oft unable as it is.. to abide that now common process: looking for All Those Virii - while it is trying also to chew gum - handle this much more stuff?

(I forget the terms now, but isn't there still an artifically-low tolerance for certain add-ins which use lo-level memory [some 'compatibility' leftovers from the time of the 640K/1M limit Era ??] See, that Billy Says that.. those limits no longer exist in the new New versions.. who'd believe That?)

Like.. right now, in my highly-vacuumed, Lite-dejunked 98SE, with minimal crap running: Sys Info sez 51% system resources free. And I doubt that # is at all affected by my mere 192M RAM, given the Spartan tasks allowed to thrash. (And aren't there a Lot more junk-tasks that run in W2K and up? unless methodically killed, after every launch?)

{sigh}
So much Information.
So little that one can Trust.

Thanks - that fits my 'qualitative' model. I did suffer through some post-9x homework. In the course of dissections re the horrific Dell from Hell - I once installed W2K on my P3-600 box (just dropped in a temp HD) and started looking at the running tasks, etc. Turned-off a few, then on - Googled a tad re whazzup-with-This one? Peeked at it all with a few of the bitchin Rixtools and similar.

Saw enough new non-9x-ish activities to require entirely new brain-mapping, I concluded. And I'd need 512M min, just for reduced-duty like mine. Oh and, I muddled through a book (Thanks, Peter) re the 2K Server version; noted enough about AD to see the word toxic in one-inch high magenta letters... and see that the Beast was (still) intent upon maintaining complex non-conformity with All others.
(I'd have much sooner spent that trivia-relearning energy on a *nix distro, if I Had to change OSs just then)

Finally - noted the training-wheels %time of a friend's 'upgrade' to 2K (still going on, actually..) That did/has clinched it por moi. Dead Parrot, that - as I have the luxury of not needing such ever-changing lore, as I would, within some biz enviro.
Deader-than-dead, when I throw in SP-2+ and daily trips to Home for new band-aids; the need to have all that on CD, if possible, especially on dial-up. Yada.


My regards to Santa -- should She hand me a fancy 3 GHz box sometime, I'll try to parlay it into nominal OSX hardware territory asap. I just don't see any futchah for this entire line of compounded-kluges, and have only sympathy for those who must use it / keep cleaning up after it. I believe that Billy's epitaph shall have at leat one line in it, referring to the Edsel.
(You don't have to unravel all parts of a kluge to discern Klugeness: Brown's First Law).

Thanks for filling-in the details,

moi,
who drops by Apple.com periodically to see the Toys; notes that eBay prices for these are excessive.. and also P-P-Powerbook Watch-Out! reminiscent, re many of the later items.