I came across an article at TUAW that has a link to a great tutorial, and a couple freeware tools, for slimming down Windows installs in order to make them open faster and run applications more efficiently within the context of a virtual machine. Specific examples that come to mind include someone like me, who runs Windows XP both via Boot Camp and Parallels on my Mac, someone who uses VMWare, or even someone with a PC who just wants a more efficient, lighter weight Windows.
A day will come soon when I won’t have to develop with Windows anymore, and won’t be buried under schoolwork. When that happens, I’ll have both the reasons and the time to try this, and I’ll be coming back to this article for the tips and tools.
If any of you have had any experience with this in the meantime, let me know if you’ve seen significant performance gains after going through this. Is it worth it?
The article can be found here.
A while back, I posted a few links to some Automator and AppleScript tutorials for users of Mac OS X. While I continue to think these tools are pretty neat, I have yet to really come across a need that makes me sit back, sweat on my brow, and think to myself, “Why can’t I write an Automator workflow to do this?” I have created one lone workflow that I actually use quite a bit, which opens a bunch of Word files, along with Firefox and my school’s VPN program, all with one click, thus cutting down the time it takes to prepare the workspace for my research project from endless minutes to a few seconds. Neat.
There are cooler things to do with Automator and AppleScript. I came across an article at TUAW by the same guy who wrote the previous tutorials, which shows you how to control your computer by sending it an email. This article assumes, of course, that you have a Mac at home that is currently on, you use Apple’s Mail application – and it’s running, you’re sitting someplace else that gives you access to email, and that you suddenly decide that you just can’t wait to turn your home Mac off right now. I’m only half kidding. There are probably people out there that have that problem. If you’re one of them, this post is just what you’ve been waiting for.
If nothing else, it’s definitely a creative use for Mac OS X’s built-in automating tools. The article can be found here.