Re: Anit-Virus help for all of us??????

[Scott McGrath <mcgrath () fas harvard edu>]

The minimalist approach has support advantages as well.  Because of the 
small image size a reimage can be accomplished quickly. 

For better or worse many network tools/utilities only run under win[*] 
requiring a windows box for many of these Win98SE fits nicely.  My app 
load is small i.e. browser, ssh client sftp client and the inevitable 
Office suite.

We are primarily a [*}x house here but we do need windows at times.



                            Scott C. McGrath

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Brian Bruns wrote:

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Vivien M." <vivienm () dyndns org>
> To: "'Daniel Karrenberg'" <daniel.karrenberg () ripe net>
> Cc: <nanog () merit edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 9:39 AM
> Subject: RE: Anit-Virus help for all of us??????
>
>
>
> > Have either of you actually followed this advice?
>
> > Win98SE is totally useless as a desktop OS due to the archaic GDI/USER
> > resource limits. When one average consumerish app (eg: a media player)
> eats
> > up 10% of those resources, one window in an IM program eats up 2%, etc...
> it
> > does not take much to bring down an entire system. Last time I  was
> running
> > Win98SE (which is about 3 years ago), it took about 20 minutes after
> booting
> > while running boring normal apps to get to a dangerously low resource
> level
> > (30%ish free). That machine got totally unstable needing a reboot after
> > about 3 days. On the same hardware (with additional RAM), Win2K could
> easily
> > run 3-4 weeks and run any app I wanted just fine.
> > So, some people might say I'm a power user, but the average users I know
> > these days tend to multitask at least a web browser, an IM client with a
> > couple open windows, some bloated media player, perhaps a P2P app, and
> some
> > office app. This is already stretching Win9X to its limits, and I would
> > expect it to be worse (code just gets sloppier...) than it was three years
> > ago...
>
> Yes I do follow my own advice.  Back from the days when I was an OEM, I
> still have a box full of win98SE cd packs/licenses for when I build people
> new machines.  Its what I put on them standard unless you ask for Win2k or
> XP or NT4 (or any other OS for that matter, ie Linux, BSD).
>
> I know full well about the resource limits.  Its a PITA, but as long as you
> run a decent set of apps that don't suffer from resource leaks (Mozilla
> without a GDI patch does this for example) that eventually use up all
> GDI/USER memory, you'll be fine.  I use Win98SE here all day with only one
> reboot needed most days, and I run WinAMP, Putty, K-Meleon, Outlook Express,
> Cygwin, mIRC, Xnews (which has a bad habit of crashing the whole system at
> times), as well as AIM, Miranda IM, SST, Yahoo Messenger, and various other
> tools.  Thats all at once, multitasking.  I know, I could reduce the clutter
> by letting Miranda IM do AIM and Yahoo, but thats not the point. :-)
>
> Many times, resource suckage comes from those ugly faceless background
> programs that run at startup.  Kill as many icons as you can on the desktop
> and the task bar, and clean out your startup list, and you'll free up alot
> of GDI resources.
>
>
>
>
> > No wonder people think Windows is unreliable. 98SE may be preferable from
> a
> > security-from-external-threats POV, yes, but for any type of real use,
> it's
> > useless. Not to mention the other quirks, like needing to reboot to change
> > network settings, the lack of any local security (or even attempt at local
> > security), etc. I'll take rebooting every week or two for the latest XP
> > security patch any day over rebooting every day or two because Win98SE is
> an
> > unreliable piece of poorly designed legacy junk.
>
> > The way I see it, there are two uses for 98SE (or 95, 98, Me, etc) in the
> > modern world:
> > 1) People who use their computers as game-only machines (or who dual boot
> a
> > real OS for non-game purposes)
> > 2) Advertising for $OTHER_OS, where $OTHER_OS can be Win2K, XP, or your
> > favourite Linux distro with KDE, GNOME, etc. Anything that actually WORKS
> > reliably.
>
> Lets not forget those people who just don't have the CPU power or memory to
> support 2k or XP.
>
> Just because something is new and 'improved' doesn't make it better.  Yes,
> 9x has alot of legacy crap.  Yes, 9x has various issues with resource usage.
> But sometimes, its just right.
>
> --------------------------
> Brian Bruns
> The Summit Open Source Development Group
> Open Solutions For A Closed World / Anti-Spam Resources
> http://www.sosdg.org
>
> The AHBL - http://www.ahbl.org