I'll research in the unattended install. But honestly the registry patches work like a charm.
And here you go: winnapp-patch.zip
Please be gentle to my 256/64Kbps ADSL line, okay? Besides, this is only to get rid of Program Files. Getting rid of "My Documents" (et al) is quite easy once you get the hang on the registry. Perhaps, I'll summarize how to do it when I got more time: I already have a draft lying around (just notes jotted down).
Hope it well help some people.
You are right of course that it is not easy. In Windows NT it was actually very easy. You just had to change two keys ProgramFilesDir and CommonFilesDir. This did not get you rid of "C:\Program Files", but all Installers that were worth their salt installed the stuff right where I wanted.
Under Windows 2000, I just took one sunday afternoon on a clean Windows 2000 installation and searched for all instances of "C:\Program Files", "C:\Progra~1" and the equivalent in Hex. I exported all those keys to.reg files, merged them together in three.reg files (one for the long keys, one for the short keys and one for the hex keys). If you have those scripts, you can now easily change the behaviour of Windows by editing these scripts to your liking, launching them and then reboot. Works like a charm. It was a lot of work, but it has been worth it. Of course, it's best to apply this "patch" just on a clean Windows 2000 install. If you have been using it a while, chances are that there are already much more entries than on a stock install. If anyone is interested in these scripts, I'll be glad to provide them.
As for partitioning: C is OS, D is data, E is Applications, F is games and G is temporary, on my systems. That said, because Windows 2000 authorizes "mounting" of partitions in directories one could just ditch the lettering of the harddisk and mount different partitions. One to "Program Files", one to "Documents And Settings" etc.
I just want to say, that by tweaking the hell out of the registry it is well possible to set your Windows to your own liking. Strangely enough, most people that use my system find it "clean and more thoughtfully organized". I wonder why exactly that is;-)
Oh, that is not innovative at all. I heard these have existed quite some time, invented by "God Inc." These are commonly called "girlfriends", and they come with all you need, pretty and intuitive interface, speech detection, touch-sensing and of course excellent tactile feedback.
Of course, I do not have one, but I talked with some reviewers of the product and they say it kicks the Windows XP Tablets back to the stone age.
On all my (own - not work) machines "C:\Program Files" does not exist. It is called "E:\WinApp". Same thing for the infamous "My Documents", it's called "Home" (Actually D:\Home\%username%). And I like it that way.
All this needs is just some tweaking in the registry and some few tricks and you never have to live with bills-insane-directory-name-choices again...
Same for the start menu, I just organize it as topics. It's not hard to do, and most people would do it if they wouldn't be afraid of breaking everything. Because, just deal with it: users are scared of "breaking their computer". I actually learned a lot by breaking my computer, but that was in the DOS days and with PCTools in my hands. I now know why my dad made backups so often;-))
Re:A non scientifitc meta benchmark
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
·
· Score: 1
Why buy expensive Mac memory if you can get good brandname Kingston memory for the fraction of what you would pay to Apple?
I think OS X is speedy enough for me. I have an iBook 600, 384Meg RAM and right now I have Mail, Chimera, Mozilla, iTunes, Quicktime and ICQ open Oh, and stickies CPU monitor and Memory monitor. It isn't a speedbeast but definately useable. Still on Mac OS X 10.1, I read everywhere that 10.2 is faster. So is it worth the money you have to shell out?
So you say it's either Microsoft or the Terrorists that win?
Now that's some kind of dillema! The Terrorists are definately in lead for me right now;-)
And I'm sure that Grandma will never ever install Windows or Office for that fact. The problems I was referring to is a problem with Visual Basic in Office (whoohoo... 1337 Granny!) and PhotoEditor that both exist in Office 2000 and Office 97, and that only when you are logged as a restricted user (at home my family runs as restricted user, guess why?).
Running as Admin, as most people do (not that I say it is a good thing), just hides the problem.
So Granny will have no problem with her single-user installation of Windows 2000 with her old Office 97 copy that she might perhaps even install herself.
What many people fail to understand (you included) is that a computer is not an appliance and need regular maintenance and care. Any system with user-rights and security is just too complex for the average user to grasp.
While I agree that John Sixpack won't get the difference, there is something like the Corporate world. In my opinion, Linux on the desktop is not yet ther (sorry, linux lovers... I'm a BSD/Mac man anyway), but that doesn't change the fact that a heavy migration to Linux could lead to a better "Linux on the Desktop".
Anways, back to John Sixpack. He buy a computer, OEM or not, and gets Windows XP Home and Microsoft Works bundeled. However he does not know what he buys! I recently had someone asking me advice for a new laptop which she would use at home and on the network of the University. I told her to go for XP Pro instead of the Home edition. Since she is going to do serious stuff on that machine I advised Office instead of the bundeled Works. Well, when she saw the increased pricetag of 400Euro (I think, could be less), she thought I was insane, and of course she didn't do it. I also tried to explain to her that the 0Euro pricetag for XP Home and Works were not real 0Euro, but that it was included in the price of the laptp. Of course, she didn't get a word I told her (or didn't care) Now she complains she can't log on to the University domain and use the shared printers. In summary, she thinks that her computer is a big pain. (Not even mentioning she had a virus within 3 months after purchase...but that's a ID-10T problem)
That is a home user...the extra 20Euro won't actually hurt them too much, but now to corporations. Some of them have 10000 seats, and that price increase you talk about is in the order of 200000Euro. Now, in corporate standards it is not *that* much, but considering the fact that IT budgets are really tight since the dot-com bubble, decisionmaker could well decide to stick with what they have. Slowly migrating to free alternatives. Don't think Linux on the desktop will go from one day to the other. It is like any other migration, slowly, over time and keeping "what works". At my current client most workstations are still NT4, Lotus Notes 4 (Yes, not kidding you), and Office 2000 (and that just recently). The first Windows 2000 computers are starting to appear, mainly in development where I work because we needed kick-butt machines and the hardware wasn't supported under NT4.
I have yet to see any office where Windows XP is used. Heck I didn't even see Office XP at any of my clients. How long have both been out? A long time.
The Home market to Microsoft is just the cherry on top, not really the most important revenue stream.
notifies all their customers in the United States, Asia, and South America that in order to pay the "unjust fine levied by European bureaucrats", they will have to raise the price of Office 15%.
Result:
a) South America switches completely to Open Source as they have already threathened so often. No more sales in South America.
b) Asia could do the same, or heck, with China developping their own OS at least China -a big market after all- could switch to something else entirely. The rest of Asia might just say? "Copyright"? We dunno what that means... and pirate happily. Result: much less sales in Asia.
c) North America: whines and bitches, and with the current economical slup they are in many companies that freeze the IT budget entirely and will continue to work with currently existing installations. Heck, many still are using Office 97 on NT4 which is perfectly viable. Net result: much less sales in North America.
Now who do you think Microsoft will hurt when they would pull a stunt like that?
needed much more than Office97. Except of course it doesn't run properly on 2K or XP.
It doesn't? Strange... I still use Office 97 on a Windows 2000 machine. I've never had any major problems. Well, I had some, but all were documented in the Microsoft knowlegde base and easily fixed with regedt32 (the one that allows to change security on registry keys).
Why isn't it installed by default on each workstation as is Office? It's not as if you have to pay for Acrobat Reader. When I install a PC, Acrobat Reader it is put on the machine even before Office.
I think you should complain to the IT guys at your workplace. After all it is their job to make sure common files are readable.
... as punishment never teached any convicted criminal.
<SARCASM>
Good thing the DOJ was so fair to Microsoft, I mean, look the excellent competition they are to the marketplace. Evil Adobe *has* after all a monopoly in PDF! Go Microsoft Go! </SARCASM>
Hey, neither do I know a lot about cell phones. I have one, but rarely use it. You know, it is there "just in case". It's over two years old now, and I really have no incentive to buy a new one.
It really is strange though that you didn't know what MMS meant, because there is no network operator that doesn't use it in their advertisements. Don't tell me you don't see the billboards, tv-spots, and magazine inserts. Well, if you don't, I'm glad for you that you're so immune to advertising.
Of course, the last possibility is that it hasn't hit the United States yet. I suspect that Japanese people think we Europeans have been living under a rock too;-)
Unless you have been living under a rock the last six months you should have known it. Any major cellphone service advertises MMS as "the next big thing" and usually the explanation on the abbreviation is somewhere on the ad in small letters.
I still don't see the point of MMS, my opinion is that everyone will find it neat the first 2 months they have the phone, get surpised by the extra salty bills and never use it again. I might be wrong, of course.
are APIs to access almost everything of the phone, even vibration.
Since you're replying to "autopr0n", this probably is the most interesting functionality for him!
Now I finally know why girls love to get SMSes. Sorry, I'll shut up now.
It really all depends on the soundcard too. I have a old P120 laptop (with 32Meg RAM), that could play MP3's just fine, even wile surfing for example. (Only under Linux, W95 sucked bad) However I had to set mpg123 to play by default in joined-mono. That was no problem since the latop had only one speaker anyway. If I tried CD-quality stereo it would only stutter. The reason for this was the ESS688 soundchip in my latop didn't support 16-bit, 44.1KHz, stereo in hardware and thus had to fall back on CPU-cycles.
Well, that's how I understood it...
This is an interesting site. What baffled me most is this girl , she looks exactly like a girl in my class in high school. Is that you Mélanie? (Probably not... but hey, I was just wondering).
It's a bit weird, the only software I've ever paid for is free:)
Me too...and honestly, I like it... It gives this warm fuzzy feeling of contributing to something without having to be a guru-coder.
And thanx for explaining the copyright issue to that other poster.:-)
Sorry, I didn't expect you to give them away. That of course makes sense, since you cannot copy the CD because of copyright. Since I only have two machines running OpenBSD and know nobody around here who runs and BSD except me I was just assuming that you bought them for yourself.
My fault sorry... Well, donating has a nice sideeffect for vanity because you get mentioned on the Donations Page. Whooohooo!
That said, I recently installed OpenBSD on a machine I had lying around and wanted 3.2, so I did a network install. Works great too, provided you have the bandwidth. So, no need for ISO's if you want to learn OpenBSD (as I saw people complaining about in other posts).
Why 10 copies? I have one in order, and donated some money instead (I just rounded up to 100Euro). That's better for the project, because they don't have the costs of pressing CD's. Well that's what I think..
Re:I know this is an american forum...
on
Howl-o-ween
·
· Score: 1
I am glad to hear that at least one person tries to give me hope. So far I only got flames and lack of understanding.
I hope you are right, I hope.... But I won't live to see it.... I will fight, as long as I can.
Because I'm getting quite drunk now, and need really to go to bed, I'll keep this short. My whole point is actually that Europeans are abondoning their own culture for Americanisms. This is not happening at the level of adults, but in childhood, hence the brainwashing thing. I do not blame the americans at all. I am actually accusing all Europenas that are guilty of accepting halloween. Honestly, I respect holidays, I respect people but we are losing our identity and nobody seems to be fighting for it.
Please excuse me for the toll road comment, I only visited California and Florida up until now (Ohio is next), and tolls were manneed everywhere. That's where I got this idea from. We don't have much toll roads anyway;-)
Even though I love Opera, you are right! I installed Mozilla for my family and my sister complained hard (IE is, well, hidden...so she had the choise Mozilla or Netscape 4.76). I installed Phoenix and she loves it.
My sister is no computer geek, so Phoenix is clearly heading in the right direction.
Slashdot Mirror
And here you go: winnapp-patch.zip
Please be gentle to my 256/64Kbps ADSL line, okay? Besides, this is only to get rid of Program Files. Getting rid of "My Documents" (et al) is quite easy once you get the hang on the registry. Perhaps, I'll summarize how to do it when I got more time: I already have a draft lying around (just notes jotted down).
Hope it well help some people.
Under Windows 2000, I just took one sunday afternoon on a clean Windows 2000 installation and searched for all instances of "C:\Program Files", "C:\Progra~1" and the equivalent in Hex. I exported all those keys to
Of course, it's best to apply this "patch" just on a clean Windows 2000 install. If you have been using it a while, chances are that there are already much more entries than on a stock install. If anyone is interested in these scripts, I'll be glad to provide them.
As for partitioning: C is OS, D is data, E is Applications, F is games and G is temporary, on my systems. That said, because Windows 2000 authorizes "mounting" of partitions in directories one could just ditch the lettering of the harddisk and mount different partitions. One to "Program Files", one to "Documents And Settings" etc. ;-)
I just want to say, that by tweaking the hell out of the registry it is well possible to set your Windows to your own liking. Strangely enough, most people that use my system find it "clean and more thoughtfully organized". I wonder why exactly that is
Oh, that is not innovative at all. I heard these have existed quite some time, invented by "God Inc." These are commonly called "girlfriends", and they come with all you need, pretty and intuitive interface, speech detection, touch-sensing and of course excellent tactile feedback.
Of course, I do not have one, but I talked with some reviewers of the product and they say it kicks the Windows XP Tablets back to the stone age.
On all my (own - not work) machines "C:\Program Files" does not exist. It is called "E:\WinApp". Same thing for the infamous "My Documents", it's called "Home" (Actually D:\Home\%username%). And I like it that way. ;-))
All this needs is just some tweaking in the registry and some few tricks and you never have to live with bills-insane-directory-name-choices again...
Same for the start menu, I just organize it as topics. It's not hard to do, and most people would do it if they wouldn't be afraid of breaking everything. Because, just deal with it: users are scared of "breaking their computer". I actually learned a lot by breaking my computer, but that was in the DOS days and with PCTools in my hands. I now know why my dad made backups so often
Why buy expensive Mac memory if you can get good brandname Kingston memory for the fraction of what you would pay to Apple?
I think OS X is speedy enough for me. I have an iBook 600, 384Meg RAM and right now I have Mail, Chimera, Mozilla, iTunes, Quicktime and ICQ open Oh, and stickies CPU monitor and Memory monitor. It isn't a speedbeast but definately useable. Still on Mac OS X 10.1, I read everywhere that 10.2 is faster. So is it worth the money you have to shell out?
Now that's some kind of dillema! The Terrorists are definately in lead for me right now
Yes, I'm kidding... I don't support terrorism.
Running as Admin, as most people do (not that I say it is a good thing), just hides the problem.
So Granny will have no problem with her single-user installation of Windows 2000 with her old Office 97 copy that she might perhaps even install herself.
What many people fail to understand (you included) is that a computer is not an appliance and need regular maintenance and care. Any system with user-rights and security is just too complex for the average user to grasp.
Anways, back to John Sixpack. He buy a computer, OEM or not, and gets Windows XP Home and Microsoft Works bundeled. However he does not know what he buys! I recently had someone asking me advice for a new laptop which she would use at home and on the network of the University. I told her to go for XP Pro instead of the Home edition. Since she is going to do serious stuff on that machine I advised Office instead of the bundeled Works. Well, when she saw the increased pricetag of 400Euro (I think, could be less), she thought I was insane, and of course she didn't do it. I also tried to explain to her that the 0Euro pricetag for XP Home and Works were not real 0Euro, but that it was included in the price of the laptp. Of course, she didn't get a word I told her (or didn't care)
Now she complains she can't log on to the University domain and use the shared printers. In summary, she thinks that her computer is a big pain. (Not even mentioning she had a virus within 3 months after purchase...but that's a ID-10T problem)
That is a home user...the extra 20Euro won't actually hurt them too much, but now to corporations. Some of them have 10000 seats, and that price increase you talk about is in the order of 200000Euro. Now, in corporate standards it is not *that* much, but considering the fact that IT budgets are really tight since the dot-com bubble, decisionmaker could well decide to stick with what they have. Slowly migrating to free alternatives. Don't think Linux on the desktop will go from one day to the other. It is like any other migration, slowly, over time and keeping "what works". At my current client most workstations are still NT4, Lotus Notes 4 (Yes, not kidding you), and Office 2000 (and that just recently). The first Windows 2000 computers are starting to appear, mainly in development where I work because we needed kick-butt machines and the hardware wasn't supported under NT4.
I have yet to see any office where Windows XP is used. Heck I didn't even see Office XP at any of my clients. How long have both been out? A long time.
The Home market to Microsoft is just the cherry on top, not really the most important revenue stream.
Result: .
a) South America switches completely to Open Source as they have already threathened so often. No more sales in South America
b) Asia could do the same, or heck, with China developping their own OS at least China -a big market after all- could switch to something else entirely. The rest of Asia might just say? "Copyright"? We dunno what that means... and pirate happily. Result: much less sales in Asia.
c) North America: whines and bitches, and with the current economical slup they are in many companies that freeze the IT budget entirely and will continue to work with currently existing installations. Heck, many still are using Office 97 on NT4 which is perfectly viable. Net result: much less sales in North America.
Now who do you think Microsoft will hurt when they would pull a stunt like that?
It doesn't? Strange... I still use Office 97 on a Windows 2000 machine. I've never had any major problems. Well, I had some, but all were documented in the Microsoft knowlegde base and easily fixed with regedt32 (the one that allows to change security on registry keys).
Why isn't it installed by default on each workstation as is Office? It's not as if you have to pay for Acrobat Reader. When I install a PC, Acrobat Reader it is put on the machine even before Office.
I think you should complain to the IT guys at your workplace. After all it is their job to make sure common files are readable.
<SARCASM>
Good thing the DOJ was so fair to Microsoft, I mean, look the excellent competition they are to the marketplace. Evil Adobe *has* after all a monopoly in PDF! Go Microsoft Go!
</SARCASM>
Hey, neither do I know a lot about cell phones. I have one, but rarely use it. You know, it is there "just in case". It's over two years old now, and I really have no incentive to buy a new one. ;-)
It really is strange though that you didn't know what MMS meant, because there is no network operator that doesn't use it in their advertisements. Don't tell me you don't see the billboards, tv-spots, and magazine inserts. Well, if you don't, I'm glad for you that you're so immune to advertising.
Of course, the last possibility is that it hasn't hit the United States yet. I suspect that Japanese people think we Europeans have been living under a rock too
I still don't see the point of MMS, my opinion is that everyone will find it neat the first 2 months they have the phone, get surpised by the extra salty bills and never use it again. I might be wrong, of course.
Since you're replying to "autopr0n", this probably is the most interesting functionality for him!
Now I finally know why girls love to get SMSes. Sorry, I'll shut up now.
It really all depends on the soundcard too. I have a old P120 laptop (with 32Meg RAM), that could play MP3's just fine, even wile surfing for example. (Only under Linux, W95 sucked bad) However I had to set mpg123 to play by default in joined-mono. That was no problem since the latop had only one speaker anyway. If I tried CD-quality stereo it would only stutter. The reason for this was the ESS688 soundchip in my latop didn't support 16-bit, 44.1KHz, stereo in hardware and thus had to fall back on CPU-cycles.
Well, that's how I understood it...
This is an interesting site. What baffled me most is this girl , she looks exactly like a girl in my class in high school. Is that you Mélanie? (Probably not... but hey, I was just wondering).
It's a bit weird, the only software I've ever paid for is free :)
:-)
Me too...and honestly, I like it... It gives this warm fuzzy feeling of contributing to something without having to be a guru-coder.
And thanx for explaining the copyright issue to that other poster.
Sorry, I didn't expect you to give them away. That of course makes sense, since you cannot copy the CD because of copyright. Since I only have two machines running OpenBSD and know nobody around here who runs and BSD except me I was just assuming that you bought them for yourself.
My fault sorry... Well, donating has a nice sideeffect for vanity because you get mentioned on the Donations Page. Whooohooo!
That said, I recently installed OpenBSD on a machine I had lying around and wanted 3.2, so I did a network install. Works great too, provided you have the bandwidth. So, no need for ISO's if you want to learn OpenBSD (as I saw people complaining about in other posts).
Why 10 copies? I have one in order, and donated some money instead (I just rounded up to 100Euro). That's better for the project, because they don't have the costs of pressing CD's. Well that's what I think..
I am glad to hear that at least one person tries to give me hope. So far I only got flames and lack of understanding.
I hope you are right, I hope.... But I won't live to see it.... I will fight, as long as I can.
Because I'm getting quite drunk now, and need really to go to bed, I'll keep this short. My whole point is actually that Europeans are abondoning their own culture for Americanisms. This is not happening at the level of adults, but in childhood, hence the brainwashing thing. I do not blame the americans at all. I am actually accusing all Europenas that are guilty of accepting halloween. Honestly, I respect holidays, I respect people but we are losing our identity and nobody seems to be fighting for it. ;-)
Please excuse me for the toll road comment, I only visited California and Florida up until now (Ohio is next), and tolls were manneed everywhere. That's where I got this idea from. We don't have much toll roads anyway
True...but it doesn't protect you if Micrsoft uses IE as a passway to the exterior.... Which is probably what will happen.
Even though I love Opera, you are right! I installed Mozilla for my family and my sister complained hard (IE is, well, hidden...so she had the choise Mozilla or Netscape 4.76). I installed Phoenix and she loves it.
My sister is no computer geek, so Phoenix is clearly heading in the right direction.
It's halloween so.... well, it is just around for today.