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Ian's Minimalist Setup

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Advice on simplifying your computer setup to reduce
the problems caused by an overly cluttered system.

Introduction

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300C.

The Russians used a pencil.

Although the above story is actually an urban legend, it nonetheless presents an example true to my nature. I believe there are usually two approaches to most problems: the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach.

Computers are an ideal example of these differing approaches. The introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s was a bottom-up approach that brought computer power to the average person, who until then had been unable to afford the huge mainframe systems that were marketed in top-down fashion to the world's largest corporations. With the continual increase in the power of personal computers, the lines between top and bottom are now well and truly blurred somewhere in the middle. Computer hardware and software are being crammed with more and more features in an effort to make them the be-all and end-all for everyone, resulting in greater unreliability (eg. Windows crashing).

The powers that be have attempted to fix this with endless updates, patches and upgrades, when what we really need is a return to simplicity. I'm a big believer in using the simplest tool to do the job; I call this bottom-up approach "Minimalist Computing".

"Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler".
- Albert Einstein

Ian's Minimalist Setup
NOTE: I wrote this when I used Windows 95, but much of it still applies today

My computer setup is probably an extreme example of Minimalist Computing; most of my family and friends have been given a "richer" version to work with. I hope that a quick tour will demonstrate some practical ideas that you may adopt to simplify your own setup.

The Desktop

Click on my desktop
to view larger image. The standard Windows 95 / 98 desktop is cluttered with dozens of icons. Some people go to the trouble of arranging these neatly, others simply have them in a huge block.

My Minimalist desktop has NO icons. I don't like them because they make Windows start more slowly and because they are inaccessible once you have a program running over the top of them. There are better alternatives than desktop icons.

The Start Menu First time users of Windows find mousing through the Start menu very awkward. For example, to run the "CD Player" program, they must click on "Start", move the mouse up to "Programs", across to the various program groups, up to "Accessories", across to the various accessories, down to "Entertainment", across to the various entertainment utils, finally down to "CD Player", all the time hoping their cursor doesn't stray too much from the desired path and cause the menus to disappear.

You'll notice that my Start Menu has its own, custom menus at the top (titled Graphics, Hardware, etc). To run "CD Player", I use: Start > Multimedia > CD Player.

The Start Menu is actually quite powerful, though rarely utilised fully, mostly because of the lack of information on how it can be customised. The easiest way is to Right-Click on the Start button and choose "Explore", which will bring up the C:\Windows\Start Menu folder for editing. Within this folder, you can make new folders (such as I have done to create the above custom menus), and anything you find within the "Programs" folder can be copied into your own custom folders. For example, copying the shortcut for "Internet Explorer" from the "Programs" folder to a custom "Internet" folder.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Ctrl-Alt-A
Adobe Photoshop

Ctrl-Alt-B
Tape Backup

Ctrl-Alt-C
Digital Camera

Whilst you're editing the Start Menu, try Right-Clicking a shortcut for a program (eg. Paint), choosing "Properties", then click on the "Shortcut" tab. The "Shortcut key" is a hi-speed way to run the program, or to switch to it if it's already running, regardless of what else is active at the time.

The shortcut key is initially set to "None", but you can choose from all sorts of special key combinations. I'd recommend using Ctrl-Alt-A through Ctrl-Alt-Z, as these are rarely used by other programs. You'll be amazed how much quicker and more intuitive it is to activate a program with a quick keypress rather than fiddling with the mouse!

Resident Programs

anti-virus battery-meter crash-guard find-fast internet-firewall office-toolbar real-player resource-meter system-tray volume-control
Caution! Resident programs are activated on startup and sit in memory, ready to perform some action at a moment's notice. A good example is a virus checker that tests all disk access and alerts if a virus is found. Unfortunately, resident programs cause all sorts of havoc, often slowing down your system, whilst many (except virus checkers!) are simply unnecessary.

I have met dozens of people with unreliable systems who have installed programs like "Norton System Works", which contain numerous memory resident utilities that "monitor vital signs and prevent system crashes". In my experience, these programs cause more problems than they purport to prevent, and uninstalling them eliminates all their system's woes!

CTRL-ALT-DEL

Click on dialog box
to view larger image. To find out what resident programs you have running, press: CTRL-ALT-DEL. (This is the "Close Program" command; if you don't want to close anything, click on "Cancel"). Compare your system to the dialog box at left from my Minimalist setup, where the only active program is Explorer (Windows itself). If you have more than a dozen or so resident programs running, I'd expect trouble!

Unfortunately, I have no simple advice for simplifying your setup; this requires careful analysis and system modification and is best left to an expert.

The best recommendation I can make if you want to keep things simple is to be wary about installing too many programs. When doing an installation, many programs offer a "custom" setup, allowing you to choose which components to include. Obviously, I'd recommend installing only the minimum required, and to be especially wary of any "memory resident" programs.

What Is Windows Doing?

Ever asked yourself the question: Why is my Windows PC grinding away, hard disk light going blinkety-blink or staying lit almost continuously? Whilst perfecting my minimalist setup, I found some answers, and having eliminated them, my computer almost never grinds away unless it's doing something worthwhile that I've initiated.

Symptom:
At startup, my desktop is there, but I can't run anything until Windows finishes doing goodness-knows what.
Reason:
Every Windows program has an icon associated with it (eg. the little world globe for Internet Explorer). And every time you start Windows, it extracts the icon from each and every program on your desktop and in your Start menu! Almost every application you install puts a program group into the Start menu, containing one or more programs, manuals, read-me files, uninstall programs, etc. Having installed ten or twenty applications may have added another hundred files to Windows' daily startup routine. To me, it would make more sense to extract the icon only once during installation. Sadly, Windows is not so efficient.
Solution:
I solved this by moving everything from my START > PROGRAMS menu to an "idle" area of my computer that is not searched at startup. I still have to wait while all my custom menus (Graphics, Hardware, etc) are searched, but this now only takes about 3 seconds!

Symptom:
When I make changes to the PCs hardware (eg. installing a new graphics card), I may see the message "Please wait while Windows builds a driver information database". And indeed, there is a considerable wait.
Reason:
Windows has an "INF" folder containing driver information files for thousands of known hardware devices. This message indicates that Windows is reading each and every one of those files to build an index of available devices. In Windows 95 there are over 120 INF files just for modems, with even more in Windows 98! The sad part is that any new device I buy will more than likely not be on this now obsolete list, and will thus come with its own driver anyway.
Solution:
I've purged most of the unnecessary drivers, making my list effectively "incomplete", but saving huge amounts of time waiting for choices that I will never, ever select.

Symptom:
My computer's been running fine for a couple of hours. Suddenly it's started doing something of it's own accord, with no message to indicate what's happening.
Reason:
This is invariably a memory resident program that is set to perform some scheduled task. One of the most common is "Find Fast" (a part of Microsoft Office), whose task is to read all documents and produce an index that allows you to more quickly find what you are looking for. This is usually scheduled for every two hours, makes the PC painfully slow, and occasionally causes system crashes. I also wonder at the motives of making such a program "invisible" (ie. no messages indicating that a "Find Fast Re-index" is taking place). This sort of thing makes me suspicious about the potentially far-reaching privacy implications should those indexes be illegally accessed. Think about what private info would be in your Find Fast indexes.....
Solution:
I've not just deactivated Find Fast, I've removed all traces of the program and any indexes it may have created. If you are concerned about your privacy, I'd recommend you do the same.

Microsoft's standard solutions for your computer running slowly are:
(1) Buy the latest Microsoft software, or (2) Buy a faster computer.

The first solution, in my experience, has always promised more than it delivers, and invariably introduces a whole new set of problems. The second solution, though it does make things faster, has only side-stepped the real problem.

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