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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ed Forrest who wrote (9970)	6/5/2000 7:36:00 PM
From: mr.mark	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 110631

hey ed, i don't if you read fred langa. he's raking anticrash over the coals pretty good in his latest langalist... ****************** "In the last two weeks, I've tested over a dozen of these tools and utilities on carefully-configured Win98 test machines. For an additional real-world flavor, I further tested the software that showed the most promise on my daily-use PC. In each case, I carefully monitored the results. This week's column on the WinMag site is a special, extended-coverage column that details what I've found. For example, take Anticrash--- an app I told you about in a recent newsletter. It's a freeware Java applet that purports to enforce proper multithreading in Windows and to prevent resource leaks: "Prevents Windows from crashing....It loads on your Windows desktop and. provides a true multi-threading environment.[A]pplications can be opened and closed without the system getting unstable or slow." I love the name--- and the concept. An add-on applet that keeps windows from crashing? One that actually prevents crash-resultant memory leaks in the first place, rather than trying to clean them up afterwards? Lemme at it! Alas, just as with every other crash-proofing tool I've ever tried, AntiCrash doesn't live up to its name. I actually had more and worse stability problems with it running than without. I even had one out- of-resources crash I can directly attribute to AntiCrash. Worse, the documentation is badly written and nearly devoid of any useful information so you're left with no clue as to how the app actually does what it tries to do. (I get very suspicious about low-level apps that want to insinuate themselves deep into the guts of my system, but don't tell me what they're doing, or why, or how.) Some readers report good results with AntiCrash, and some popular download sites recommended it. But I have to believe there's a placebo effect at work, and that people are seeing what they want to see--- they're seeing results that just aren't there. My tests were as careful as any I've done in 20+ years of software testing, and the only clear effects I can attribute to AntiCrash are negative ones. In short: Don't waste your time on AntiCrash. Anticrash tries to be a crash (and leak) preventer, but all the other tools I tested fall into the category of "memory optimizers" that try to manage your pool of RAM better than Windows can on its own, and along the way, recover leaked resources. The bulk of the Part Two column details the pros and cons of the dozen or so of these tools. Amazingly, it turns out that the #1 reason most people try these optimizers is based on a false assumption about what these tools can and cannot do. And if you use one for the wrong reason, you actually can end up worse off than before!" langa.com *************************** you may recall that i uninstalled anticrash to see if it would stop my disappearing speaker icon problem. it did. you know, another funny thing about that vanishing speaker icon... i was checking out a site with 150 registry tweaks, and one of them is 'how to get rid if the speaker icon in the systray'! lol! fwiw... :) mark