Re: But, but Whose?

[Peter Evans peterev@xxxxxxxx]

Nathan Sivin reports on a mysterious problem that appears to result from
the interaction of three programs, one of which is Xy and another of which
is Norton Utilities. [Look, Ma, no quoting!] As usual (always?), I can't
be of any help, other than via a comment that will no doubt appear
unhelpful at best. And the comment is:

Why bother with Norton Utilities?

Back in the days when Microsoft provided very little in its operating
systems (except, it must be granted, leanness and understandability), we
all needed sets of utilities. Mostly because of its back-up module, partly
because I already had 4DOS, my own favorite was PC Tools (whose acquisition
[and subsequent destruction] by Symantec seemed to cause no great
eyebrow-lifting by the US antimonopoly commissars). But Symantec's NU was
pretty good too.

Of course, only certain parts of those old utility sets work with Win95.
When I got Win95 I was all set to buy one. But the sole choice was
Symantec, and its high price (and lack of a good back-up program) irritated
me, so I decided to lay off for a time.

Time passed and I never bought NU (or anything much like it) and have never
wished I'd done so. I did buy Norton Navigator, never got to like it, and
could find no way to get rid of all of it short of reinstalling Win95
(which I did). Wary of any company selling such strongly adhesive
software, I was also careful not to install any of the occasional freeware
daemons that Symantec altruistically releases from time to time.
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Peter Evans