Bill Gates retires: time to toss out the cruft!

[drscott]

kiltbear points out the relatively tedious process of setting up a new Windows machine vs. a Mac.

Earlier today I watched (in the background) Bill Gates announce his retirement (in two years) from Microsoft. Many statements about how the wondrous juggernaut would roll on undisturbed followed. Mr. Gates entered Harvard when I entered MIT; he dropped out and made a lot more money than I did.

I just spent half my day finding resource-sapping startup programs I could do without, reorganized, deleted, defragged, and updated. My XP machine gets slower and slower as programs install useless cruft; your personal desktop resources are being abused like any shared resource without cost accounting. Every software provider abuses the freedom to insert new program bits, and as a result, everyone's machines gradually slow down. There is no way to keep a clean, up-to-date program space, keep antivirus and adware programs operating, or downgrade worthless services without spending half your time watchdogging. This is, of course, not something most home (or even business) users can do. And the solution of buying a new machine and transferring your old environment has also become an impossibly complex waste of time as well as money.

Ultimately we want our machine environment to have these characteristics:

1) be independent of hardware, live in the cloud, and be invocable anywhere based on our identity.
2) OS and software will be kept consistent automatically, somewhere out of our sight
3) The original goal of desktops (good UI with instant response to the user) will again be paramount

The new program that virtualizes Windows programs (any version of windows, all at once!) on the Mac (meaning, the program runs in a virtual space inside a Mac window, while Mac applications run in their native space) is a good start in providing an escape from the collapsing Windows legacy.

Comments

[otterpop58.livejournal.com]

I totally agree about the pain involved with creeping cruft.

Thanks for the pointer to Parallels... if/when I finally make the switch [back to] a Mac, that will be great to have!

[markbuster.livejournal.com]

A disabled friend of mine needed me to set up his mac for him--
so I went over, thinking it would take a few hours- because that's what it took with my dell.

FUCK. Color me jealous.
Process:

Out of the Box.
Plug in the DSL.
Plug in the power supply, speakers, and printer.

DONE.

Done.
Internet working, iTunes working, WORD working, DONE.

He has one of those 20" iMacs, which I think cost about $2000. Expensive for a home computer. But hell's bells, that was easy. We even had to set a few things up (very large print, some voice prompts), and it took like 30 seconds.

[(Anonymous)]

This isn't a process for the faint-hearted, but there's a public domain program called "HijackThis" which is designed to document ALL processes and services running on your Windows machine, in a format which spyware hunters can easily decode.

If you go to the following online forum, you'll find instructions on not just downloading and running HijackThis, but on how to post the resulting log to the forum, and receive specific instructions from spyware hunters in de-crufting your system:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=50

WARNING: This is not a spyware/cruft solution for people who are queasy digging "under the hood" of Windows.

After attending a couple of HTCIA forums on spyware, I now use TWO different antispyware programs on my laptop and desktop (Spyware Doctor & Pest Patrol), plus an antivirus program (Symantec Anti Virus, Corporate Edition). This combination has worked reasonably well for me.

Whoops!

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Sorry ... that last comment (anti spyware techniques, HijackThis, etc.) was from me. My browser logged me out of LJ for some reason, and I didn't notice it was an anonymous posting until my entry submittal was confirmed.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

I know you *can* (if you devote much of your free time to it) completely track and eliminate these resource-stealers. But that's my point -- keeping an XP machine operating is now a burden beyond most people's tolerance. Time to scrap the platform and move on. Vista only fixes a few things; it's an attitude problem.

[furfairy.livejournal.com]

Bob Cringely had recently mentioned running windows like this on an apple machine and thought it was a killer idea. But workplace IT departments are hopelessly conservative. Our IT person at work still tries connecting our inkjet printers via the old fashioned serial cable instead of the USB. Windows will be with us for 10 or 20 more years with people like her around and with no viable alternative.