I recently came across a backup of my old web page from Oct 2002. I decided to share some highlights from back in 2002.
First, I wrote about using an uncompressed drive. This was back in the Win 95, 98, 98SE, and later the ME days. I used to compress my drive sometimes to gain some space but it put a noticeable lag on my system speed. I honestly couldn’t make up my mind on whether speed or space was more important.
Then I recommended the use of a program called IEradicator to remove the unmovable Internet Explorer. It interfered with some programs but overall it did speed up the system. Believe it or not, the website that offered this program still exists – Download IEradicator
Go to the free software section. Warning: For Win98 and Win98SE only! Not for modern-day systems.
Then there was the Recommended Shareware/Software.
ACDSee for pictures. A program called AxMan for breaking up large files to fit on floppy disks. Grisoft Antivirus, now called AVG, my first choice of antivirus. I started having too many update issues. And too many crashes when I got my first Win XP system. Then I switched to Avira for almost a decade until that gave me too many issues so I switched to Avast.
Opera browser. At the time, it had a big banner ad embedded that you had to pay to get rid of. I registered with www.pcmag.com to get a bunch of free programs and utilities. And WinZip was my compression program.
I got into the backup game from day one. I even figured out how to back up my computer BIOS at the time. Everything was for floppy disks then (about 1.4 MB each or 720KB for some older floppies). I had a list of recommended files to back up.
Then I had problems with Opera. I didn’t know how to edit the bookmarks. My mind didn’t make the connection right away between what I called bookmarks and what Opera called its hotlist.
Even back then I was always trying to make my system go a little faster. I found out how to edit a file called the config.sys file that was supposed to make my system faster. I can’t remember if it made any noticeable difference.
Then I had a segment called Network Nightmare because when hasn’t Windows Networking been a nightmare. To be fair to Windows, this segment deals with the problems of trying to get a driver to install for my D-Link ISA network card in my 486 computer at the time. Twenty years late but I realize I should have called it Driver’s Nightmare, or something similar.
Then I mentioned a few more Computer Maintenance Tips. This involved cleaning up Temp files – sound familiar? And using Microsoft’s own Reg Database Cleaner called RegClean. Microsoft discontinued the program eventually and discouraged anyone from using it. More backups and a program that was supposed to remove unneeded files from Windows.
And finally, a link to my first choice of HTML editors at the time – Claris Home Page Lite.
So, a small trip down memory lane for me. What are your earliest memories of computing? Let us know in the comments.
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