XP Virgin Install: the Final Chapter?

It has been a while since I'd booted my XP "virgin install". If you recall, this was a pure, unadulterated (except for the manufacturer-recommended drivers) install of Windows XP, SP2. I'd been playing with this to see what one looks like, and how it performs. It's surprisingly hard to find a "pure" install in the wild, since so many of us get OEM versions of Windows, replete with junk from Gateway, Dell, even Microsoft (no thanks to Movie Maker, seriously).

Given that it had been months since my last boot, I had to wait for a couple dozen Windows updates to clear. Then I waited a while for AVG to update. I launched Google's Desktop Beta, which at the time was version 1 I think? Impossible to tell, because Google's Desktop search doohickey just didn't want to tell me that info. More distressing than that was the lack of a new version notice. Normally those bug me (like when Firefox just decided to update itself on my wife's machine and she got a little freaked out). This time, that would have been nice. Going to the Google Desktop page within the application doesn't even give you a note that there's a new version available! The more Google pushes forward, the more I'm beginning to see tears at the seams of their fabric of tools... More on that at a later date...

Anyway, despite a longer than usual boot time, everything came out of cold storage OK. Real Player has decided to send me a couple of messages about garbage I'd never give a passing glance, were it not for their "permissions based" tray'o'spam icon. In other words, I got a popup from Real that I could have done without, and a cutesy icon in my tray indicating messages I don't care to read. I can't imagine why no one uses Real Player anymore, can you?

So both AVG and Google Desktop wanted me to reboot, which I did, and realized a good number of things were out of date. Microsoft AntiSpyware, Windows Media Player, Firefox, and most of the free apps (like RSSOwl) needed incremental updates. Firefox was v. 1.0.6! Add in Flash player update (a major one), and I really was just over it. Proof that in today's computer world, you need a broadband connection and constant vigilance to maintain technical superiority over your neighbors. Anyway, my real interest was in Google's new features in their Desktop application. Unfortunately, by the time I'd installed all the updates, I had run out of time. So while there probably won't be any more of these Virgin Install series, I will at least try to beat up this installation as much as possible with doodads from Google (and the rest), for purity's sake. More importantly, I'm going to keep an eye on my disk usage, since I hear tell the Desktop search may balloon cache files beyond the point of reason. And with less than 6 GB to go on here, that may keep me up at night...

Tags: freeware, installer, osupdates, xp