[Sandwich]

http://www.etek.chalmers.se/~e8gus/nano98/

Now we see the true meaning of "bloatware"!

[Descenterace]

Just need someone to shrink WinXP Home now.  1Gb is ridiculous for an operating system.  It's not like I use much of it.

Incidentally, I've had trouble getting rid of MSN Messenger.  I uninstalled it and put in Trillian instead, but whenever Trillian logs onto MSN, I get a window saying that I 'have been logged off of .NET passport service' because I 'logged on at a different location'.  Also, when Trillian isn't running people are able to send me instant messages, despite the lack of MSN Messenger.  WTF is going on here?  Is it not possible for me to use XP's .NET passport without having some ghostly version of Messenger running?  It's a PAIN in the ASS!

[Ace]

MS should release "diet" versions for those of us who don't want computer obesity

[Admiral LSD]

Neat. but 1) It's still Windows 98 and it still sucks and 2) It's pointless seeing as no one in their right mind uses an 8Mb 486DX4-100 with a 250Mb HDD as their main machine anymore.

RAM and storage are cheap and plentiful enough so that you don't have to count every byte, it's not 1994 anymore.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD
Neat. but 1) It's still Windows 98 and it still sucks and 2) It's pointless seeing as no one in their right mind uses an 8Mb 486DX4-100 with a 250Mb HDD as their main machine anymore.

RAM and storage are cheap and plentiful enough so that you don't have to count every byte, it's not 1994 anymore.

More importantly most useful programs (like games and Lightwave) depend on there being some other things there. You can't use this for much of anything real.

Of course that puts it on par with most of Linux...

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD
Neat. but 1) It's still Windows 98 and it still sucks and 2) It's pointless seeing as no one in their right mind uses an 8Mb 486DX4-100 with a 250Mb HDD as their main machine anymore.

RAM and storage are cheap and plentiful enough so that you don't have to count every byte, it's not 1994 anymore.

However, that's just the mentality that has led to programs these days being horrid bloated things, unoptimized to the extreme. An example of the opposite is NetCaptor, an IE shell with tabs, etc... all in a package ~750kb IIRC.

[Admiral LSD]

Originally posted by Sandwich
However, that's just the mentality that has led to programs these days being horrid bloated things, unoptimized to the extreme.

But users are in a better position do do something about that today than they were a decade ago, it's both easy and cheap to get more RAM or a bigger HDD, clinging on to this ridiculous notion that every program should fit on a floppy disk just because you have a crap PC (and can't be bothered doing something about that) is stupid.

An example of the opposite is NetCaptor, an IE shell with tabs, etc... all in a package ~750kb IIRC.

NetCaptor still needs IE present on the system, which is a 50Mb download on it's own and probably a good 100Mb of the total size of average Windows install. If you want to use a web browser as an example, use Opera: a fully self-contained web browser with an inbuilt email client in a 3Mb download. It's not 750k admittedly, but compared with the 6Mb of Mozilla Firebird (which doesn't include a mail client), the 10Mb of the regular Moz, the 20-30 of the Netscape package and the 50 or so for IE, it's still rather good.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD


But users are in a better position do do something about that today than they were a decade ago, it's both easy and cheap to get more RAM or a bigger HDD, clinging on to this ridiculous notion that every program should fit on a floppy disk just because you have a crap PC (and can't be bothered doing something about that) is stupid.

What kind of PC you have is not the point. The point is that software today is on average less optimized than it was 8-10 years ago. Instead of using one obscure function to accomplish a taks, programmers don't make the effort and program it in 4 more-well-known functions. This is unoptimized coding.

Originally posted by Admiral LSD
NetCaptor still needs IE present on the system, which is a 50Mb download on it's own and probably a good 100Mb of the total size of average Windows install. If you want to use a web browser as an example, use Opera: a fully self-contained web browser with an inbuilt email client in a 3Mb download. It's not 750k admittedly, but compared with the 6Mb of Mozilla Firebird (which doesn't include a mail client), the 10Mb of the regular Moz, the 20-30 of the Netscape package and the 50 or so for IE, it's still rather good.

All true, Opera is a good example. But Netcaptor is still small for what it does - look at the sizes of other IE shells.

[Ace]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD


But users are in a better position do do something about that today than they were a decade ago, it's both easy and cheap to get more RAM or a bigger HDD, clinging on to this ridiculous notion that every program should fit on a floppy disk just because you have a crap PC (and can't be bothered doing something about that) is stupid.

Sandwich has stated already my opinion on this.

[TopAce]

This is impossible to have that size for Windows.

[Flipside]

I agree with Sandwich here, I used to program Oric 1's, BBC Micros, Amstrad CPC's etc in machine code, and you had to optimise like crazy, both for size AND speed.
A lot of programs that don't run on, for example, a P600, SHOULD do so. A 600 Mhz processor is NOT a slow thing! (Remember I programmed back in the days where 2KHz processors were fast!). And with additional support of dedicated video rendering and maths co-processor, theres no doubt in my mind that nearly all programs these days, Windows very very much included, are incredibly poorly written or optimised. This is often because commercial programmers are given mega-powerful systems to work on, and so don't take the time to optimise. Give 'em a P500 and a medium spec graphics card, 512 Meg and a 24 Gig Hard Drive loaded with XP and loads of other unrelated stuff and THEN tell them to get writing

Flipside

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD
But users are in a better position do do something about that today than they were a decade ago, it's both easy and cheap to get more RAM or a bigger HDD, clinging on to this ridiculous notion that every program should fit on a floppy disk just because you have a crap PC (and can't be bothered doing something about that) is stupid.

Isn't it bad enough that the program is slow and takes up a large amount of disk space? Now the user has to pay more money to get the program to work the way it would have if only it had been programmed properly in the first place?

I remember reading a story one about a programmer who took an  MS utility that was 1.5MB in size and programmed a utility with exactly the same functionality in 48k.

 Even with 10% bloat you have to remember that it stilll has to load. Ever wonder what percentage of the time it takes your computer to boot is simply due to poor programming?

Even if the user chucks money at the problem it isn't going to make it go away until you start spending money on really esoteric storage options.

[diamondgeezer]

Hey Sarnie, I just tried that NetCaptor thing and it seems to have hijacked my comp. Had to do a manual registry purge. Which is a shame, since it seemed nice enough and it didn't crash when I came to HLP

[Nico]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD


But users are in a better position do do something about that today than they were a decade ago, it's both easy and cheap to get more RAM or a bigger HDD

Talk for yourself.
You might not count every byte, but some people, like me, do count every cent they use
Not everybody is a Rothshild wanabe

[IceFire]

Wow...that is a serious reduction in size.

I've heard many a rumor on MS products (and others) where all the old code is still present in the new product...just commented out or even left in because the new team doesn't know quite what the old code does so its still there, consuming space and processing time.

There is absolutely no excuse for sloppily written code and it doesn't matter if its a website or the latest version of an office suite.  Plenty of things could be written better and would make all of our computers perform much better than they do.

Case in point, Trillian consumes probably half the amount of memory that ICQ 2002 I used to use did and yet it has all of the important features and the ability to connect to every IM service worth mentioning.  ICQ caught on a produced ICQ Lite with too few features...but Trillian guys got the right idea.

[Fineus]

Would it be fair to say that perhaps software companies are working with hardware companies to drive the overhead up? It would make sense that the software would be written to require more powerful hardware or indeed specific hardware to make it function at its best. Most people want as much functionality as they can - so if they can afford to buy the new hardware, they will.

It's sneaky - but it's what I'd do.

[karajorma]

Wouldn't surprise me in the least. In fact it's probably the only reason the PC manufacturers haven't openly revolted against MS. There crappy bloatware sells more PCs than a properly programmed OS would.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]anyone got a copy of win95 that could send me the files needed?

EXPLORER.EXE
COMDLG32.DLL
SHELL32.DLL

I installed a copy of win98 on my old pc and I want to see what I can do with this.
[/color]

[Descenterace]

Apparently, the utility programs in MS DOS 6.22 were usually between 20% and 90% useless code.  Defrag could've been reduced in size by about 85%.  Dunno if that's true, but I've heard it quite a lot.

I'm currently writing Vertex and Pixel Shaders for a game.  While high-level shader code might be easier, I chose to use assembler for two reasons:

1) I'm used to low-level languages (I wrote a powerful GUI application in Borland Turbo Assembler)
2) Because the VShaders are so complex, it is imperative that I squeeze every last mip out of the graphics card.  Hence, high-level is a no-no.

Anyone used Visual Studio AppWizard?  It sucks.  There's a whole load of bollocks in the MS-generated application framework that doesn't have to be there.
MFC?  The problem with a universal application base is that ONLY 10% OF THE FRAMEWORK IS USED BY ANY GIVEN APPLICATION!  Here we have the reason why Windows is so huge.

A situation well known to programmers (such as myself) who use the Windows API:

Q: How many Windows programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Four hundred and seventy-two:
One to write WinGetLightBulbHandle
one to write WinQueryStatusLightBulb
one to write WinGetLightSwitchHandle...

but the API runs faster, inherits less redundant code, and is easier to follow than MFC.  At least, I find it easier to follow.  Probably because it's me who has written most of the code in my program, instead of some drunken member of the MFC team...

Whenever I rewrite a program to improve efficiency, the first thing I do is figure out where I could cut out useless code.  It seems that this doesn't even figure on the MS list.  Maybe if they didn't set stupidly-sort time intervals for completing a piece of software, their programmers might have more time to decipher the mess made by the last generation.  Of course, that's the problem.  The last lot didn't tidy up the code, so the current team have a harder job ahead of them.  So they don't do it.  So the subsequent team have EVEN MORE junk to deal with!  The term 'exponential bloatware' springs to mind...

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Hey Sarnie, I just tried that NetCaptor thing and it seems to have hijacked my comp. Had to do a manual registry purge.

Eh? Hijacked how?