business..
Speaking of banks, there was an item in the news today about an employee
at one who had been tapping the accounts of her friends and acquaintances.
This rampant siphoning had gone on for some time -- makes you wonder. Can't
even trust your friends... However, I won't go into a recent series of stories
about dishonest lawyers fleecing both the state and individuals, except to
note that there was public surprise that court lawyers could submit bills
for e.g. travel costs without any supporting paperwork to substantiate the
costs charged. Apparently, lawyers are held in such high esteem that they
alone, of all professionals submitting bills to the state authorities, are
not required to specify and validate charges passed on. Weird...
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses
simply have their bright ideas closer together. -- George
Lichtenberg
Further explorations of the neighborhood -- weather still fine, if nippy
at night and in the early morning. Isabel and I walked a lot before lunch,
and checked out a local supermarket that was a ways off drom the big mall
area just South of here. This was well worth the visit, though one would
normally drive there, not walk. Or take a bus.
Our daughter saw a cat run over today, which was not a pleasant experience
to end the day on, but it confirms our decision to keep ours on a leash when
allowed out on the patio. Cats and cars don't mix. i'm not afraid...
i'll bite their bumpers off... Oh shut it, Salem!
We solved supper by firing up our small grill and seeing what a BBQ felt
like on the patio. Not bad at all.
I got back to looking at a couple of the book chapters this evening. The
time away has done me good. I could quickly see where changes were needed
and the text flowed smoothly and clearly from my tapping fingers. If I can
keep that perspective, the final edit should be pretty clear sailing.
Life has no rehearsals, only performances.
A reader comment
on the wiki apropos yesterday's postings. (Got to Thursday's heading.on that
page.)
Reworking/augmenting the first couple of (intro) chapters to give it all
a "better read" -- some actual typing, but as yet much just pondered in my
head. The latter was necessary, since we booked in what turned out to be
a double wash pass during the day, morning and evening -- we want to wash
everything after the move (much was used as padding and may no longer be
fresh or strictly clean).
Not much else to report. My esteemed daynote colleagues will have to do all
those other crazy things so I won't have to...
Dan Seto agrees with me
that commenting Politics on a web page is likely to get you more flames than
commenting Religion. At any rate that's his experience after making numerous
comments about both.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
-- Henri Louis Bergson
I was pointed at this new
Microsoft "corporate"
URL 
,
which may prove interesting for some of my readers who are tired of MS wizardry
and automatic agent-updates to your running system over the web. The point
of this alternative is that "IT professionals" can search the MS update database
based on your own criteria, not what the site automatically detects from
your machine. Thus you can download specific updates to specified platforms
as files that you can move to the target machine and install there, bypassing
Windows Update. There's also provision for tracking your own download history.
Site caveats at this time of writing:
Persistent cookies must be accepted to access the site.
In order to use the Windows Update Corporate Site, you will need to
be running Internet Explorer 4 or later on a Windows x86 system.
The Corporate Site can only be accessed by Internet browsers that support
ActiveX Controls. For more information about ActiveX Controls, please refer
to the
Windows
Update FAQ.
Some other pertinent addresses:
As always, should you decide to use any or all of these URLs, and
any or all of them turn out to be 404, or an ActiveX control self-destructs
your system, or worse, LeufCom will disavow any knowledge of your
activities or intentions -- past, present or future -- and cannot be held
accountable for the vagarities of Microsoft(R) sites, products or extensions,
or the constant reshuffling of the aforementioned web addresses or redirectors.
Good luck, dear reader. For your own safety, your system will now self-destruct
in five seconds to foil covert broadcasting to remote MS GUID sniffers.
US sales statistics suggest that perhaps 250,000 copies of WinME were sold
during the first month, which is lackluster indeed and about a third less
than comparable first month sales of Win95 and Win98, despite the significantly
lower retail pricetag on WinME. Nevertheless, with pre-installed systems
now shipping with the OEM version of WinME (traditionally at about factor
30 more than retail sales), this will automatically mean a user base in the
hundreds of millions in short order.
Enough about our favorite virus-assimilation-system... :)
There's never enough time to read everything one wants to, and the web is
especially problematic since I keep getting sidetracked following interesting
leads. "Just a click away" turns into many pages removed before you know
it (and time's up).
Anyway, our daughter had a fun day at her cousin's today, playing Ultima
Online (they have DSL and a 3-computer network at home). Ultima
appears to be very addictive for anyone into fantasy and multi-user games
-- very well implemented with good graphics and excellent playability in
the various worlds, and clearly constantly evolving. Some of the more imaginative
SF descriptions of virtual-world gaming are evidently just about here. As
for me, I tried not to get involved in this timesink, and went for a walk
instead -- lovely afternoon. Have been feeling some bug a few days, and today
was especially bothersome with a headache and extreme tiredness, so it was
good to be out for a while, away from screens and other such temptations.
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order
to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer
spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you
impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. -- Woodrow Wilson
A truly glorious day, which we spent on an outing to a friend's
country house. It really felt like the kind of summer day we've had so few
of this year. Better late than never. A peaceful day, and a needed recharging
of both corporeal and spiritual batteries for us all.
Back home, I could eventually catch up on some email and make this short
posting. The coming week looks fairly busy, including a few meetings about
future prospects for interesting projects. We'll see. I'm also casting about
a bit for a book to follow the wiki one. I've worked up several proposals
earlier, but my agent indicates that publisher focus is elsewhere at the
moment -- advanced programming?. Hmm... What will the bookshop
customers be looking for in a year's time that I can write about now, and
that a publisher agrees is doable? I suppose that's the proper question...?
(Or: How can I get a computer book on the Oprah Book Club list?
Now that's a question worth pondering!)
For every problem there is a solution which is simple, clean
and wrong. -- Henry Louis Mencken
