What exactly is a utility?

[plucky duck]

I'm talking about little nibble things like TCP/IP utilites such as Ping, Netstat, Nbtstat, NSlookup or others a wee bit bigger like WCPUID, Free Mem Pro, etc.

What makes something deserving of the name *application* or *program* while others are simply called *utilities*?

BTW, what other TCP/IP *utilities* are there out there for Win98/Win2k besides the ones mentioned above and what do they do in general? Observe? Manage? Tweak?

Wierd questions, yeah I know eh, but need to know http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif Owww...me litte brain hurts http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

Plucky

[Ed_S]

From the Tech Dictionary (http://www.computeruser.com/resources/dictionary/dictionary.html)
Definition for: utility

A small helper program.Utilities are distinguished from application programs, which are used to do the main work of the computer (such as word processing, accounting, CAD), and system programs, which control the computer and run application programs. Some examples of utilities are screensavers, font managers, compression programs, and file finders.

IMO, the difference between utils & apps are that utils help maintain the machine itself, or make it easier to use, while apps actually do something with a "real world" usage.
Norton System Works, Partition Magic, etc are utils, while Office, Corel Draw, etc are apps. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif


Ed