Tony Firshman wrote: [removing IE OW etc from XP / W2K]
>It is there very clearly under add/remove windows components (under >add/remove programs). Far less hidden than many aspects, and certainly >not a hacker job in the registry. >OK - entries would possibly remain, but not affecting the bloated system >to any great degree. >The whole of this thread has implied it is locked in only to be removed >by hackers. OK, try the following: remove IE from windows using add/remove then in the start menu, select RUN and type 'iexplore' Surprise: IE is still there, ALL of it. Same applies to MP8, Netmeeting, OE and a couple of other things. That said, all of it CAN be removed but it is not easy, though there are utilities that will do it (but not for free!). One case in point would be Media Player - I have removed the default MP 7/8 and use Mplayer2 (MP2) which is installed with windows anyway - it does not come as any surprise that even though they all use the same codecs, Mplayer2 is about 2x as fast at decoding. Hardly seen in MP itself on a relatively fast machine, but easily noticeable on a Celeron 600 based laptop - in fact, MP 7/8 is completely unusable on it, while Mplayer2 works perfectly with the very same codecs and media files - meaning: there is absolutely no reason for MP 7/8 to work any slower at all, and a heck of a lot of reasons for it to work faster (after all, it is 'improved', isn't it?) - yet it is slower, and not faster. To make things worse, on a relatively fast machine you get playback hickups if you use other programs at the same time, which do not occur with the same programs and MP2 and may (wrongly) assume you could use a memory upgrade or faster CPU - when in fact it is the efficiency of the newer versions of software that gets progressively lower. Reason: It REALLY is not necessary to use 2GHz processors just to browse the internet and write letters - but if this were common knowledge, how many 2GHz procesors would get sold? So, should we just write inefficient software (and the assumption that the inefficiency is not intentional seems to be a rather large one, and if correct immediately implies something even worse, which is incompetence) in the name of progress, or should I say, industry profitability? _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List