[Thinkpad] T43

[Michael Geary]

(For some reason this message got stuck in my outbox and didn't get sent -
if it seems like I'm replying to a conversation from several days ago that's
why...)

> > BUT... It makes it *MUCH* more likely that you will need to 
> > use those recovery utilities. NTFS is in a completely different
> > league than FAT32 when it comes to robustness.
> 
> I know this is true on paper, but I've had more (and more 
> serious) problems with NTFS in the few years I've been using 
> it, than I ever had with FAT32 (or have had since, running a 
> 'mixed' system).  This is just my decision *for me*.

Roger that. I guess if I'd had the same experience I'd lean that way too.

Hmm... Actually not... The file size limitation is the deal breaker for me.
Plus I use the encrypted and compressed folders all the time. So FAT32
doesn't work for me anyway.

> > For running that old DOS software, VMware is the best solution.
> > You can create a DOS VM that lets you actually run DOS in its own
> > virtual machine.
> 
> I was doing this for a while, but the overhead on the 
> particular machine where I need it most (both in disk space, 
> load time, and overhead) was just too great.

I wonder if we are talking about the same thing. My simplest DOS VM boots
from a virtual floppy, which is a 1.44MB file on the physical computer.
There are a couple other files of a few K each, so it's less than a couple
of megabytes for the whole VM.

Another VM boots from a virtual hard drive which is a few megabytes in size.
There's not much overhead in these, just the actual disk space used in the
VM.

> Much easier/faster to just boot from a DOS floppy.

Whoa, we are not talking about the same thing! :-)

A virtual floppy runs at hard drive speed, not floppy speed. My
"floppy"-based VM boots much faster than a physical floppy on the same
machine.

Plus you have to shut down Windows, save all your work, reboot the machine
into DOS, have no access to anything else on your machine while you do your
DOS work (email?), reboot into Windows, and open all the apps and documents
you were using.

All I have to do is open the VM. Running at hard drive speed, it's up in a
few seconds - without interrupting any of my other work.

I'm not trying to argue the point, I'm just genuinely curious how rebooting
the machine with a floppy drive could be faster than that. Maybe you just
meant that you don't have to take the trouble of setting up the VM? If the
DOS software is something you use very often, the time it takes to set up
the VM would pay for itself quickly.

VMware itself does take some disk space, of course, but it's so useful for
all kinds of things that I've never worried about the space it uses. That's
what computers and disk space are for - to do useful things for me. :-)

Take a look at the latest "virtual appliances" (prebuilt virtual machines)
to get some ideas:

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/

These all work with both the free VMware Player as well as VMware
Workstation.

-Mike