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Yes, these pictures are showing a Motorola Droid running Windows. Here’s how to pull it off…

First off, think of all the cool uses for x86 emulation on an Android phone. All those old PC games that ran under DOS or older versions of Windows, and just the pure nerdyness of it all… it’s too much to resist.

First step: Android SDK

To get started, you will need to install the Android SDK. The reason being is you’ll need the program “adb” which essentially allows you in debug mode to issue commands to the phone (like installing programs) you can get and install the sdk here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Actually getting set up with a working development environment for Android is a whole other story - you’ll need a IDE like Eclipse. But for now, all we’re concerned about is that adb program in the tools subdirectory.

Get your phone ready

Your phone will need some settings set up, go into your settings application and then “applications” you’ll see a section for development settings. You’ll want debug mode on, you’ll want the phone to stay awake on usb, and you’ll also want the setting in applications to allow installation from unknown sources. After this is all set, plug the phone in via usb, and mount it.

Getting the emulator set up

For this, we’re using DOSBOX - which is a handy emulator for many, many platforms. The android version is available here: http://androiddosbox.appspot.com/

The instructions for installing DOSBOX are on this page. Essentially you’ll be using adb to send the .apk file to your phone. It’s simple, just navigate to the tools directory and type “adb install” followed by the name of the apk you get from the downloaded zip file.

Example, on the mac terminal: ./adb install ~/Desktop/WVGA/aDosBox.apk  (In this example I’m in the tools directory running adb and pointing to the extracted zip file on my desktop - a folder called WVGA containing aDosBox.apk

Next, we need to copy a configuration file for dosbox. Use adb followed by “push” and the name of the file and then the destination. For example: ./adb push ~/Desktop/WVGA/dosbox.conf /sdcard/dosbox.conf (first is adp, then push, then the source, then the destination)

Edits

You can use phone itself if you have a file manager program like ASTRO, or just use your computer - but you’ll want to make some tweaks to the dosbox.conf file. First off, give it additional memory. 8, 16mb — enough to run windows 3.1 or 9x. (Sorry I hope you weren’t expecting Windows 7 here!) Also feel free to add your own commands to the autoexec.bat section of the config file. Old skool users will remember that autoexec.bat is just a batch file that runs at startup.

Also, on the phone I made a dosbox directory organize all the x86 stuff.

Windozing

Well, at this point you should have the DOSBOX application on your phone which will fire right up into DOS. You can technically but any executables and run them from the prompt. I really cheated, what I did was install the Windows environment in a virtual machine on my laptop and then, copy the windows directory onto the phone. Nothing is stopping you from copying the setup files to your phone and running setup.exe — but do you really want the pleasure of sitting through a windows installation on a cell phone? Well maybe you do, since you’ve gone this far!

Final Thoughts

Launching windows is done with the “win” command, you can add this to the configuration file under the autoexec section or just run it manually at the prompt. Enjoy!

With all bias aside, a question many netbook enthusiasts debate is which OS to install on a netbook. Today there are a lot of powerful netbooks on the market with large hard drives capable of running any distro of Linux or Windows 7. My focus is on a low end or older netbook. I still love my Eee PC which is now a few years old. But even upgraded it has 2gigs of ram and 4gigs of storage (plus another 8 on sd) — the model shipped with 512mb ram, and just the 4gig ssd. This really brings us to two realistic contenders in my opinion:

Windows XP or Xubuntu.

Before anybody complains about me forgetting about their favorite, obsucure, runs-on-an-atari lightweight distro, keep in mind me choices are based around actually doing modern or real work using real applications and modern websites.

Here are the pros and cons…

Windows XP
PROS
* Customizable install with nLite
* High compatability
* XP is small enough you will still have room for apps like older versions of office, photoshop, etc
CONS
* Security. Realistically you should consider running antivirus as well which is a big setback on a netbook.
* Becomes slow and bloated over time
* Difficult to install without use of external cd drive.

Xubuntu
PROS
* Being free, it’s a lot easier to obtain, customize, and install (even via a USB drive)
* High UI customization to optimize screen real-estate
* Customization - only install what you need
* Fast, runs chrome perfectly.
* Decent apps, still have the ability to install Gimp, maybe open office with room to spare
CONS
* The learning curve associated with Linux (maybe not to the people who are installing OS’s on netbooks, but still!)
* Some maintenance issues, such as preserving disk space after package management.
* Less compatible

OVERALL
* Any OS install on these will require setting up a usb drive to boot and install from. This is somewhat easier with linux, but not impossible with windows. An external CD drive is even easier.
* Both OS - linux or windows - require customization to run well regardless. In windows, you’ll need to avoid swap files, tweak your registry, reduce disk writes and caches, and similarly in linux you’ll want to avoid swap as well and customize some scripts to reduce disk writes. Both will also require some tweaking to run well in the low memory environemtn.
* It’s tempting to spring for ubuntu, vista, 7, or something newer but honestly xp and xubuntu are slim and have a very small footprint and are essentially as capable as today’s OS’s.
* Using an SD card is tempting as a home directory or even a home and program directory - not only will this reduce writes to your more-expensive SSD, but you can reinstall and retain some of your stuff.
* Both XP and xubuntu waste space after it updates, see the old technobabble article on this!

Some things get better with age, and if you’re a retro game fan like me - then you’re in luck.

What is Abandonware?

Abandonware refers to software that is old, abandoned, and usually no longer supported or protected by the creators. It can be a gray area because companies are usually very protective about their copyrights - even those that are quite old. Nintendo, for example, has traditionally held a tight grip on their copyrights to older titles. Now that we have Virtual Console, we can understand why.

Old computer games are a little different.  (Sometimes) There are many games that have gone free, open source, or just fallen out of the interest of the orginating companies - if they even still exist. If you grew up with DOS or MAC you may have some old favorites you might like to play again.

This article will focus on old DOS games and getting them to play - not just on Windows but also Mac and Linux.

First up, you need something that can run the games. In many cases emulation or virtualization will do the trick. For old DOS games many people turn to DOSBOX. It’s a great little program that is available on various platforms.

Get DOS BOX here: http://www.dosbox.com/

Other ideas include VirtualBox, Virtual PC, VM Ware Fusion, or Parallels

If you’re using DOS BOX you have some configuration to do. When you run the program you get a usual DOS prompt. To get at your files, you have to mount the location. So, if in Windows you have a directory of games at c:\games you can type “mount c: c:\games” to get that directory into DOS BOX.

Other useful things will be going full screen (alt-enter) and adjusting the speed of emulation: ctrl-f11, ctrl-f12. Many old games will run extremely fast on newer machines, so some throttling will be necissary.

DOS BOX also has many front ends available for it, dosshell, boxer, and so forth. These make it easier to have multiple configurations for multiple games. It also simplifies the loading proess for your programs. If you enjoy tweaking your system, you can locate the DOS BOX configuration file (in Windows it’s in your install directory) — in the configuration file you can change defaults such as starting full screen, sound/graphics options, speed, and so forht.

All you need now is some programs. There are many sites out there with Abandonware galore. One I used to find some of my old favorites was: TheOldComputer.com

Here’s a brief top-10 of apps I can’t get by without on a Windows machine. Most are free, too! Just google any of these to find the website and download link. Ok here goes (not in any order)

AVG Antivirus

Not a bad idea to start here, keeps your machine virus clean.

Notepad++

I used to be a diehard TextPad fan, but I will say this editor is even better. Every good nerd needs their editor. On Windows, this is mine. (vim for linux, and TextWrangler for Mac, if you’re interested!)

IrfanView

Of course, photoshop is an essential as far as I’m concerned. Gimp is a great free alternative - but even more bare bones and essential is IrfanView.

IsoRecorder

This should be part of Windows, and it kind of is. In Windows 7 it will be. But this is a free and easy way to burn ISOs.

uTorrent

Sooner or later I find myself downloading a torrent. This is a great client for Mac and Windows.

PuTTY

A great SSH and terminal program

Pidgin

The mutli-client chat program for AIM, ICQ, and everything else. (For Mac, use Adium)

VLC

Plays pretty much everything. This is a must for every platform.

WinMerge

A handy tool for comparing files visually

FoxitReader

A lightweight and clean PDF reader

WinStatDir

Handy-dandy visualizer for disk space… oh wait, this last one makes 11..

Misc / Other obvious winners:

Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Visual Studio, Firefox (I suppose)

One of the first things I did with my new Windows PC from Best Buy was to torch the OS and install a clean copy of Vista Ultimate. The fact it came preloaded with the google toolbar, and various demo installations just freaked me out. If you have a retail copy of Windows, I’d say round up your drivers and do the same.

Anyways the whole reinstallation deal lead to an observation of mine - I had a 20 gig partition that the Windows installer could not get at, nor could the Computer Management control panel (Disk Management snap-in)

20 gigs on a 750gig hard drive isn’t really a whole lot - but it’s the principle!

So before you embark down this road I’ll give you my usual disclaimer of proceed at your own risk. Back your stuff up! Also, I have a legit copy of Vista Ultimate to fall back on if I really screw crap up. (Not to mention all the Linux utilities and bootloaders) Ok now that all that’s out of the way, let’s get down to business.

1. Go to start, run, type “cmd” to get to the command line. (Do this as a system admin)

2. type diskpart, press enter

3. now you should be in the diskpart utility, you’ll see a special diskpart promp. At it, type rescan and press enter.

4. type list disk and press enter. You should be looking at a list of the drives installed in your machine.

5. now type “select disk x” where x is the number corresponding to the disk with the locked oem partition. e.g. “select disk 0″ press enter.

6. if you type “list partition” you can see the partitions on this drive. you should see in this list the locked oem partition

7. now we need to select that partition. type “select partition x” where x is the locked oem partition

8. this is it, once you’ve selected the disk and restore partition you can type “delete partition override” to blow it away.

9.now, exit out of the terminal window and go into the control panels (classic view), administrative tools

10. in administrative tools you should see computer management, inside that is disk management

11. in disk management you can easily right-click the newly freed up partition, format, and bring up as usable space in your system.

OTHER IDEAS

If you’re hurting for space and don’t want to do a reinstall, you could relocate your swap file to this partition if it’s big enough. This will free up space on your primary drive for more programs and whatnot. Alternatively you could use partition magic and try and merge the partitions together. Or, if you have a copy of Windows, you can drop both partitions within the Windows installer and install a clean copy of Windows on the one, big, partition.

Happy Hacking.

In some previous technobabble articles we talked about some of the bloated files that Windows Update leaves behind. Many times drives fill up on users and there’s no obvious reason to where all the space is going. That’s where visualization comes in - at a glance you can identify the biggest parts of your file system.

First you need a tool to accomplish it. I’ve first seen a visualizer in Ubuntu as part of the disk cleanup process, if you have a recent linux install - chances are you have something already. As for Mac/PC people…

http://windirstat.info/ (Windows: WinStatDir)

http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ (Mac: Grand Perspectiv)

Both programs will scan what ever part of the file system you decide - one drive, two drives, one folder (like your home folder, for instance) when completed, you’ll see a psychedelic representation of what objects in your fiesystem are taking up the most space, relatively. Large blocks are larger files.

Once you identify a particular file or folder that takes up space, you can research what it is to determine if you can safely delete it. Running on a typical Windows machine you’ll typically find a gig or so of update backup files which can be removed safely, but when in doubt - just google something to determine if it’s needed by the system or not.

Good luck & happy spring cleaning!

Drive visualization in Windows

The large chunks to the left are big virtual machines

Here are some updates, changes, and additions to past technobabble articles.

Media Center

I stand corrected, the Mac version of the logitech keyboard is CHEAPER than the windows version. I guess I was just lazy and they had the Windows version at Target! Also, check out the remote management hack - being able to quickly control your media center from your laptop comes in handy too. It’s also fun to confuse people trying to watch TV.

Windows Disk Cleanup

I’ve recently installed XP on my Eee PC and have had to really slim down my installation. There are tools desgined to shrink Windows down by removing non-essential parts - but I like to look for less destructive, better ways. Another solution I’ve come up with is deleting temporary and backup files left behind by Windows Update. In your Windows directory, look for folders like $NtUninstallxxxx$ - usually with the dollar symbol. You’ll see hot fixes, security updates, and even the service packs if you update Windows from sp2 to sp3… this can easily eat up a gig or so. These are not the updates, they are actually the backups of what was there before hand - so if you need to uninstall and update - you can. I’ve never had a problem with a Windows update breaking something. If it did, I think I would know within a day or so. Again, do your own backups.

Eee PC

Like I mentioned, I put Windows on my Eee PC  - mostly just to see how it handled. Just as when installing Linux on the Eee PC it’s important to minimize disk activity to the SSD with Windows as well. My machine has a few gigs of RAM so it’s not a problem to disable swapping. I don’t know how XP would behave with 512mb and no swap, you might run into problems running larger apps. You could consider implementing “poor man’s readyboost” in other words, dedicate space on an SD card for swapping. (Granted the whole issue is swapping on flash memory) But if possible, don’t use virtual memory on it. And System Restore needs to go.

At first glance, today’s hard drives are quite large. But as hard drive grow, so do the ways to fill them. Remember when AOL fit on a single floppy? Programs are really huge these days, and many people have collections of videos and music than can easily eat away 100 or more gigabytes.

This one is for you Windows users who need a little extra space on your drive, but don’t want to sacrifice anything in the process.

(Oh, and, as always – proceed with caution, as with anything like this it’s your own risk)

First line of defense: Disk Cleanup Utility

Disk Cleanup Utility is a tool intended for PC novices. It’s designed to will help the user remove some unused files. It’s handy because it’s an all-in-once place to see how much room your Internet cache (temporary files) and so forth are taking up. You’ll also be able to flush out temp files, and junk setups left behind. This tool runs automatically if your drive starts to fill up, or you can launch it from Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup

The big one

This is something I do any time I install a fresh copy of windows. You can save literally gigabytes by doing this one, harmless, step. Right-click My Computer, choose Properties and click on the System Restore tab.

System Restore is a feature that will basically backup your system files so if something breaks your ability to startup, you have a fail-over. If you check the box to disable system restore, you get all that space back. (And it can be a gigabyte or even more.)

Of course, you may want the piece of mind that if something you install breaks Windows, you have a fall-back. My recommendation is find a backup program you like and backup to DVD or CD instead. Besides, System restore isn’t truly a backup. Broken programs are still broken, etc. If you need to boot up to undo a change you made to your system – well that’s what safe mode is for anyways. So to me, System Restore is a pointless waste of a LOT of space.

Swap it out

The Windows swap file is hard disk space that is used when programs need extra memory. For example, if you have 2gigs of memory installed and you are running 3 programs that each require 1 gig, swapping will occur and the extra 1 gig will be used on your hard drive. So your swap file can be pretty big.

Unless you have a LOT of memory (or a SSD drive) then turning swapping off completely isn’t exactly the best idea. Back in “the day” I used to used a fixed size swap file as this would keep the disk activity down from having to grow/shrink the swap file. This also helped prevent the disk from getting fragged. But now, that’s not really the issue. You can reduce your swap file size if you want the room, but that’s not really idea. To manage your swap file, right click My Computer, choose properties, click on the advanced tab, then under performance click Settings. Now, under the Advanced tab of this pop-up you should see some settings for your virtual memory / swap file. You’ll see how big your swap file is, perhaps 2gigs or such. If you click on change you get full control over how your swap behaves.

I’ve run into the situation before using virtual machines where I make a drive that is smallish, maybe 2 gigs – which of course Windows will fill up quickly. I could easily make a new drive that’s 20 gigs, but I don’t want to lose my stuff on my 2gig drive. So, what I’ve done here is create a second “helper” drive – a place to put stuff. I also put the swap file on this drive. So now, I’ve freed up several gigs on my primary drive, and the swap file has room to breathe. Most programs allow you to install in any location, it’s not insanely difficult to set a different location up as the Program Files directory.

Compression Method

Well this one I’ve been slow to warm up to – I have memories of Windows 95 disk-doubling which compressed everything and made everything slow. I’ve heard people use disk compression in XP and are completely fine, but normally I just compress some things that I know I won’t use. The Disk Cleanup utility can help you compress old and unused files.

As far as controlling disk compression, go into My Computer and right-click the hard drive you want to compress. Under the initial General tab, you should see a checkbox to enable disk compression. Compressed files from here on appear blue in explorer, and you shouldn’t notice much difference in accessing them. The only exception might be if you compress files needed by a game, etc.

More swap savings

The goal of this is to avoid having to re-install Windows, so here’s another idea of how to save some space. Remember earlier how I mentioned you could relocate your swap file to make space on your primary drive? Well some newer (cheaper) computers don’t provide you with re-install CDs. Dell/Compaq I’m looking at you. What they do usually now is make a “restore” partition – so if your Windows poops the bed, you can start from this partition and perform the restoration. Well what happens if your drive fails, that’s gone too, right? Well often you can call the manufacturer and request a CD. If you have a CD to reinstall Windows then there is no need for this restore partition and you can reclaim it for your stuff. Since we’re trying to avoid having to reinstall Windows you could simply format this partition and use it for your swap/temp files. Usually it’s only a gig or less, but it might be enough for this purpose.

Well I got my grubby little mac-loving hands on Windows 7 beta, I was very eager to check it out. Most people feel that 7 is going to be important for Microsoft as it will either save them with a splash, or reconfirm their incompetence. I will try as hard as possible to be fair, ok here we go! (Screenshots at the end)

• Installation process exactly the same as Vista - fresh install is about 9-10 gigs.. yikes
• Elegant startup, with firefly lights that form the Windows logo. Overall the design is less in your face. I hated the greens and aquas coupled with the laser effects that vista had. 7 is very “aqua”
• My first destination was into the Windows system folder, I had no warning about “display these files” which was refreshing.
• There is far less nagging, but still more than I like. It asked me to install anti-virus, nags if you REALLY want to install something, and asks for administrative privileges to move some files. There is a setting for naggy-ness. Also, no gadgets by default… keeps things out of your face a bit more
• The WORST aspect I’ve encountered though is the new Mac-ripoff taskbar. It tries to be like the dock, but it’s majorly confusing. For instance, I opened a My Computer window and minimized it… where’d it go? Aparently  they all get tucked together in a weird document library icon. It’s very odd. Same thing goes for any other program - if you minimize it, it goes into the program icon. So if I minimize a web page, it goes into IE. I understand what they’re going for - but it’s going to confuse the absolute hell out of some people. Also gone is the quick launch, you can now pin icons to the taskbar similar to the way Application icons can be kept in the Mac OS X dock. It’s one of those clear rip off things and now Windows users too will have that inability to determine what programs are actually running and which are just “there” … trust me it’s weird
• I’ll end my little review on a sort of good note, I think it’s a little nicer looking. My VM did not have 3d acceleration enabled so I got the basic non-glass looks. It’s just like Vista only a bit cleaned up. No more freakin’ lasers, just nice solids, blues, crisp angles. The dock is a bit ugly, but otherwise the “looks” is an improvement.

My overall reaction is simply that I was hoping for something a little more, it’s very VERY similar to Vista. As far as I’m concerned Microsoft just wanted to shed the Vista stigma so they threw 7 together. It’s just an update.

Performance wise, it’s hard to tell as it’s in a VM - It does not run anywhere near as fast as XP. The biggest PRO is the cleaned up interface, the biggest CON is the taskbar/dock.

I will play around with it some more, I’ve only had a little time to mess around. But my feeling is just that is very similar to vista with some things better, some things worse. Not a giant step forward by any means.

These two entries were taken from my MySpace blog, they contain some useful tips on how to stay virus/spyware free.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

My wife was getting weird emails, turns out they had an email worm virus on them - good thing she uses a Mac!

But not everybody is lucky enough to use a Mac or Linux computer - so I figured I’d try to share some advice with Windows users on how not to get compeltely screwed blued and tatooed on the internet. (With spyware, virii, and such)

TIP 1- “Do it yourself.” Stay away from custom smileies, cursors, icons, screensavers, whatever. If you want to customize your Windows comptuer with that stuff, great - but do NOT install something that does it, all of that can be done manually through the control panel. One of the stupidest things I’ve seen is something that installs a wallpaper - you can just right click an image to do that!

TIP 2 - “Know what you’re getting into” For example, there is a lot of good free software out there - just know what you’re getting into. If you are unfamlilar with the publisher of the software, do some quick research on them from an unbiast site like wikipedia. If you do install, watch carefully what they want to put on your system.

TIP 3 - “Be paranoid” Don’t click on ads, don’t fall for their tricks. They’re out to get you. Your computer works for you. Like driving, always expect the worst possible thing to happen. If you have a bad feeling about it, go with your gut.

TIP 4- “Watch for obvious stuff” What I mean by this is make sure you type web addresses in correctly. Anybody (mac user or pc user) could do this. For example, if I had a website called bonkofamerica.com I could make it look exactly like bankofamerica. As soon as you type in your account information, I could forward you to the real page and you’d never even know.

TIP 5 - “All that glitters isn’t gold” Again, they’re out to get you. Don’t pay for fixes. Anti-virus is a good idea fine, but don’t by that stupid “spy ware”cleaning program at target for $10, that’s just stupid. There are free versions of everything, and in the case of computer secuirty adaware and zonealarm beat out all the crap at the stores.

TIP 6 - “Use fake email addresses” Yup I mean it. Go to yahoo and register some crazy email address to use for websites that require emails. Don’t throw around your REAL email address - you don’t need any more spam.

TIP 7 - “Keep your system clean” A lot of people think installing stuff makes your computer run slower. This is only half true. Things that run all the time do consume resources, and if you’re hard drive is stuffed full there’s no room to breathe - but for the most part, assuming your hard drive isn’t full, things should only be installed into program files or your start menu. There is no need for a game to install something that runs all the time. The programs I write sure don’t. When you play MegaMac it loads into memory, and when you quit it’s done. If a program IS installing something that is constantly running (like quicktime in the windows dock) it’s probably junk and safe to kill.

TIP 8- “Know what is running” So how do you tell what windows is running? There are several ways. First off, there’s a program called msconfig that is simply brilliant. Click start - choose run - and type msconfig. Under services and startup you can see all the crap that gets loaded onto your machine to slow the works down. You can safely uncheck things and whatnot, for example quicktime, or hp/dell/compaq crap that gets preloaded on their computers. Also, ctrl-alt-delete allows you to view the task manager which will help show you what’s running on your system. If you don’t know what a particular item is, google it. For example if you see qttask.exe, type that into google and find out that it’s part of QuickTime, and most likley safe to remove. QuickTime will still work - it’ll just load when you need it.. LIKE IT SHOULD!

TIP 9 - “Usual suspects” Typically things like google toolbars, or other toolbars that latch into browsers or install into the dock are a bad idea. Same thing goes for little guys who chill on your desktop like that gorilla dude, that’s bad mojo. I’d reccomend firefox for you windows users, in which case extensions are a good way to add functionality - and not some deeply nested add on like IE toolbars. Remember IE is integrated into windows so if you start to screw with IE your entire system might feel the heat from it. Keep it modular so you can uninstall.

TIP 10 - “Get a Mac” That’s probably the easiest fix. That or Linux. They have no virii or spyware. Windows is an easy target. It is less secure and so widely used that it’s most often a target of malicious software. Plus Windows is so old that it’s literally a mess of spaghetti behind the scenes of old code with a new interface to look modern. Installing something is a big stupid ordeal with Windows. I remember when I first heard that Windows had uninstallers I laughed so hard. Why can’t you just drag it to the trash? I guess you should just plan on reinstalling a clean copy to be safest - or get a mac!

——— ok I’ll wrap this up it’s getting a bit long. Hope this info helps ——-

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Ok I lied, these are for Mac & Linux people…

I’m going to be completely honest - my Mac Mini has been running SLLLOOOOW lately. My old powerpc-based mac flew, and I could not figure out why… other than this is intel-based (which as much as I liked powerpc, it’s a coreduo meaning it essentially has TWO processors…) so what gives… well here we go

Speeding up your intel-based mac

1) The big one: Learn to use Activity Monitor - it’s in your utilities folder. This shows everything that’s running and you can visually see how much your processor and memory are being taxed.
2) If you are low on memory, or high on processor usage (this was my problem) kill widgets you don’t use (why is there a clock and calendar - you already have that running at the top of your screen, right?) but here’s what was killing me - itunes! it was taking up like 300 or 400mb of ram - WHAT THE HECK!? turns out it was the “album flow” view doing it. I guess it had to load all of my artwork into memory, and I have a library that runs 40-50 GIGS! but don’t tell anyone… heh heh so the bottom line is now itunes is running around 30mb which is a lot considiring my first mac had 4mb of ram but it shouldn’t tax your 1gig memory system
3)i hate the fact the coreduo systems don’t have dedicated graphics memory. you lose memory to that unfortunatly - just keep it light, extra things on the desktop and dock do take their toll
4)here’s another big one, that i’ve been careful about - on your intel-based macs - make sure you’re running universal or intel software, older software written for powerpc runs VERY slow on new macs. I’m kinda pissed about that but at least I still have the ol’ ibook. It’s too bad too because some of the programs I use most are still only available as powerpc - MS Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Flash. Most shareware has been updated to run native on the intel chip. I realize there’s open office, bean, gimp, and all sorts of open source alternatives that are intel-based but they don’t really stack up to the real apps. sorry! but worst of all, keep your system free of powerpc drivers. stuff like hp printer software, palm sync software -all that crap that is always running will make thigns sluggish since they are not native intel

for mac users there’s lots of other good tips, some are similar to pc user tips - just don’t install extra crap that runs all the time - and just be aware of what you’re installing

ok one last thing - i promised linux users some tips too. i think the linux community could give me more advice than i can contribute, but here goes anyways…

if you’re running gnome, there’s a wonderful little program services-admin that lets you stop services from loading that you don’t use. this really only applies to distros like ubuntu and knoppix, many of these will give you things you don’t really need. some services you’ll find like bluetooth and some universal access (braile!?) type services are completely unessasary - the nice thing about this program is it explains what each thing is so you’re not lost doing it manually

other than that if you’re using on of these package-based distros learn to use your package management to clean out things you won’t be using. for redhat or fedora it’s yum and ubuntu uses apt (as in apt-get)

lastly here are two last tips for linux people -
fedora users, google the livna repository, it contains more apps than your standard red hat repisitories, and with it - you can uninstall thigns like xine and reinstall it using livna to get past redhat’s stupid crippiling of mp3s, dvd, and such
ubuntu - or just get ubuntu, it’s much more “open” i guess you could say - and they’ll give you things like madwifi so pretty much EVERYTHING works out of the box, there are some silly things that it installs that you can get past pretty easily. there’s some stupid open-source java runtime that you can disable and replace with sun’s REAL java jre - this will allow things like limewire to run without any problem.