speeding up computers (was Re: Terminals...)

[Jerome H. Fine]

 >Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote:

>> The real problem is windows.  They load it up with bloat so that you
>> need a faster processor and more memory, then drop support for older
>> versions that didn't do so much crud.  The end result is that you're
>> forced into upgrading to a slower operating system (that is, it's
>> doing more) at the same time you're upgrading to faster hardware.
>
> Am I the only one here who uses windows XP and windows 2000 for a LONG 
> time (without reformatting) and everything works? :oO

I am just about to upgrade from Windows 98SE (used since 2002) to a 
Windows XP
system.  I want to use Windows XP to run exactly the same 2 applications 
as the
current system (750 MHz PIII), i.e. Netscape 7.2 and Ersatz-11.

I am about to install Netscape on the Windows XP system since I want to 
drag along
all of the old archives (more than 10 years of e-mails and Usenet).  I 
use Ghost for
back up on the old system as well as on my wife's Windows XP system 
which she
has been running for about a year.  So I am satisfied that it will all 
work quite well.

About the only aspect that I am very disappointed about is the base size 
of the
Windows XP system, i.e. about 6 GB of files.  That seems to compress down to
about 3 GB with Ghost, but that is more than 10 times my backup file on 
the current
Windows 98SE system for just the system software.

Can you make any suggestions as to how you have managed your Windows XP
system over the years that would help me to avoid malware and virus 
problems?

Also to reduce the base size of the system when I do a backup?  On my 
present
system, all of the files are about 2 GB and that compresses with Ghost 
to about
1 GB which allows me to fit 4 months on one 4.7 GB DVD and keep the backup
files at the end of each month.  If I could even end up with just 4 GB 
of files on
the Windows XP system which would fit on one DVD a month, that would be
sufficient.

Jerome Fine