A friend of mine (who despite having a Mac, I consider rather computer-savvy) told me yesterday that I shouldn't be using my desktop much since beyond cluttering it, it actually eats up a lot of memory as well as other things. My desktop just (usually) has links to organized folders for files and somewhat-commonly used applications. Looks something like this (though normally the floating files are put in their respective folders): Spoiler Is there any truth to this? I mean, I don't see the point of having a desktop if it's better to leave it empty, personally, but I'm not opposed to the idea. Thanks guys!
I've never heard that one before. It's BS though, links and shortcuts on your desktop take up and extremely insignificant amount of space. Besides files that are just floating around would have to take up space somewhere so it doesn't matter where they are, the desktop is just like any other folder, other than it is constantly displayed. BTW your wallpaper is awesome.
What you said is pretty much what I thought, though I'm not that confident in my computer skills, so I wanted to check and see. And thanks, I quite like it too. I was just thinking the other day that maybe I should switch it... it's been the same for a few months now
Man, you're fussy. I've used the same background for all three and a half years I've owned my laptop!
Well, I suppose if you put a lot of sidebar gadgets and whatnot on your desktop, THAT might eat up some memory and processing power. Aside from that, your desktop is stored in the same user folder that your documents would be in if they were stored there instead. Those documents and files wouldn't take up any more space than they did before.
I'd agree with lazyboy, but I would say that it might be slower to startup windows upon logging in assuming the files are stored in the desktop folder.
I have a mac too, and my desktop is completely empty...but that's because I have my applications in the dock, so I don't really need any icons on the desktop, and I prefer the cleaner look. I agree with everybody else, the space taken up (if any) is so insignificant it's not worth worrying about.
It's utter rubbish. The difference in performance will be so miniscule - your computer has no problem displaying thousands of subdirectories and files in a folder, so it will have no problem displaying the handful you can have on your desktop.
First off, I want to say "Good Job" for having CCleaner and Avast!. They are some of the best programs that I have (in terms of performance) Anyways, what I really am replying to this thread for. Your friend may be referring to "background programs" (not sure) but these are programs that run in the background (and game clients, uTorrent (if not closed after use), OpenOffice for me, as it claims to start up faster if it has the little program open, (not much of a difference). These do eat up processing power, and RAM. It also makes your computer shut down slower and boot up slower. When you install, Skype, for instance, it defaults to open on start up. This means that when you power up your computer from a shut down state, it will automatically open Skype, whether you want it or not, like it or not. I choose to have most programs that open automatically removed from that list, as my computer is slow as F*** anyways. Unless something is "stored" on the desktop, and is not a shortcut, it will use an extremely small (1 kb? maybe?) of disk space. If you decide to install a program on the Desktop, which you have to manually tell the program to do, then thats a different story. But, thankfully, most programs are set to default install to your hard drive in "Program Files" or some folder named close to that. Sorry for the long post/rant.
I just want to assure you that there is very little impact having stuff on your desktop has on your computer - once everything loads up. Personally, I hid all my desktop icons - all I have are a few widget programs that give some info I want. Anyways, the one reason one might not want to put so much on the desktop is productivity. Obviously, this depends on the person, but have fewer things on your desktop can make you more productive - not having to look through 20 icons for something, keeps you concentrated. I know people who fill up every spot on their desktop - no joke. Then I know people who have nothing - like me. While filling up every spot does have a measurable impact, what you have right now does not.
That's complete bullshit. I mean, it's more for the display software to have to render in terms of icons. But we're talking about one place or another on the file system... It gets loaded into memory when you look at files anyway. And no, disk space used != memory used.
Whoa! Calm down... Take, for example, you have a filled desktop and everything is all rendered out. Launch a RAM heavy program like Photoshop and do some work. Close PS and you may see that your computer refreshes the icons displayed. If your computer has to refresh these icons - you are using the GPU to render them - thus, you are impacting your computer. I said nothing about disk space used == memory used. I only said these is "very little impact...on your computer" and that the impact is also more conceptual in that if you give me a desktop filled with icons - my productivity will go down for the sheer reason that I will have to search through all those icons to find something - something I usually don't need to do... nothing about the computer itself slowing down but about me slowing down. Goodness, such a hostile world we live in.
