[Thinkpad] advantages of reduced operating systems and older hardware

From: Andrew in Ann Arbor <andrewaa_at_comcast.net>
Date: Mon Feb 23 2004 - 00:51:56 EST

> From: "Justin F. Knotzke"
> I have zero idea how Andrew thinks he's going to "disable" the
>portion of Windows with the security flaw.

I must confess I'm not smart enough to de-bug an OS.
My approach is to leave out all the parts of the OS that I don't need.
All the thinking was done by the folks at <www.litePC.com>.
Their website promised me that a reduced OS installation would require
less RAM, less disk space, be faster and more secure.
So far (several years) I've been happy with the results. I think LitePC
has been the best $40 I've spent on software.
I have had problems with a few programs that wouldn't run on the 98Lite
"micro" install, a wireless card applet would run without activeX (but
the card works fine without the applet) and I haven't even tried flash
animation.
As software marches on I'll probably have to set up a machine with a
more complete OS but I can't see any reason not to continue using the
stripped down 560x for most of what I do (E-mail, web, autoCAD, Word,
Excel).
As I've said before there are advantages to using the stupidest system
possible. Not only is the software much easier to maintain but the older
hardware is so cheap.
I just got another 560x with floppy, cd, dock and case for $140. It's
got a dead hard drive so I'll have to spend another $120 for a new drive
but that's still not bad for a computer that does 80% of what I need
(the other 20% is split between my desktop (Win98 Lite "chubby" install)
and my palmtop (DOS 5.0 in ROM)).

-- 
Andrew in Ann Arbor
technology is the answer, what was the question?
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Received on Mon Feb 23 00:58:16 2004

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