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Happy late birthday, OS/2

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing April 15, 2012June 7, 20171990s, compaq, IBM, Missouri, New York, New York City, university of missouri, vista, windows 2000, windows 7, windows nt, Windows Server, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Twenty-five years ago this month, on April 2, IBM announced its new PS/2 computers and a new multitasking operating system to run on (most of) them–OS/2. They even lured a bunch of the actors from M*A*S*H to do an ad campaign for them.

It didn’t seem like it at the time, but that was the beginning of the end of IBM’s PC business.
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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Move the print spool directory to your ramdisk

Dave Farquhar Software, Windows March 21, 2012July 24, 2016print spooler, ramdisk, vista, windows 2000, windows 7, Windows Explorer

You can improve the speed of printing slightly and, depending on the nature of your print jobs, dramatically reduce disk writes if you move the print spool directory to your ramdisk. It’s a little performance tweak you might have never heard of, but it’s helpful.

This trick works best with a ramdisk product that loads a disk image at startup, such as Dataram Ramdisk.

Dave Farquhar

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Living with a past-its-prime computer

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 28, 2012July 15, 2017defragmenter, firefox, IBM, intel, Intel Atom, Libre Office, lifehacker, Linux Mint, McAfee, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Security Essentials, model m, oatmeal, office 2007, office 2010, Open Office, optimizing windows, overclocking, ramdisk, symantec, vista, Windows 10, Windows XP

I’m playing catch-up a bit. This weekend, Lifehacker ran a guide about living with a computer that’s past its prime.

I’ve made a career of that. One of my desktop PCs at work (arguably the more important one) is old enough that I ought to be preparing to send it off to second grade. And for a few years I administered a server farm that was in a similar state. They finally started upgrading the hardware as I was walking out the door. (I might have stayed longer if they’d done that sooner.) And at home, I ran with out-of-date computer equipment for about a decade, just this summer buying something current. Buying something current is very nice, but not always practical.

So of course I’ll comment on a few of Lifehacker’s points.

Dave Farquhar

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An easy way to change your power plans in Vista and Windows 7

Dave Farquhar Saving money, Windows November 11, 2011December 5, 2015Click Finish, Click Next, keyboard shortcuts, vista, windows 7

If you need to change power plans to manage your computer’s power usage, here’s the easiest way to do it without fumbling around in control panel. This works in either Windows 7 or Vista.
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Dave Farquhar

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Microsoft’s leaked roadmap

Dave Farquhar Windows November 3, 2011April 18, 2017vista, windows 2000, windows 7, windows 8, Windows 9, windows 98, windows me, windows nt, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Microsoft is getting aggressive with Windows release dates, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to put a damper on future sales.

Windows 8 is coming out in August, which was a poorly kept secret anyway. That can’t be helping Windows 7 sales, but at this point I think Microsoft is mostly concerned about new computer sales and corporate sales. What’s more concerning to me–initially–is the revelation that Windows 9 will be out in November 2014.
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Dave Farquhar

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Pipe output to the clipboard in Windows

Dave Farquhar War Stories, Windows October 23, 2011April 28, 2017command prompt, JPG, net view, oracle, passwords, pdf files, unix, vista, windows 7, Windows XP

Besides all the changes to the GUI that happened post-Windows XP, they also made one useful change to the command prompt. When you run a command, it’s now possible to pipe output to the clipboard.

If you’re like me and write a lot of documentation, or you just take a lot of notes while doing computer maintenance, it’s a big boon.

Dave Farquhar

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Don’t use software firewalls: Good advice or bad?

Dave Farquhar security October 10, 2011October 9, 2011amd, extra money, firewall, intel, linksys, malware, netgear, prison, vista, vulnerability, Windows XP, x86

A common piece of good-meaning advice you’ll hear is that you should never use software firewalls. But is that good advice, or bad?

On the surface, it’s good advice. It’s much better to use the firewall built into a cable/DSL router. But the software firewall built into Windows XP, Vista, 7, and (presumably) 8 makes for a good second line of defense, so I don’t recommend disabling it.

I’ll explain further.

Dave Farquhar

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An old Windows myth looks to (finally) become reality in Windows 8

Dave Farquhar Windows October 9, 2011October 8, 2011old windows, vista, windows 7, windows 8, Windows Vista

For the better part of my adult life, I’ve been dealing with the myth that if there were certain settings that could speed up Windows, Microsoft would make those settings the default for the operating system. The pundits who perpetuate this myth have their reasons for doing so, but that didn’t make them true.

Now, the difference is harder to notice today than it was when I started my career. There are things I can do to make Windows 7 run better on my 4-core, 3.1 GHz AMD64 box with 8 GB of RAM and a 100 GB SSD. But I won’t notice the cumulative effects of a few 5% improvements on that box. Not the way I did on 50 MHz 80486-based PCs in 1997.

Microsoft’s philosophy for 22 years, from Windows 1.0 in 1985 to Windows Vista in 2007, was to write the software, and if it takes a few years for the hardware to catch up with it, so be it. Windows 7 changed that–for the first time, the actual requirements for running a new version of Windows went down–and, with Windows 8, it looks like CPU requirements will hold steady, and memory usage will actually go down.

Dave Farquhar

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Version 7 looks like just what Firefox needed

Dave Farquhar Software September 30, 2011firefox, tweet, vista, windows 2000, windows 7, windows 98, Windows Vista

Firefox 7 is out. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you already have it, because, historically, a large proportion of my readers use Firefox or, in the past, used other Mozilla-based browsers.

The last couple of Firefox versions have been yawners, and a frequent butt of jokes on Twitter. “It’s Tuesday. Time for a new major Firefox release.” This one looks better. Here’s my review, after a few days of use.

Dave Farquhar

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Toggle between two hosts files with a simple script

Dave Farquhar Windows September 21, 2011April 24, 2017vista, windows 2000, windows 7, windows 8, windows nt, Windows Vista, Windows XP

A longtime reader wrote in asking if it was possible to easily toggle between two hosts files. There are several possible uses for this. When I’m at home, I need to address my web site by its internal, private IP address. On the road, that private address obviously doesn’t work. He wants something like this for other reasons; I believe he’s blocking ad servers with his hosts file and needs to unblock one or more servers temporarily for select sites to work properly.

This solution would make my Computer Science 203 professor rescind the B I received in his class if he saw it, but it works, and I don’t think he reads this blog anyway.

Dave Farquhar

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