TinyApps.org

Free

A little goes a long way

While building a home-brew PC recently, I ran into one ofMicrosoft's catch-22s. I had a legit new CD-ROM of Windows 98, but I couldn'tload it onto my blank hard drive without first formatting the drive with asystem floppy disk. And I couldn't make a floppy until I had installed the CD.I was stumped for a few hours, until I came across TinyApps.org, a softwarerepository that specializes in small Windows and DOS programs and had just whatI needed - links to system disks for all versions of Windows. After copying theappropriate disk image onto a floppy, I was set to go.

Miles Wolbe, a teacher and Web designer living in Hawaii, runsTinyApps and is, not surprisingly, an evangelist for more elegant software thatdoesn't take up a ton of space and is less likely to crash. Need a simplegraphics editor? He presents one that's just 349K. How about a bare-bones wordprocessor? Just 4K. For my newly formatted PC, small is beautiful once again.

- Aaron Pressman

TinyApps.org:www.tinyapps.org.