General Discussions

**Eternal** · 09-01-2007, 02:38 PM

Hi, i was just wondering about a few things...
1) Does having a background with more than one colour and design to it slow down my computer or have any negative effects?
2) Does having many software shortcuts on my desktop slow down or cause any negative effects?
Thank you.

ETERNAL

**JamieLewis** · 09-01-2007, 02:45 PM

Quote:

Does having a background with more than one colour and design to it slow down my computer or have any negative effects?

Desktop? or Web Page?

Desktop = Only if your living in the 1980s
Web = Depends on Connection Speeds

2) Only if you have a really crappy computer.

Jamie

**Eternal** · 09-01-2007, 02:54 PM

Say i have a good pc and i want to get the best out of it, will it even change anything?
thx for psting

**joder** · 09-01-2007, 03:23 PM

Only if the PC was not manufactured in this century.

**Eternal** · 09-01-2007, 03:36 PM

ooh, ok thanks everybody

**ForrestCroce** · 09-01-2007, 03:41 PM

I disagree. I've seen a lot of computers this century with 128 megs of ram, with an embedded video card that siphons off that. Using a background image for your desktop eats further into the available ram, and on computers that have a problem in this area, minimizing all your windows can be painful.

People have wildly different ideas of what an acceptable computer is. I just heard about someone still using Windows 3.0 ... there are plenty of museum-worthy computers still in service. Even my current one, with a mere gig ram and what feels like a slow primary drive, feels slow to me. I've got the Windows desktop background set to a single color instead of an image so it doesn't have to swap that image data in and out of memory.

A jpeg file is small on disc, but its data is compressed. When you expand it, it starts eating up what might be non-trivial amounts of ram on compters that are already facing pressure in this area.

**D-not** · 09-01-2007, 05:11 PM

I disagree with you Forest. My Windows95 box runs some pretty spectacular visual styles (Custom UI is the best) even compared to XP's Luna. Yet with only 1,5 GiB of RAM and a modest Graphics card it still is blazingly fast despite being a technological dinosaur by most standards.

(That or the first generation of AMD64's were just that amazing.)

**colbyt** · 09-01-2007, 10:11 PM

Quote:

My Windows95 box runs some pretty spectacular visual styles (Custom UI is the best) even compared to XP's Luna.

Is it an internet machine runnning all the clap protection one must run? What AV still runs with worm protection on a win95 box?

Edit: or maybe that is too old for worms?

**ForrestCroce** · 09-03-2007, 01:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by D-not

(That or the first generation of AMD64's were just that amazing.)

Interestingly, I have one of the first gen amd 64 chips. So that's not it. I bought the display model when my laptop died, and never reformatted and started fresh. Sounds like I need to.

**contact247** · 09-03-2007, 03:21 AM

yes having too much desktop shortcuts affect the efficiency of the processor