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My new system's desktop.



Two items to point out, besides for the elegant simplicity of the setup).

1) The toolbar to the right.

I can SINGLE CLICK on any item in it.

Once I set it up, I never went back.
Besides for the folders listed, the "Stuff" folder contains one shortcut to the subfolder "G:AudioVoice MP3s" and it shows up as a folder on the toolbar.

No folders on the desktop needed, only a few application icons.
Also starting out with a reorganized "Start Menu" helps a lot.

2) That single "Quick Launch" icon, "Show Desktop", can be really handy at times.

My new 160 GB hard drive started out with 146 GB. There is a 2GB Restore partition which I have left alone for now.
However a 160GB C: drive is insane. So I learned what is available to repartition a drive without spending any more money and then split off a 114 GB partition to hold most of my videos.
I also moved over my old second hard drive but haven't bothered to recover the unused 20 GB of unused space, (Windows 98SE can only address a max of 128 GB on any single drive).

I now have my most organized system yet.

MAIN (C 31.9 GB (23.1 GB free)
DVD-RW (D
VIDEOS (E 114 GB (17.6 GB free)
MUSIC (F 51.3 GB (20.7 GB free)
STUFF (G 76.5 GB (48.8 GB free)

An archived mirror image of the C: partition fits on a single bootable DVD!
Used Space on C: 9,463,775,232 ( 8.81 GB )

The archive has a full C: installation of user applications & hardware drivers for everything listed below:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Version 2002 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
Eudora 7.1.0.9 (including 5 years of emails) - AVG Free 7.5
GetRight 4.5 - Acrobat Reader 8 - True Image 10
Open Office 2.0.4 - 766 fonts - Font-O-Matic 1.04
WinZip 8.1 - Winamp 2.77 - Firefox 1.50 w/MAF 0.63
Macromedia Shockwave & Flash players - NetZero dialer
Apple QuickTime - WS_FTP LE - WinDAC 32
Merriam-Webster's Reference Library - Dictionary & Thesaurus
GoldWave 5.19 - Nero Burning ROM 6.6.1.4
Read Please 2003 - Art Rage 1.1 - Paint Shop Pro 3.12
CamStudio 2.0 - Rand-McNally Tripmaker 99
CD2HTML v3.4.2 - Tenebril Encrypt 1.5 - PicViewer V1.72
Bareview 1.3 - DisplayMate 1.25 - Overloaded Imagination DLL Viewer
System Information for Windows 1.56 - Hoolicon 3.21
DarkBASIC v1.13 - Play Basic 1.61 - WinUAE 1.2.0 - AIAB r10.5
Atari800WinPLus31 - Yahoo! Messenger 8 - Real Player 8
Ad-Aware 1.06 - Spybot 1.4 - GTK+ 2.6.10 - GIMP 2.2.13
PageBreeze 4.0a - DarkBASIC Professional 4.1
Windows 95 solitare games - Atari Arcade - exPressit S.E. 2.1
CSDiff 4.0 - Cute Partition Manager 0.9.7 - Dictionary 2000 4.0
GParted - LiveCD ( -0.3.3-7.iso ; -0.3.4-6.iso)
HP 712C Printer - HP Scanjet 4400C & utilities
Fuji FinePix A205 - Bushnell Binoculars - EZ CAM II USB
AverDVD PCI video digitizer - EO Video 1.36
Windows Updates through 4/12/7 including Internet Explorer 7.0.5370.11
Windows Media Player 11
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If I'd installed any Microsoft applications it'd be a 2 DVD archive for sure.

All user data, and installed games go onto the E:, F:, and G: drives.
And I had to install the graphics utilities which came with my Fuji Camera, Bushnell Binoculars, and EZ CAM II USB into Grogram Files folder to make that single DVD archive happen.
Those graphics suites are huge.
Also the PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x utility is on G: since you can't install it to the drive being recovered.

The joys of a new computer.

Sounds great mate.

Some of the installs like winzip etc I would have replaced with winrar etc..
Dont forget about VLC for groovy video playback.

Being a programmer as well, you should have a tiny partition for text files, re: partition file size allotment vs tiny txt files.

If you have another drive to use as well, slice a part of it for the virtual memory area.
This way you have a HD head reading another drive for a tiny bit more speed.

not my kind of setup, but I can see where your going with it.
kudos.

Thanks indi. I'll check out the VLC, but I have to admit that the latest Media Player from Microsoft is pretty good.
Over the years they've ripped all the good ideas from everyone's media players and now they've finally gotten the thing optimized.

I'm a registered user of for WinZip so of course it's installed,
but thanks for reminding me that I also need to download that 7zip or something for rars.

With so much hard drive I'm not worrying too much about text file sizes. Thise files have their own folder in STUFF with appropriate subfolders for clarity.

The whole idea is that I can find most any of my stuff in seconds,
with a minimum of clicking, without any new Google or Vista indexing and search monitoring features talking to big brother or hackers in stealth mode.

It's really handy having one click access to all of your drives and about 20 of your most used folders in a constant location.

You might think it's ugly, it's easy to set up and remove, just right click on the taskbar and select Toolars > New Toolbar from the menu. You can drag the toolbar away from the taskbar into a seperate window, or as I prefer, into a RHS menu.

How did I forget to install the CyberStella emulator?

sorry mate my whole business is mac OsX oriented now.
Windows is an operating system I get paid to repair for clients.
I have a few but they are hardly on any more.
MY game DT is on hold until I get a month off to dabble.
I only have to add NPCS and AI to complete it.
Not to mention the months its taking to texture my monsters and animate them.

My search is already catalogued before i search so I find stuff in seconds then minutes with windas.
Yeah i guess you have to tolerate that kind of 3rd party install with a windows environment.
Google desktop etc bleh.


VLC is very worth your time.
My OSX lounge room machine runs that exclusively on the plasma for all video content, except for the h264 conversions of the DVD library Im building. QT pro runs the rest.


hey bro my next rig is 8 dual cores woot! all at 3000 mhz.
Intel as well so I can dual boot for my game dev. XP of course
hurry up with Dx10 DBP guys.!

yummy for the HD Quality video editing and rendering, gotta love mental ray satellite, shame I can only use another 2 cpus on my network, better make then another 2 x 3000mhz beasties.

That comes at a cost of $1200 - 1400 AUD to get to maya 8.5.
sweet no more upgrade costs after that for a while . luckily i bought the dongle version.
Sigraph in August will tease me with Maya 2008 or maya 9 to the uninitiated,
PPC to intel maya from 8.0 to 8.5 cost me a whole days of work dammit.
I shoulda waited for maya 9 instead of buying in when I did, anyway its lush to learn now,

My whole archive system is freeware unix GNU/ GPL freeware and unix batch scripting.
you paid for winzip! i would have never guessed. your the first to say so just kidding.

yeah hard drives are cheap now a days.
Got the cash for 3 x 22 inch wide screen LCDS this month. Im dying for them to be delivered.
Im seriously thinking about the dell ones they have listed on the site.
ugg dell.

Where is a love I mean grub mate. why is it not dual booted ?

Lol, just couldn't stop yourself could ya Indi.

Hard drives may be going up in price.

This drive's regular price was $55 until the past Monday morning.
160GB 7,200RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps Hard Drive



I assure you that it will be, but one thing at a time.
When I'm ready, after I've finished with more current projects which will take at least a year or two, I'll then get the latest version of whatever Linux seems best.

Back last century I used to dual boot Windows 95 and Red Hat so I could compile FORTRAN.



I installed it and it was able to play an .avi that the Windows Media Player couldn't.
Nice, thanks.

Who needs a quick link for show desktop? Winkey + D, dumpy.

Heartbone;

Congrats on being the first I know of, besides me, to use those little toolbars. I can't get enough of them!

QuothTheRaven, I did not know about that one. Thanks.

code master, you are the only other one that I know about as well, and I've never seen it enywhere.
Of all the ways to access computer data, I like a single mouse click the best.
As Microsoft never emphasized the toolbar method to set up a desktop, I understand why it is underutilized.
Heck, I even found out about it by an accidental mouse click.
How did you learn about it?

Win2k has a similar toolbar thing. And you can drag the toolbar off the taskbar to the desktop and it'll make a floating toolbar. I found it by accident when I dropped a folder on the taskbar.

heartbone, you may be interested in taking a look at "Rocket Dock", I use it.

It's sort of like Star Dock/Object Dock without the crashes. Star Dock is awesome and I loved the developer tool bar,
but the free version would crash on me like a Kennedy after a couple of night-caps!

I've used those toolbars before and I love them. I just got a 22" widescreen LCD so I think that a sidebar like that would be feasible to add to my workspace. Might just do it.