No sooner does Microsoft come up with a new operating system that's slower than the last one than we have a new version of 98Lite -- the utility that does what Microsoft insists can't be done: It unhooks the operating system from the Web browser.
Starting with Windows 98, Microsoft sewed the Windows Explorer desktop and Internet Explorer browser closer, insisting customers wanted this feature.
Netscape and the Department of Justice disagreed, and we all know where that went. Adding IE to Explorer allowed for features like Windows Update and Web backgrounds in Explorer folders.
Doing so also greatly slowed down Windows 98, which drove researcher Shane Brooks, a biologist at the University of Maryland, to develop 98Lite.
The original version of 98Lite, released in late 1998, just replaced three Windows 98 files with the Windows 95 versions. By doing this, Internet Explorer was removed from the Windows desktop.
However, with 98Lite 2.0, Brooks found a way to modify the Windows Registry to unhook IE from Explorer, so no file replacement was required. He also modified Windows so many features that were otherwise not removable could be uninstalled. This included features like Data Access Objects, Windows Media Player and DirectX, for people who wanted a super-lean install.
Brooks has now released 98Lite IV, with support for Windows ME. In addition to unhooking IE 5.5 from Explorer, 98Lite IV also makes Windows ME features removable. This includes features like Imaging Support, System Restore and PC Health, and the latter two are major system hogs.
"Windows ME has some features that people will say are big improvements and others will say are no good at all, so one of the things I tried to do is let people keep only the features they want," Brooks said.
Windows ME is by far the fattest of the Windows 9x codebase, due to features like imaging and PC Health.
"There are a lot more processes running in the background than you had in Windows 98," said Brooks. "So 98Lite looked at what's running in the background to see how much needs to be there."
System Restore is one questionable feature. Because it keeps track of all the changes on your system, the restore folders can hit up to 600 MB in size as compressed files when you make a lot of changes, such as installing a lot of software. System Restore also backs up Registry every six hours, which means a few more megabytes of space lost every day.
Aggressive users can cut their Windows ME install from more than 200 MB to 70 MB in disk space and more than double the amount of free memory on the computer, said Brooks. Startup time has as much as 10 seconds sheared off while shutdown is nearly instantaneous.
For one user with an old 233 MHz Pentium II system, the improvement was noticeable.
"I was amazed how smooth it was running," said Sebastian Schroeder of Germany. "[Active Desktop] really slowed my system down, but with 98Lite I finally could remove them. It felt like I removed a stone from Windows that was stopping it from being a good operating system."
Brooks is also preparing a Windows 2000 version of 98Lite. In his early tests, he's been able to cut Windows 2000 down from a 400 MB install to 140 MB.
"Half the technology that's in there is stuff that an end-user will never use," said Brooks. This includes things like database drivers and Web-based enterprise management. He expects to release the Windows 2000 version by year end.
