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photo credit: Dylan Parker

Of the main reasons why I have to reformat my Windows PC every 12 months or so, registry bloat is the usual culprit.

“RegBloat” coupled with the deterioration of hard disk performance brought on by an over active torrent client makes my PC slow, sad and not much fun to be around. I was also getting a little annoyed with the “features” and “issues” that Windows Vista presented on a daily basis, something that grates against me after using my MacBook all the time.

I decided that I would take some proactive action and reinstall XP and as many “portable applications” as possible, freeing up the opportunity for registry bloat to take hold too soon. For those who are unaware, Portable Apps are applications that can be stored and run from a USB device or folder - without installation. This means you can take your applications anywhere and run them knowing they will have all of your settings saved and tweaks applied. The Portable Apps can also be copied to a folder on your hard disk and run from there.

No MSI installation routines - no InstallShield needed - just a folder with the required files in. Perfect.

After the reinstall, here is the current setup I have with the portable apps highlighted in bold:

Windows XP Pro
AVG Free Anti Virus
Microsoft Office Professional 2003
Microsoft Visio 2003
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended
Adobe Illustrator CS3
Firefox
VLC
7-Zip
DeepBurner
FileZilla FTP client
uTorrent
Adobe Acrobat Reader 8

Thats a good chunk of the applications that are portable!  And If you don’t want to use a portable version of OpenOffice to do your writing and spreadsheets, Mr Google will even tell you where to find a portable version of Office 2003!  From past experience, after installing Office - that is when the performance of the PC takes a nose dive.

The beauty of using portable apps is that you can add and remove them as you see fit without too much impact to the operating system.  You may need to associate your AVI and MPG files to start with VLC and your PSD files to open with Photoshop - but other than things like that no extra information is inserted into the registry.

The whole process is similar to installing an application on OS X where you drag the “application package” into the Applications folder and run it from there.  Changes are made to the system (such as the open with options) when you first run the application, but 99% of it still resides in the Applications folder.  On OS X, you can also use tools such as AppZapper to delete the application and associated links, preference files and information quickly and without any fuss.  How many times have you uninstalled an application on Windows and then realised it has left great chunks of unwanted information in the registry and folders scattered around the disk?

Head over to PortableApps.com to get a wide range of freeware portable applications and use the “usual sources” to obtain the others!

Fresh from the rumblings that disturbed my late night Photoshop session, another rumble has appeared on my screen this morning!

WHERE THE HELL DID THIS APPEAR FROM???????

It opens this weekend apparently - and was supposed to open last year before xmas!

Where the hell have I been???
Going to find it hard not to buy an iPhone now!!

I think i’m going to cry…

It’s official. I am a new man.

Yesterday - I bought some computer software - that wasn’t a game!

If you know me, you might think that this is a little odd and it may give you the impression that I never buy stuff for my computer (which I hardly ever do - working in the IT industry does have some benefits) - but this was almost too good to turn down.

Each year, Macheist sell bundles of Mac OS X software which would usually cost in excess of several hundred dollars - but under their offer, only costs around $40. Also, a portion of the profit from the sales goes to charity!

Simply put, this is the best Mac software deal in history.

This year, the bundle includes 12 applications for $49 (£25):

1Password - an application for storing your secure information - not just your web based passwords and information.

CoverSutra - a desktop based app for iTunes control and alot more!

Cha-Ching - a money/finance management application

iStopMotion - for recording stop-frame animations to the Mac. Something for me and the kids to do one rainy sunday afternoon.

Awaken - an alarm clock which starts up your mac and plays you sweet music from your iTunes library - or Barry Mannilow - which ever..

Speed Download - if you go anywhere near Rapidshare and you use a mac - this is really invaluable.

AppZapper - kills apps and associated settings/preference files with drag-and-drop efficiency

TaskPaper - a Mac based application for Getting Things Done. Something I definitely need!

CSSEdit - an application that provides a visual take on CSS file editing.

Snapz Pro X - a screen recording application for when you want to demo how to hack into something to all the other spotty kids on YouTube

PixelMator - A new(ish) image editing application

Wingnuts 2 - a fighter plane style game

So, whist not all of these are “must have applications” the majority such as CSSEdit, Pixelmator and Speed Download are worth the $49 alone!

I have been quite inspired by this act of “giving back” rather than taking. I am writing this post from the 21 day trial of Ecto - the best Mac based blogging application. With a new blog based project in the pipeline - I think I will be buying a license for this too!

I recently posted about my upgrade week encompassing installing OS X Leopard on my MacBook and also the new update for the Xbox 360 that allowed DiVx content to play.After spending a few weeks with OS X Leopard, I have decided to uninstall and move back to using Tiger, the previous version instead for the following reasons:

• Too slow - I just found that with my measly 512mb of RAM, my MacBook was just not as responsive and as quick as it used to be. Even with the Dashboard disabled and the 3D dock busted back to 2D it was still sluggish.
• Wifi Issues - since the update to Leopard, my wireless connection seemed to be searching, connecting, scanning, searching… all the time. There are grumbles about this issue on the web but all of the fixes I attempted never worked. Back to Tiger - all is fine again.
• Unused New Features - the features like Quick Look, Stacks and Cover Flow were all very nice, but not essential to my use of the MacBook. I was able to quickly search through all of my JPG files to try and find one particular image using Cover Flow, but I could have achieved the same result by using the normal search results. The new version of Safari is nice and I will miss that most of all. Both Spaces and Time Machine were not anywhere on my radar.

At the moment I am running a very basic OS X installation with nothing apart from the following applications installed:

• Transmission - The best OS X BitTorrent client - link
• Perian - a collection of codecs for Quicktime - link
• Burn - for converting videos and creating DVDs - link
• Quicksilver - an application launcher - link

Whilst OS X Leopard is a good and solid update for the Apple systems, it’s not for me at the moment.

Much like receiving rough prison-style anal sex, the thought of getting an iPhone was not very high on my agenda.

Although I am an Apple fan I had not even seeked out the device to play with whilst Mr Spotty Teenager sales assistant at Carphone Whorehouse hovered round me like a priest round his "young flock" - waiting for the weakest to fall, and then pouncing for the kill.

The iPhone is certainly one of those things that is best stayed away from, lest you fall under it's magical spell and succumb to a life of £35 a month contracts and endless "i-monikered" peripheral devices.

But I have seen one.  I have touched one.  And I want one!  My colleague traded his Girlfriend for one and seems much happier as a result.  It really does change lives!

It's much better than I even thought.  Quicky, zoomy, fadey and most of all, Appley.

As Shakespeare once said… "give me a fucking iPhone for Christmas now… forsooth!" 

It's ugrade week here in the Megatao camp.

Tuesday saw the release of the Xbox 360 "fall dashboard update" which brings DivX and Xvid playback to the console with a host of other new features .  Microsoft have even seen sense and allowed the content to be played from USB memory devices and data CDs and DVDs too.  If only the 360 wasn't so noisy , it might replace my aging Xbox1 and the perfect Xbox Media Centre app.

Wednesday was "upgrade to Leopard" day!

I have now updated my Macbook to run Leopard , the latest (and greatest) version of the OS X operating system.  The upgrade went smoothly without any issues (after I freed up some hard disk space) and I am now taming the beast that is Leopard.

My first impressions are positive.  It does seem a little slower to operate - so some more RAM might be on the cards once I have had a good poke around to make sure nothing is stopping it from running properly, but it kept all my settings, preferences and files too!

I had even disabled the OS X Dashboard to give my Macbook a performance boost and it left that disabled after the update too!  I have already changed the dock from 3d back to 2d though as it does seem to be a bit of a memory hog.

What will I upgrade next?

I have two more days left in upgrade week… 

After the recent beta release of the Apple browser, Safari, I promptly downloaded and installed it to my macBook only to find that it crashed as soon as it loaded!

KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS

I have only just had time to look into it and found that it was crashing due to me having Speed Download installed too.

I nuked that from the Mac with AppZapper and all was fine after that.

If it was on a Windows machine I would have probably been able to hack my way round it all, deleting registry entries and INI files and the like, but on the Mac I am a little in the dark about things like that. I guess I should’nt need to really!

Via AppleGazette

Does OS X get any cooler than this?