Today I installed Windows NT 4 on my work PC. That will replace the Virtual PC that I use on my PowerBook. It's an OEM version, which they didn't tell me beforehand. Such is the danger of buying software from eBay. It took a while to install. Boot up off of the floppies, then install Windows NT 4 SP 1, then upgrade to SP 3, then install Internet Explorer 4, then go to Dell and get the display driver and install that. Then I installed VNC on it, though to do that I had to install Stuffit Expander. That's enough for today. I still need to install Visual C++, the CTConnect Server and API library, and our Call Center Connectors server. Maybe IIS so that I can have an ftp server, since Sharity is only good for one connection, which I want to use on our workgroup server, where I can't really install IIS.

The Mac OS X desktop has a bad habit of moving things around between reboots. Not the drives and Mac OS 9 desktop folder, which are added dynamically when you log in. But the other items on my desktop move around, which is annoying. I've taken to leaving the Desktop window open in the corner of my screen. Another shortcoming is that the Dock doesn't recognize nested aliased folders. If you have a folder item then you can navigate to subfolders, unless the subfolder is really an alias. I guess it doesn't recognize the alias as a special file.

I installed VNCDimension, a VNC Viewer for Mac OS X. Not the greatest program in the world, about on par with the current Mac OS 9 viewer. It doesn't save settings by itself, you have to save them in a document. It's also very slow under Mac OS X. I love the disk image installs. You just drag one file (really a folder but Mac OS X makes it look like a file) to your destination and that is it. Easier than installing a package, which does the usual installation procedure that you can't really see. Kind of like the old way of installing applications.

You know, I didn't see any way to associate a file extension to a particular application. Now that Mac OS X doesn't save file type and creator with a file, the extension is the only clue as to file type. I'd really like to associate a file type to an application so that it doesn't keep trying to launch the creator application, which is a classic app.

Next I installed Sharity, which is a Windows Networking client. Nice looking application. It brought up a Network folder and I browsed the network (it only showed whatever domain you have configured), then tried to mount one of the shares. But it wouldn't take my password and I couldn't break out of the process which started to block Finder operations, so I had to force quit Sharity. Since then I can't get it to work, so maybe I have to reinstall.

I also installed iCab. It's a Carbon application and window resizing is very fast because you're only resizing an outline, not an opaque window like with Cocoa applications. Unfortunately iCab doesn't seem to pick up the proxy settings from the Network preferences so I can't get past our firewall. And another setback, somehow I killed the Mac OS 9.1 installation because Classic doesn't recognize it as a valid System. Setting the Startup Disk to the Mac OS 9.1 partition seems to have solved it.

I finally started Classic. The first thing it does is say that some Mac OS 9.1 components need to be updated, it will take a few seconds and will not affect Mac OS 9.1. Then it starts up and once it's finished it hides from the Dock. I tried a couple of applications and since they don't use the Mac OS X libraries the classic applications are blazingly fast in comparison. Sigh. It'll be hard to leave the legacy applications behind.

I'm now convinced that if you want a fast and responsive user experience you have to stick with Carbon or Classic applications. It doesn't bode well for Cocoa applications if they can't compete in performance with Carbon or even Classic applications (the Classic applications that work, of course). Sure, it has a great look-and-feel, but I'm really annoyed with the responsiveness and lag of the native applications. I do hope that Apple somehow improves the speed of these applications. Quartz is just a dog at times. I'm just being very negative because it's been a long day getting one step closer to setting up my Mac OS X environment.

Frak, I just figured out how to get back to the Network folder. It's a folder at the root level of the filesystem and I forgot that the root level is not the root of the partition where Mac OS X is installed. It's above that, that's why I couldn't find it. Anyway, I was able to mount a share with an Industry user. I think it doesn't like it if you try to specify a different domain than the default, which really sucks. But at least I can mount my one folder, though I think I will look at using ftp instead since they are just Windows files -- no resource fork to get mangled.

The reason I'm not using Samba is that I didn't find a graphical client for it. Too much to expect I know but I am using a graphical UI so I want Mac OS X native programs to use on my computer. Or at least Carbon applications, I'll settle for that if I have to. I'm such an elitist snob sometimes.