cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)

On Sat, 4 Aug 2007 21:07:45 -0400, "Mike Hall - MVP"

>I have two drives, one with Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 plus stuff, and
>the other with XP and Office 2003 plus stuff, where stuff is almost
>identical give or take very small things.. all of my user generated items
>are kept away from both drives..

Cool! Do you use non-standard MBR or physically disconnect the Vista
HD when in XP, to stop XP eating Vista's shadow copies?

>Office 2007 is larger than 2003, but nothing like as much as you suggest..

I used WinDirStart (a free tool that shows files in a graphical way,
scaled proportional to the space they occupy) and found the MS Office
2007 footprint to be around 1G.

In the old days, MS Office was always considered a "disk hog", and
that was true up to MS Office 2000. Thereafter I was pleasantly
surprised to see it stay around the 200-300M mark, while other
utilities (Java, Acrobat Reader, HP printer fluff) grew up past 100M
and in some cases over 200M, too.

So it's not surprising to see installations where the biggest non-game
lump in Program Files isn't MS Office as expected, but (say) the
bundleware that came with an all-in-one printer/scanner, etc.

However, MS Office 2007 (in the single install I did; it hasn't been
popular, and I haven't encouraged sales due to the no-disk thing) was
way larger than that; over 1G as mentioned.

>Vista Ultimate, on the other hand, is substantially larger, but one has to
>remember that it creates volume shadow copies..

Yep. I went from 8G to 32G for that OS, which ends up with around 65%
C: free as opposed to 45% free on an XP in 8G install.

>I would not consider advising the running Open Office unless the OP did not
>want to spend to get MS Office or simply could not afford it
>(understandable).. ease of use within 2007 is way better than anything
>before it once the user has found everything..

Well, that's the thing. There's more "UI shock" moving to MS Office
2007 from previous MS Office than there is moving to Open Office (as
tested by showing clients both). MS Office is not cheap (though
better value than the same money spent on a broken one-trick pony,
like Quick Books for example) and not getting an installation disk
seals it for me; smells like a bad nappy, and I don't sell nappies.

Having said that, if folks do use MS Office to the max and are
prepared to get over the UI shock, MS Office 2007 can turn out to be
the favored choice. When I did the "try each and comment" test with a
couple who were professional editors, they initially went "huh?" on MS
Office 2007, fiddled around a bit, and then went "yeah, cool!" ;-)

I know why they changed the UI; it was a matter of scalability, the
old UI just couldn't contain the sprawling feature set. Still, if you
struggled to learn MS Office 97 and don't need the rich feature set,
Open Office may be a better fit.

I mean, if you said to me "I'll pay you half the cost of a laptop to
forego the joys of activation, and hey, I'll throw in a pre-install
archive so you can install as often and wherever you like", I'd be
seriously tempted to do without all them features - and that's the
basic equation, here. I find I seldom use Word (whereas before it was
like a pen glued to my hand) and mainly use Excel, as the Internet has
superceded printouts and faxes for communication.


And for writing HTML, Word is APPALLING. It pollutes the HTML with
all sorts of Word-isms (such as "special" "MS Word HTML" file type),
bloats the size, and triggers heuristic alarms.

Case in point...

Client is an OE "heavy hitter", using rich HTML stationary (hey,
they're a marketing company, what can I say... they don't spam,
though; they arrange events and publicize through magazines etc.).

They changed their phone number, so they go rt-click, Edit and edit
the new number into the stationary file, and save. Next thing, OE
goes ape**** alerting on scripts/active content within all the new
messages they send out. If they want to select 50 of these to
transfer from Sent Items to another mailbox, they get a pop-up dialog
on each of those 50 messages. They freak out and call me in.

I find the new stationary has that "special" icon (trust Word to smash
up standards) and is about 3+ the size of the old file. It's addled
with Wordesque junk that stems from the "must be pixel-perfect" DTP
mindset that's out of line for HTML.

So I change the phone number in the old stationary using Notepad, and
switch to that. They say "what about the messages we've already
done?" and it's 'sorry...' <shrug>

Then I try to get their preferred HTML editor (Front Page Express, as
downloaded from the Win98 era) set up as the default Edit action for
HTML, so we don't fall into the same damn tar-pit next time. This is
doable, but far more difficult than it should be, and three guesses
what will happen if MS Office ever gets re-installed.

Are OE's safety setting set too high? Well, unsolicited email
"message text" should be handled sternly, as per Restricted Zone norms
at least. Why should I be forced to drop my nickers, or even unbutton
my overcoat, just to accomodate some extra risk that Word imposes?

>...effects/changes preview alone makes Office 2007 worth getting,
>in my opinion..

I must try that feature. My main beef is that as an OEM, I'm obliged
to follow bad practice that I really object to; foisting trialware on
users (that I can fix at install time, I hope, but if you aren't
awake, you get Access and other non-in-this-edition bits rammed in
your face as a "trial") and worst; no installation disk, forcing them
to run after me if they need to re-install (anyone else will say "oh
dear, I don't have that disk; wanna buy it again? <snigger>")

>Pagefiles, if left to Windows Management, size themselves pro rata RAM
>installed, and as many people do have 1gb and more even running XP, I would
>not have thought that pagefile size will make much difference..

Yup. In XP I use 512M for all RAM sizes, with fast user switching and
full memory crash dumps disabled.

>Some games and some applications do not integrate into Windows at all, but
>many do, and at the point of installation it is impossible to determine
>which do and which don't.. it is probably best to assume that most do.. all
>of my large games do, for instance, as does MS Office..

I've got to know which do and don't; with games of a couple of years
ago, the ratio is 1:4 for "must install":"can scrape over".

I don't mind games getting broken, as they can be re-installed, if it
means C: is small enough for me to have imaged elsewhere. If I do
have a meltdown, that image will be a smile, and the broken games will
be a shrug, relatively speaking.

>The best reason for keeping the size of C down is because formatting is
>quicker in the even of total OS failure..

So is AutoChk, ChkDsk, imaging, defragging and SR footprint.

>in normal operation, optimum performance is seen when there is more
>than 15% free space, preferably nearer 25%

Most 8G C: systems have between 2G and 4G free space, in the field.
My own runs routinely at 700M to 1G with no sweat, due to several
bulky core apps (dev tools, WAIK) and if I wanted to, I could free
500M-1G by pulling off a couple of WAIK .CABs etc.

>Even budget computers are fitted with 160gb drives these days, so drive
>space is not at such premium as it once was.. those upgrading to Vista using
>machines at the lower end of the XP level may have a problem in finding
>enough free space, but that is to be expected, yes?

Disk space isn't there to be wasted of crap, especially on C:. I want
a big HD to mean shorter head travel in a C: of the same size.

Vista-era laptops still sell with pukey 40G to 80G HDs here, and once
you drop 32G for the OS, that doesn't leave much - plus, you have 50%
head travel (still better than 100%) most of the time.



>-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -
Tip Of The Day:
To disable the 'Tip of the Day' feature...
>-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -