Cruft .:. grubbykid.com

Cruft

What is cruft? Cruft is the accumulation of features, ideas, and crap that at one point in time had a purpose; but now this crap has no purpose - it was blown away by the sands of time; its context no longer apparent. My computer had fully morphed into a cruft-laden pile of silicon this year after six years of architecture school, and a year of semi-inactivity. Multiple copies of files, redundant directories, and cryptic file naming structures which, at some point had a meaning, but now were rendered useless. My Rosetta Stone was awaiting to decipher late night naming conventions into usable English.

The Rosetta Stone never arrived. In its place, came the great computer blow out of Summer '04. Boot sectors would not boot; emergency disks did not quench the emergency. All of my years of breaking Windows based computers, then fixing them, were to no avail. The box was fully and seriously toast. Windows 2000 and Xp would not resurrect it; in fact, the last straw the the inability of the box to even Post. Signs of impending doom, and deeper system problems aborted the repair.

Repair was not achievable.

I was resigned that it was time to buy a new computer. For some time i was interested in making the big switch to Apple. I am no evangelist, yet I knew that if I was going to spend the money, Microsoft Windows was not high on the priority of products that deserved my money. I think I would rather bankroll a Republican candidate for local office, than buy Windows. After being burned multiple times by the Blue Screen of Death, I wanted out of this asylum.

There was no single event, no "smoking gun" that I could point to in order to show you my great displeasure with Windows. Yet, after fixing my mother's computer this weekend, I am more than happy that I made the switch. Her windows installation had been hit by the Netsky virus, through an Internet Explorer defect. It wasn't her fault; there are larger forces then her in the world, all allied against users who don't have time (or the geeky-ness) to keep up with the exploit du-jour.

The usual front line defenses were deployed: hardware firewall, software firewall, Ad-Aware set to scan weekly, and Norton used to catch the errant virus. IE and Outlook unfortunately were the chosen programs, which in the end, was the chink in the armor. At the time the machine was set up, Thunderbird was immature, and Firebird didn't exist. The urge to migrate to Firefox was harped upon, but user inertia is greater than nagging from 1000 miles away.

What really broke the camel's back, was the buying of Norton Ghost and a new hard drive. Ghost was billed, both by Norton and googled pages, as a great tool to clone data from an old disk to a new (better) one. Ghost did in fact clone the disk successfully. Yet, everything was not ice creme and puppy dogs. No, Windows 2000 dashed any hopes of ice creme, not to mention puppy dogs. No, Windows did not like the move; the disk environment did not match the former environment. Worse, the computer failed to post again - a replay of my former problem.

Using the original disk as the operating system disk (which Windows 2000 used about 75% disk space out of a 3 gig hard drive), and another disk as environmental disk solved this. All swap space, user data, temp space - any setting which could be switched to the alternate drive, was switched. Virus images were updated, browser was switched to Firebird, mail was switched to Thunderbird.

Netsky obliterated. Outgoing packets cut back to normal levels. Now, ice creme and puppy dogs were free to descended on the house from above. Simple computer use was restored, and the user (my mom) was happy. Problem, solved. Yet the new hard drive, with its large capacity, was not used. Windows 2000 didn't like it, and so it wouldn't work.

Now, I know that I am no guru - I admit to struggling with the command line. But when all diagnostic tools were used to no avail to to a finicky operating system, something has to be wrong. I know I am not alone with Windows problems - I can safely state that the problem has reached endemic levels. Users are not dumb, but their software makes their computer do stupid things. Releasing software with settings dictated by the marketing department, not under the aegis of user safety has rendered Microsoft Windows the most insecure platform on the market.

I am happy with the switch to Apple. My Powerbook hums along nicely, and when I can afford it, she will get another meg of memory. The software design is top notch, and I hope to write about my experiences in upcoming postings, because, I think it is important to share.

So that we all can get ice creme, and perhaps, puppy dogs, too.

Cruft

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