This is out of date material - but it does outline the motivations that kicked off 98lite and is a good read

Firstly, let me say straight up that I think Microsoft put together some great products. The Windows series of operating systems are excellent interfaces to a computerised work environment - remember DOS word processing packages - ugh!

You cant hope to satisfy everyone - but by making software (incl operating systems) modular, and highly customisable, you can maximise your number of happy users. Along the way I think that Microsoft forgot the single home user that can not afford the latest gear, that doesnt want a 24 hour internet connection, that doesnt want to upgrade all the time - or that simply doesnt have the dollars to keep up with the fast pace of computer developments. I found myself asking...

"Why is all this stuff that I never use, or dont even have the hardware to support, installed on my computer without me having the choice to delete it, or better yet - not to install it in the first place."

Windows98 offers many improvements over windows95, unrelated to IE4, that make it a more desireable operating system than its older counterpart:

• Greater Stability
• Better memory management
• Can execute code direct from the file cache (vcache)
• Application launch acceleration
• Better driver support
• Faster bootup/shutdown
• ACPI support
• ...and the list goes on....

It is a great OS, however, there is some extra overhead imposed by some of these new features, that slows your system down. If you dont have the horsepower this slowdown is really noticable. As soon as I upgraded to win98 I noticed that Explorer was slower to load, and that my system seemed to work harder just navigating around my disk. Harder than it ever did with windows95. In addition, the windows take longer to redraw, and all the icons seem to take longer to get updated and repainted - I could actually watch the windows repainting. It was like there was a large weight sitting on my computers chest.

Granted, I am using a relatively slow computer. It is a NoteBook I have borrowed from work (a no-name clone, P133 (not MMX) 10.5 inch 256 colour LCD display and 14.4 Modem, NO CD, but thankfully 32MB RAM, 2.1G HDD). This system is a real dog, that has sub-par disk and graphics subsystems that benchmark below a 486DX100. I can not afford to buy a faster computer of my own, so I'll do *anything* to squeeze the last drop of system performance from this notebook.

Several months after upgrading to Windows98, I concluded that Windows98's IE Explorer was:

• Slower to load
• Slower to use once loaded
• Consumed more memory which caused more swapping.
• and my system was in general 5-10% slower to use.

This was not very satisfying. I reloaded win95 as a dual boot), but I found that I missed all the improvements in Windows98. So I deleted '95 and went back to '98.

The speed that Windows98 Explorer loaded really became an issue when I discovered the alternative shell LiteStep. The LiteStep shell gave me an extremely powerful shell replacement and application launch facility in the LiteStep Popup Menu, used less memory, and was a neat interface to boot. Yet, every time I wanted to view a directory, I had to wait for Explorer98 to load. I tried looking for a faster, smaller, Explorer replacement but I really like Explorer in "My Computer" mode (opening a separate window for each folder), something that no third party replacements do very well. I tried for a long time to get the smaller and faster Windows95 Explorer to load instead - and evetually my perseverence paid off...

Notice I haven't mentioned the "webification" of Windows98 yet. I dont use IE, simply because I prefer Netscape. I dont dislike IE, it is a nice browser. I simply want the choice. In addition, I dont like the idea of an active desktop (which bogged my P133 system to a crawl) and dont care for web view of folders and all this "integration" that Windows98 promotes. I like to keep my local and internet perspectives separate. I know you can turn off most of the IE4 webification in windows98 - using tweakUI or using a utility from from Windows Annoyances - but turning IE off does nothing to speed up Explorer, and doesn't give me back any hard drive space. Again I find myself asking why I cant remove all these files that I dont use...

Lastly, everyone says...

"You cant remove IE from win98 because IE is so tightly interwoven with the operating system"

...thats like waving a red rag to this bull, and 98lite is the culmination of my frustrations.

Using 98lite, my system is much "snappier" to use, and MyComputer windows of my hard disk directories simply snap open. My small hard drive has about 40+MB few files on it, and I couldnt be happier. My computer seems much faster, and is simply a much nicer beast to use and my day-to-day computing experienced has improved dramatically.

98lite is not just about removing IE from the system. I have developed 98lite into a tool that gives you the power to choose which system components you want to keep or remove - including the choice to remove IE if you want. Many people are installing Windows98 using 98lite - and then installing IE4.0 or IE5.0 for the their browser. This preserves the faster explorer shell - but gives you IE web browsing if thats your choice. Outlook Express (98 and also version 5) also continue to work well.

Read on, and enjoy the ride... IE4 has left the building!

Shane