Old Purfle

You've probably already read about Old Purfle, though not by that name. On other pages I refer to it as my P4 or my Windows XP box. There isn't anything special about it, but I include it here only for completeness.

I haven't done much hardware hacking with this system, as it was pretty enough to begin with. The software side has been more interesting. I started by doing the basic registry hacks, like getting rid of the useless search dog. Next, I exorcised XP of Windows Media Player. I removed every single reference to WMP from the registry, which was enough to finally kill it. Additionally I switched most every reference of Explorer to A43. It's a wonder the machine still boots.

Added the essential background utilities. TinyResMeter, Kerio Firewall, TaskSwitchXP, Powermenu, StartupMonitor, Virtual Dimension, and AllChars. I also begrudgingly installed Norton AV. I would have preferred to use AVG instead, but Drexel's tech people like to force us to use inefficient bloatware. Its okay, though. I tore Norton apart. All that's left is a single 2.5MB process, rvtscan.exe. Updates and full scans only happen when I say so.

While I named this computer Old, it is by far the newest of my computers. And the computer has nothing to do with purfle, which is a type of lacy trim.

For years, my household did not have a network. As such, the computers did not need names - we just called them by their distinguishing feature. 286, 8086-laptop, 386, that-Pentium-from-the-neighbors-garbage, etc. But when this convention was carried over to the stray cats my family took in, one of my friends felt it was time for an intervention. Eventually I agreed with her. If I didn't start giving things real names, my children would be called First and Second.

So I thought at it long and hard and gave up. I settled for an anagram of the distinguishing feature.

Linkback:
  http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~kmk592/hardware/oldpurfle/

Printer friendly links:
  http://www.shawneelink.net/~bgmiller/
  http://perso.accelance.net/~pesoft/trm/us_trm.html
  http://www.kerio.com/kpf_home.html
  http://www.ntwind.com/taskswitchxp/
  http://www.veridicus.com/tummy/programming/powermenu/
  http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/
  http://allchars.zwolnet.com/
  http://www.grisoft.com/

History:
  2005/12/31 uploaded