This is precisely what I was talking about with GENEVA -- the sheer, incomparable joy of tricking out your system to respond and perform *exactly* the way you want it to. People do indeed forget, and more often than not, sit around and gripe that they don't like what they have (often for reasons that are easy enough to fix).
It's part of why I have so much trouble respecting the slew of anti-Microsoft religious nuts who cite 'crappy built-in software' as the reason they can't stand any MS OS. Don't like it? REPLACE IT. That's the beauty of XP -- it truly is that modular. Replace all hooks to EXPLORER.EXE in the registry to your favorite shell replacement; it can be done. Hate IE? Try Avant, try Firebird, try Opera. With enough work you really can replace nearly everything.
Here I am with a laptop that uses Jaguar's icon dock, a replacement file explorer that's based on my favorite Amiga file tool (Directory Opus is back!), a third-party browser that's remarkably resistant to crapware advertising, a third-party icon engine that supports much larger icon sizes, the ISS replacement network stack which I've found quite a bit more stable (not to mention allows me to run their diagnostic software), and third-party control panel, search and run applications. Heck, I've even replaced the command prompt with a port of bash that I'm dreadfully fond of.
Of course, I mean no disrespect to folks who've chosen Mac. I'd be a hypocrite, seeing as ninety percent of my efforts in retooling GENEVA have been to turn her into some bizarre Panther/Solaris hybrid. The point is simply that this is the single most fun, and most rewarding, part of getting a new system.Sometimes I wonder if it's even more fun that actually *enjoying* the tricked-out system when it's done.
...and perhaps that's why it never really gets 'done.'
- Dusty, who'll be puttering on GENEVA every night screaming 'just one more tweak!' 'til he dies
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2003-10-27 05:00 (UTC)It's part of why I have so much trouble respecting the slew of anti-Microsoft religious nuts who cite 'crappy built-in software' as the reason they can't stand any MS OS. Don't like it? REPLACE IT. That's the beauty of XP -- it truly is that modular. Replace all hooks to EXPLORER.EXE in the registry to your favorite shell replacement; it can be done. Hate IE? Try Avant, try Firebird, try Opera. With enough work you really can replace nearly everything.
Here I am with a laptop that uses Jaguar's icon dock, a replacement file explorer that's based on my favorite Amiga file tool (Directory Opus is back!), a third-party browser that's remarkably resistant to crapware advertising, a third-party icon engine that supports much larger icon sizes, the ISS replacement network stack which I've found quite a bit more stable (not to mention allows me to run their diagnostic software), and third-party control panel, search and run applications. Heck, I've even replaced the command prompt with a port of bash that I'm dreadfully fond of.
Of course, I mean no disrespect to folks who've chosen Mac. I'd be a hypocrite, seeing as ninety percent of my efforts in retooling GENEVA have been to turn her into some bizarre Panther/Solaris hybrid. The point is simply that this is the single most fun, and most rewarding, part of getting a new system.Sometimes I wonder if it's even more fun that actually *enjoying* the tricked-out system when it's done.
...and perhaps that's why it never really gets 'done.'
- Dusty, who'll be puttering on GENEVA every night screaming 'just one more tweak!' 'til he dies