Golden Age of Software -- Gone

Maybe I'm late to the game. Maybe "it's the internet stupid". But today I stopped by a local largeish computer software/hardware store - and was amazed how few shelves actually contained software. I'd have to estimate that half of the area that used to contain software titles - now contain kooky keyboards and kooky speakers.

It's amazing that I used to find myself lost in nerdvana scanning the shelves for the coolest cool tool - or the obscure development tool. Now half of the "utilities" section is populated with nothing but Antivirus titles. I miss PC-Tools, I miss the old school hard core utilities.

Gosh, now the Macintosh software shelves look like they are growing in comparison... maybe the incumbency of Windows will just shrivel - leaving users free to migrate to another platform. I've been convinced that another platform (Mac, Linux, etc) won't really take off unless there was a clear migration path (meaning old software would run --- Windows apps on Mac, just as about every other major transition required --- CP/M to DOS (okay they ran on same hardware - that was easier) DOS to Windows, Windows to Win32 then Win64. Another 5 years and maybe there just won't be consumer software (just games) -- and it just won't matter anymore.

Or maybe not....

Love the Burgers

Around here - it's hard to beat "5 Guys". There's something terribly good about 'honest' burger joints. They make good burgers -- and that's about it.

Another place to get a good burger. When in Seattle - make your way to Burgermaster (the burgerjoint, not the memory manager). Oddly enough Burgermaster's logo looks suspiciously like the Windows Longhorn Logo

Also in Seattle there's Dick's Drive In.

ThePCSpy.com v8 - Articles - What Slows Windows Down?

ThePCSpy.com v8 - Articles - What Slows Windows Down?

Would be nice to not be on this list ;)

Quickstart, FastStart, whatever

Applications that need to 'preload' at OS start are big bloated applications - and clearly point to bad decisions being made much earlier. I wasn't happy with FastStart in earlier applications - as I would have been happier fixing the actual problems - or having folks actually fix their perf issues. But this time it's just a sign of poor managment of expectations. Unfortunately engineering management has given the product folks prior art to use as justification. Oh well - strike two.

Sandboxie

Sandboxie

This is a pretty cool app allows you to make any app virtually unable to modifiy the filesystem. It captures all disk writes into a virtual file system. Would be cool if they could limit the files it was allowed to read from (masking out documents & settings, etc)

CrossOver Mac

CodeWeavers - Beta Center - CrossOver Mac

Now Mac buddies - what do you think of my grand plan?