my name is mwd

As much as it’s improved over the years, I think Jonathan Hogg nailed it right when he said that Windows had the look and feel of an undergraduate project - it’s still a bit rough around the edges. Still, as I said, it’s getting better, and you can help it along a bit. For example, the first thing I do to a fresh Windows install is install Cygwin. This gives me a real terminal and shell, plus emacs, gcc, etc. After that it’s on with FireFox to make browsing worthwhile. Finally, just because I’m a mac head, on goes iTunes.

I found a couple of other toys today that are not essential like the last lot, but a bit of fun. If you don’t like the default windows themes (the default XP theme is mad, and the classic theme is a bit tired now I think) then you can use this little hack to allow XP to use alternative themes. There’s a whole bunch on the web, but I’ve gone for this simple one called b0seclass. Finally there’s a nice themeable stats monitor (that I wouldn’t mind seeing a Mac OS X version of) called Samurize if you’re into that kind of thing.

Of course, it’s not all bad. In SP2 the wireless LAN selection GUI is very nice, and the firewalling stuff seems to be done well too. Here’s looking forward to funky things in Windows Vista…