Since I’m not likely going to be able to make my switch to the world of Apple for a few months, I just had to settle in to Windows and accept my fate. Linux, unfortunately, is not an option for me due to my unique software needs or I’d be there in a hurry. And there’s no point going to Windows Vista, is more expensive, slower, buggier, and more annoying than XP (at least for now).

So I decided to make XP as suitable habitat as possible. After reading through many guides, I found some that were worth following and have tweaked my machine to run like a well-oiled machine. It’s FAST. Here’s what I accomplished:

• Speed: Eliminating useless overhead in Windows and using so performance enhancements has made my machine almost as zippy as it was when I first got it (when it had NOTHING on it). My favorite though, was telling Norton to stop scanning my outgoing emails and program. With that change alone, things are opening in half the time or better.
• Beauty: Using some themes for Windows and Firefox that stress speed and space my interface has become delightfully non-distracting and my monitor feels like it grew an inch or two.
• Stability: I can’t really claim this one until I’ve been running it for a while, but I was able to disable most of the superfluous “services” running in Windows. Without so many operations going at once, I expect I will not have as many incidences. Also, I disabled that dumb “Send error report” window! Whew!
• Better Browsing: My browser, FireFox, is no longer a browser for the general public. It’s a lean mean browsing machine and it’s been bookin’ around the web since I gave it a tune up.

So what if your car has live GPS positioning, integrated map plotting, bullet proof windows, four and a half wheel drive, and can drive itself if you can only go 10 mph? I’ve removed the things in Windows I will never need (I can always turn them back on) and I’m reaping the benefits.

This is extremely Geeky, so I don’t recommend this if you don’t have at least a couple hours to spend on it (1 hour windows, 1 hour internet). Here’s the best of the bunch as far as guides:

PC Stats Beginner Guide
Removing Useless XP “Services” Overhead (be cautious… definitely worth it)
Tweak Guides: FireFox 2.0
FireFox Preloader
TCP Optimizer (speed up your Internet)

That’s it. Don’t do EVERYTHING in those guides, it would take forever. Just do the things that look the best to you. With a little tweaking, you’d be surprised just how responsive XP can be.

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Here’s a question I was asked recently that you may find interesting:

“Do you know what’s the best way to go if I want to set up my own website for free? I googled “free website” and pulled up a bunch of stuff that looked kind of tricky–like officelive.com that said it was free but when I looked deeper it said it would charge my credit card after awhile. I was wondering what you thought.“

Of course, if you are willing to put up with the culture and ads, MySpace was made for this. But since I can’t reccomend Myspace to anyone without feeling like I have to make a burnt offering to the Lord afterwards, I suggested a more creative approach… WARNING: This is not for the feint of heart (or those afraid of “words” like HTML):

Free hosting is hard to come by but there are some options out there for the creative.

I guess it really depends on what you need the site to do. If you were doing a basic info site with some downloadable files I would probably try a Wordpress/Google Group combination. Wordpress, while intended to be a blog is actually a highly evolved CMS (content management system) that can be used to make great websites.

The best part is, the site is controlled like a blog, so it is very easy to edit content.

The reason for the Google Group is that you can upload files to it and that link directly to those files on your site (this is transparent to users).

Another plus to using this set up is, no ads! It’s completely ad free.

I would advise that you buy a domain name though unless you want mysite.wordpress.com to be your address. You can get one for $8 a year at godaddy.com. Using domain-forwarding through godaddy you can have your site appear to be hosted on your own domain.

http://wordpress.com
http://groups.google.com/
http://godaddy.com/

You’re going to have to get your hands pretty dirty to get it done (what do you expect for free!), but it should be fun and completely convincing when you’re done. WordPress is an awesome system. You’ll need a good template that allows for multiple pages. Here’s some good WordPress links:

http://themes.wordpress.net (if you don’t like any of the defaults)
http://wp-plugins.net/
http://faq.wordpress.com/ - to answer your questions

If you need to host images for your template, try photobucket.com or flickr.com.

There’s probably an easier way to do this if you want to put up with ads, but for the best end product, this is the route I would take!

Sorry if that seems like too much work to you! You could always fork out the dough if you don’t like it though

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