I remember interviewing a senior Intel VP a few years back and asking him why on earth we needed all this extra memory and faster processors when most people just used their word processor. His reply was something like, ‘well eventually you’ll want to run lots of things at the same time.’ I didn’t get it then at all. I get it now.
How much of that junk are you actually using? Very little : most of it is sitting around waiting just in case you use it. Pointless. Here’s a revolutionary idea : have a system that is lean enough that applications start fast so that you don’t have to have “helpers” hanging around all the time just so that you get quick startup.
Junk? Junk? I’m using every singly piece. File searchers, mail protectors, bookmark filers, ink savers, a/v, image cataloguer…the lot. The only two which are a bit suspect are MSN and the webcam which I only use every so often to chat to a mate in LA. :-)
But I do agree with your lean machine concept. Fast startup is definitely the driver here. :-)
“mail protectors”… ahem. Try Thunderbird.
“bookmark filers”… You’re using firefox, ffs! You don’t need them anymore!
Ah, it’ll take me a while to move off OE I’m afraid, my life is intrinsically tied into it’s folder structure. :-) As for Powermarks, no-one has a better search feature, and I’m talking about searching over 6000 bookmarks here!
S3 and Picasa manager are definitely spacewasters…
You’re right. The S3 thing has just gone. Don’t even know why it was there. :-) Picassa is nice though. And I like the instant indexing, since I do a fair bit of snap-shotting (can’t really call it photography with a big P.) :-)
I use a program called TrayManager from PC Magazine to hide icons that I don’t need. Windows XP has that built in, but I’m running Win2k.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,9877,00.asp
To be honest, I’m not that bothered with hiding the icons. They don’t bug me that much. And I’m running 1GB of RAM, so I’ve got enough space to run a few things anyway. :-)