DIVID Technology Riffraff & Whatnot

Using the display control panel, the resolution options usually don’t include 256 colors. Here’s how to get it. Click Settings tab > Advanced > Adapter tab > List all modes. You’ll see a list of all options, from which you can pick your favorite 256 color resolution. Enjoy!!

ps. If your mouse cursor’s get finicky, just enable (short) mouse trails and that forces the cursor to refresh.

Software with restrictive licensing is released to protect the Intellectual property of the organization who nurtured it out into the wild, and wouldn’t be competitive without that protection. I for one am a pragmatist, so this doesn’t give me a false sense of entitlement. I don’t want to rebel against commercial software, because some of it is great stuff. I do have a soft spot for purity as open architecture, and am a proponent of progressing open source.

Although there are countless advantages to using restricted software, let’s support our developer community first. Drive change in trend to further FSF community causes whenever practical. Advocate the use of open source projects in your own family of colleagues when the alternative shows no significant advantages.

This can be done in small amounts by leaning to the community for daily software choices in business and personal endeavors. When you rebuild a PC, mention Linux even if you don’t install it. When you build a new website, try an open framework. If you buy hardware, support the vendors that support us as open source developers. And make a concerted effort to contribute something back instead of only using open technology! Then it goes full circle.

edit: This doesn’t really work.

Previously mentioned in Pt1(where is that?), a software vendor by the name of Superspeed offers a program called RamDisk and RamDisk Plus. As long as you have plenty of memory, and they have a formula for calculating that, great gains can be seen by moving your Virtual Memory allocation to a RamDisk. This further keeps your hard drive from hampering performance.

After all of these considerations are met, do the obvious things like disabling extra XP eye candy that slows your system down. These include indexing, unneeded services (be careful) system restore, menu fades and effects, etc. Google around and you’ll find everyone’s opinion of these minor performance enhancements that I consider optional.