Phoenix has risen

This post is being written on the Phoenix.

I got the machine back on Tues, and been spending a couple of days getting the necessary software installed (firefox, thunderbird, java, winzip etc). Plus doing some work, and getting non necessary stuff on (say - Tron 2.0 which I can max out the video settings now, and it looks amazing).

I also checked out a book from the library, Windows XP inside out. It has lots of useful info about using WinXP, plus some info on tools that let you do things with it that you should be able to do without said tools (powertoys for example).

When I was playing around with Ubuntu, one of the things I liked was the split taskbar - the top bar had pulldown menus and quickstart Icons, and the bottom one had the tabs for running software and such. Well, XP lets you make toolbars on any side of the screen, so I set up the toolbars like that. Then I used powertoys to kill the Recycle bin icon. So I have a computer with a top and bottom task/tool bars and no icons whatsoever. Looks pretty cool. The top toolbar I have different subtoolbars that have lists of programs in them - so it is sort of like a personalized program files. But I can get to any software with two clicks. :)

The machine is blindingly fast (well, I did move up .33 on the Proc and from 256 to 1 gig of memory - and the proc went from a 32 to a 64, and the memory went from old slow stuff to DDR2).

Got the network up and running, including getting the minimac I use for work on the network.

All and all, I'm happy with the result. :)

And yeah, the background image of my computer is a phoenix. :)