Wow, I’ve been doing a lot of testing lately.  In the past week, I’ve had 4 operating systems installed on my system for testing, investigating and learning.  So now that I’ve gotten that work done, I’m re-installing my base build (again).

Instead of using the image I made late last summer, I’m going to start fresh (again), but try something completely new.  During testing, I limited the amount of software that was installed, and really relied on more online functionality.  That is what I’m going to do this time around.

• Office 2003?  Nope.
• MSN or Google Toolbar?  Nope.
• Digital Image Editor/Library?  Nope.

So what will I install?  Firefox, Thunderbird for EMail, Pluck for my aggregator, WinZip, SnagIt, and very little else.  I’ve got most of my “heavy duty” software on my main machine and simple “remote desktop” into that PC to run what I need.  Its also my main Audio/Video “server” system and hosts some Virtual systems.

My day-to-day machine will remain a simple uncluttered computing device.  My inspiration for this was my T-Mobile MDA.  I’ve been using my MDA for several weeks and have found that I can do with a lot less!  And the best part of all??  This new configuration is FAST.