PC Performance Question

[Wayne 0]

I know there was an iPod/ iTunes help thread, are there enough knowledgeable members on here to provide help to those who need it?

Anyway, my question is does saving things to your desktop in Windows affect the performance? Take up RAM or generally tend to slow the computer down? I'm talking about lots of files: ripped music, etc, not just a few documents.

I'm wondering if I'll see a significant increase in performance if I move these files and save them elsewhere in the future.

[Chadd 916]

It absolutely slows down the initial loading of Windows, just put them in another location and put a shortcut to the location on your desktop. Shortcuts are much more efficient than actually having files on your desktop.

[Vapor 0]

I am going to have to disagree with you 100%. The files are not being loaded at startup. If they are in your startup que, yes, but there will be no slowdown by simply having desktop icons. Chadd, if you have any proof of this slowdown, I would be interested in reading it.

[Chadd 916]

I am going to have to disagree with you 100%. The files are not being loaded at startup. If they are in your startup que, yes, but there will be no slowdown by simply having desktop icons. Chadd, if you have any proof of this slowdown, I would be interested in reading it.

Not icons; the actual FILES reside on the desktop, it's not like on a Mac. I don't care if you believe me or not. For almost ten years I was responsible for for either fixing PCs or managing people who fixed PCs and it was a widely known problem. Vista may or may not have the problem, I haven't bothered to check into it.

Newer computers make the problem less noticeable but I can recall older machines taking several minutes longer to load because users had 100MB worth of files on their desktop.

[Vapor 0]

and FILES are represented by... icons. In modern computing with 1-2GBs of ram and much faster processors I canot see the rendering or loading of desktop files having any impact on startup time. In the past on your 133 pentium with 16MB of RAM... sure.

[DDude26 0]

and FILES are represented by... icons. In modern computing with 1-2GBs of ram and much faster processors I canot see the rendering or loading of desktop files having any impact on startup time. In the past on your 133 pentium with 16MB of RAM... sure.

vapor, not everybody can afford those amazing computers that you talk about...

[Chadd 916]

and FILES are represented by... icons. In modern computing with 1-2GBs of ram and much faster processors I canot see the rendering or loading of desktop files having any impact on startup time. In the past on your 133 pentium with 16MB of RAM... sure.

The .ico takes up far less space than the actual file. Saying an icon is the same as the file is incorrect. Yes, the .ico is a file, but it does not take up as much space as the file it graphically represents.

It does take far less time than in the past but a number of large files will, in fact, increase the length of time it takes to load the desktop. What you choose to believe is irrelevant, it is factual and I have witnessed it several times with my own eyes.

[MLSman 22]

Chadd is correct here....

There are a few things that a desktop can do that will affect performance...somewhat. It is true that with speed and memory you will not see this issue as noticeable as you would as a system constrained with resources. If you have ever started a machine with a boatload of desktop files and not enough memory, the problem shows itself clearly. Have you ever opened a directory for the first time, and notice that it takes a few seconds to show all of the icons in the folder? There's the problem. The icon of each file is an image, and the system when initially loaded has to work to find the image of each icon in the folder. Well, your desktop is actually a pointer (shortcut) to a folder, so it needs to do the same thing. Once the icon images are loaded into memory, you no longer see the latency....except if you have thousands of files with icon images that are not loaded in memory. The desktop image (wallpaper) itself also hinders the initial load as the system has to first find the image, then load it into memory. Wanna speed it up a little? Turn off the web desktop, use a solid color or a small image file for a background, and get the files off the desktop...but for memory constrained systems, this will not help as much as making sure to minimize the amount of applications that run at startup. No one needs to have office start on startup, or quicktime, or iTunes, or anything but the virus scaner and the firewall. That will help. So will going through the services menu and turning off unnecessary processes.

[--notorious 0]

How do I change what on Startup?

[Perry94 0]

and FILES are represented by... icons. In modern computing with 1-2GBs of ram and much faster processors I canot see the rendering or loading of desktop files having any impact on startup time. In the past on your 133 pentium with 16MB of RAM... sure.

vapor, not everybody can afford those amazing computers that you talk about...

lol, normally I wouldn't do this but its just too funny:

One thing PC users can do that Mac users can't

warning: there is some profanity

This pretty much sums up how I feel about macs.

[Vapor 0]

Well Icould go through everything on the page on how innacurate it is but... just a few. If mac just works why is there a site called mac fix it? That is a pretty retarded statement. Things will go wrong with ever piece of machinery at some point, especially when you make millions of units. Everything just works implys the fussion of software and hardware. "iTunes is the next Real Player"... uhhhh nope. There is no adware that comes with quicktime or iTunes. And then he says how buggy iTunes is. Maybe it is on the PC... but not on the mac.

[mack 44]

STFU already. Christ, any computer-related topic turns into this monkey crap-tossing contest.

[Chadd 916]

STFU already. Christ, any computer-related topic turns into this monkey crap-tossing contest.

Don't most topics turn into that anyway?

[Vapor 0]

STFU already. Christ, any computer-related topic turns into this monkey crap-tossing contest.

Its a message board... what do you want?

[mack 44]

Less you.

[Vapor 0]

ouch