ID:276999
Jul 14 2006, 1:06 pm
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 ...and I'm running Windows XP. What you see over there is a memory readout (of used memory, methinks), the status of my wireless network and a binary clock (eventually I'll be able to read it flawlessly!). What does your desktop look like? And what do you think of mine? | |
Crispy wrote:
If it's that big, use a JPEG... The acronym "JPEG" makes me cringe, as well as it's meaning. JPEGs are completely useless and shouldn't even exist. Have you tried setting a transparent color to those things?! Doesn't look too bad, though you have way too much stuff running in the background to be healthy (too many system tray icons). Those icons are nessesary for the PC to function. Well.. It consists of some wireless stuff, anti-virus software, Google Desktop, GAIM and BYOND. That's it. My desktop is black, uses the Windows Classic style, and has a bunch of icons on it. =) Not much to see there, which is fine because I hardly ever look at it. I usually have Firefox or a programming IDE up obscuring it anyway, so the simpler it is (and therefore the fewer system resources it takes up) the better! Mine'll take less system resources than yours; a considerable drop of resources were detected after I ditched explorer.exe. | |
Android Data wrote:
The acronym "JPEG" makes me cringe, as well as it's meaning. JPEGs are completely useless and shouldn't even exist. Have you tried setting a transparent color to those things?! They aren't supposed to have a transparent colour. They're meant for data that holds a wide range of colours. Like photos from a camera, for example. | |
Right click the task bar -> Properties -> Where it says "Hide Inactive Icons", tick that. OR Customise (by inactive icons box) -> Pick out the ones you want to hide, hide when inactive, or show.
Took me months to work that out =P Yours looks pretty cool, mines just the silver theme with a picture my friend did for me as a background. What does JPEG stand for that's so terrible? >_>; | |
JMT wrote:
Right click the task bar -> Properties -> Where it says "Hide Inactive Icons", tick that. OR Customise (by inactive icons box) -> Pick out the ones you want to hide, hide when inactive, or show. I don't use explorer.exe. I don't have a start menu and properties like you do, so no way that that'll work. I can hide them, but I haven't gotten around to actually doing so. What does JPEG stand for that's so terrible? >_>; It uses a lot of colors. This means that if I want to save a JPEG as PNG it'll mess up and I have to remake the transparent color practically pixel-by-pixel. LOTS of work. | |
Mine standard XP as well, but with a Sana'te background, mostly obscured by icons. My desktop is totally full of icons, mostly BYOND stuff (little programs which help me to code, like list imploders and save file editors).
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Haha, very nice man. Mine's just a sweet picture of Hikki with my icons surrounding her. <hikki3 :D Instead of hacking away at the dial-up'ers life, i'll just send a nice link.
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i12/oblivon/zzzjpg.jpg notice the custom heart ^-^ | |
Android Data wrote:
JPEGs are completely useless and shouldn't even exist. Bzzzzt! Wrong answer, thanks for playing. Yes, in some situations, JPEGs suck. You should never use them as an intermediate or working format, because they're lossy. However, in some situations they are the best possible choice, especially on the internet, because they hugely reduce filesize with only a slight visual impact. I took the liberty of converting your 700KB PNG image to JPEG, with decent quality. The result? A mere 40KB file. That's nearly one seventeenth the size. And you can get even smaller if you're not worried about some minor artifacting. Reducing the size of the screenshot (which you should have done anyway, since it causes the forums to scroll horizontally, and horizontally scrolling webpages are bad) could get it smaller still. The bottom line: Use the right tool for the job. Often PNGs are the right tool; in this case, PNG was the wrong choice, and JPEG would have been much better. Have you tried setting a transparent color to those things?! That's not the point of JPEG, silly; and it's completely irrelevant in this situation. Since when does a screenshot need transparency?! Those icons are nessesary for the PC to function. So you actually use Winamp Agent? Hmmm? Nope, didn't think so. It's completely useless. As much as I like Winamp (I'm using it right now, in fact), the Agent is a monumentally useless application. There are at least 5 or 6 programs I can see there that aren't related to antivirus, wireless, BYOND, or instant messaging, and could easily be axed. Mine'll take less system resources than yours; a considerable drop of resources were detected after I ditched explorer.exe. True, that's possible, and since I don't know what shell you're using I'll have to give you the benefit of the doubt. Still, I'm a software developer, so running a reasonably standard setup is in my best interests. And I'm used to all the little shortcuts and such of Explorer anyway. | |
Crispy wrote:
The bottom line: Use the right tool for the job. Often PNGs are the right tool; in this case, PNG was the wrong choice, and JPEG would have been much better. JPEGs ruined my life. I had to spend ages getting the transparent color out of one of those. When I was finally finished, MS Paint crashed and I had to start over. =( So you actually use Winamp Agent? Hmmm? Nope, didn't think so. It's completely useless. As much as I like Winamp (I'm using it right now, in fact), the Agent is a monumentally useless application. That's not Winamp Agent; it's Winamp itself. Can you blame a guy for playing music? On repeat. All the time. The same song, over and over. There are at least 5 or 6 programs I can see there that aren't related to antivirus, wireless, BYOND, or instant messaging, and could easily be axed. The first icon is the alternative to explorer.exe; it allows me to set it up. The second icon is the icon to remove my wireless application (even though trying to do causes a Blue Screen of Death for some obnoxious reason, but I don't care anyway as my device is always plugged in). The third icon is the default Windows icon for "obnoxiously change your keyboard language every ten seconds due to malformed settings of the 'you're too old to function so I'll aid you' program". The fourth icon is my sound, fifth as well (driver). The sixth icon is Google Desktop, which helps me manage my e-mail and shows me the news and weather forecast in my country. The eighth icon is my wireless internet, the tenth my anti-virus, the eleventh my instant messenger, then it's just my Winamp, BYOND and Total Commander (file manager). True, that's possible, and since I don't know what shell you're using I'll have to give you the benefit of the doubt. Still, I'm a software developer, so running a reasonably standard setup is in my best interests. And I'm used to all the little shortcuts and such of Explorer anyway. ±350 MB of resources being used while explorer.exe was active. ±260 MB of resources being used right now. =) | |
Android Data wrote:
JPEGs ruined my life. I had to spend ages getting the transparent color out of one of those. When I was finally finished, MS Paint crashed and I had to start over. =( Serves you right for using MS Paint to clean up a JPEG. =P That's not Winamp Agent; it's Winamp itself. Ah. Well that's alright then. =) | |
You act as if it is crazy that you are using XP. That looks a lot like XP to me. If I saw that screenshot in with a bunch of others, I would almost instantly know it was XP, even without BYOND and winamp running.
Ones worth looking at: -Lappy --http://scoobsoft.com/ScreenShots/compiz3.png -Desktop --http://scoobsoft.com/ScreenShots/ubrowser1.png --http://scoobsoft.com/ScreenShots/million18.png ("Mozilla Firebird" ;)) My generic screenshots folder: http://scoobsoft.com/ScreenShots/ I have been meaning to take some more pictures of my Desktop on my main machine and my laptop. They change monthly, so I tend to forget to document the current style. As for killing off Explorer for saving RAM, that is silly. You may like the desktop manager you are using in replacement, which is fine, but RAM is a poor excuse. I don't know about you, but my 1GB does quite well with explorer. I would even go as far as to say that my Laptop, on the rare occasions that it is running XP, does very well with its 512MB. | |
Crispy wrote:
True, that's possible, and since I don't know what shell you're using I'll have to give you the benefit of the doubt. Still, I'm a software developer, so running a reasonably standard setup is in my best interests. And I'm used to all the little shortcuts and such of Explorer anyway. He's using aston shell. Not bad, but explorer is better:P I like storing files on my desktop rather than having a folder open with the stuff im playing with. Prolly the only reason I don't use aston. | |
  I know the resolution is bad on the second one, but it's a server, so I usually don't have my monitor plugged into it. | |
Doesn't look too bad, though you have way too much stuff running in the background to be healthy (too many system tray icons).
My desktop is black, uses the Windows Classic style, and has a bunch of icons on it. =) Not much to see there, which is fine because I hardly ever look at it. I usually have Firefox or a programming IDE up obscuring it anyway, so the simpler it is (and therefore the fewer system resources it takes up) the better!