Master of Your Domain

Not really true. K-Meleon uses Gecko, just like Firefox. Therefore, it has some (but not all) of the same security holes as other browsers that use Gecko, like Firefox. In addition, K-Meleon is not updated by the developer very often. Sure, there are unofficial security updates available for K-Meleon. But do you really feel comfortable patching your browser with security updates that come from some semi-anonymous "Joe Schmoe"? Something to think about... Phil Ofcoz I update my gecko engine with latest (1.7.12 iirc), can you show me any security problem in it? and obviously i'm not talking about any joe schmoes joe schmoes do use IE5/6, whatever came with their windozes, same as they do watch CNN for news, eat crap that is advertised on tv etc etc etc Lets leave Joe Schomoes of the world out of this board... its not that hard to update mozilla-based browser with new gecko, just read around and you'll be all set... and yes, youre right. all the browsers have more or less security problems, none is 100% bug-free, but you can't expect them to be released every day or even every week, obviously. But thats another subject for different thread, all I was saying is that if you have firewall set right, you dont need to remove IE at all to feel safe, just dont use it, thats all. Removing IE is not easy for any "regular Joe", and not everyone (i.e. ME) likes to have their explorer view in windows looking like first Windows 95 first edition (the 'normal look' according to Fred V.) so its all up to the person...

I had similar Acer notebook (well, I still have it, but not exactly as it was before), also 1998 make, with 233MHz Pentium MMX, 32MB RAM only, 1MB video neomagic chipset, slow 4200rpm hdd etc (also the size of VHS or slightly more). I had it for years loaded with Win98 (patched up with various stuff, using FireFox etc) using it primarily for recording audio when i was studying, taking notes etc. I got bored this summer and I made custom Win2K with IE and all other crap removed (as on vorck.com). I got it running down to few services with some 25MB RAM footprint, so it is doable, you may get down to your 19MB target. But its not really useful. Anything you'll run on it (bigger than a notepad) will immediately jump up your RAM use, and since there is no RAM, here comes the swap on a sloooooooooow hdd... man, save yourself this pain, and get more RAM. My notebook was expandable to 144MB max (there is 16MB onboard SDRAM), so I just did that, installed 20GB hdd, added ZV port MPEG accelerator (PCMCIA card), sandard Win2K (patched with all latest crap) and man, now this old heap rox. Im serious, im taking it everywhere with me, because with wi-fi card (again - PC card) i can watch DVDs on my backyard streamed from my 'main' home puter, and virtually all over the city there is no problem to poach any free wi-fi access at any time either (free calls using voipbuster or just audiochat thru msn messenger) I dont care about having IE since I dont use it (I prefer K-Meleon with its ZERO security holes known so far) or Task Scheduler opening port 135 etc etc - just add firewall, antivirus, and youre all set. Why bother playing with trials and errors... get more RAM and you'll be set within an hour or less BTW - Fred's guide is very good inspiration to play with hfslip etc, but really its a freaking mess I had to translate it from English to English to few friends because his guide is so inconsistant ("all these files go to HF folder" then in the same sentence "these files go to somewhere else"... ). Overall great guide, but Fred should have warn there it is not for any newbies or anyone who can't i.e. distinguish between hotfix' .exe and a .cab file (hence won't know himself where goes what in hfslip). And some warning about removal of i.e. Add/Remove Progs cpl and some other *vital* components (for any n00b) are removed as well. Today I was already asked by one of the buddies about some "hftools" folder... I guess I'd have to download newest hfslip version later and see what Fred missed or omitted in his guide