Desktop under window???

[kayofcircles]

Months ago, Pete posted a comment in a thread about Desktop icons. He pointed out that the more icons there are on the Desktop, the more work your monitor has to do to refresh those..a gazillion times a minute or whatever. That makes sense, and I understand that, so on new system was planning on as few shortcuts on Desktop as possible...but I desperately miss my shortcuts. My question is...does your monitor have to work to refresh those things on Desktop (whatever they are) underneath the window/screen you're currently in? I am rarely "on" the Desktop except for those brief moments between programs...and so?

[hiredgoonz]

In that case, why don't you use the quicklaunch bar? I have my taskbar set to auto-hide, put all the shortcuts I use often in the quicklaunch and that way I NEVER have to go to the desktop at all. Just scroll my mouse down to the bottom of the screen and pick the desired shortcut from the quicklaunch when it pops up...

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When all else fails, read the instructions.

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[kfh]

Hi All,
Sea pointed me in that direction a while back, all I have on the desk top is the recycle bin.
Not sure if it is safe to remove it,Even if it is in quick launch.
kfh.


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Sequitur Patrem Non Passibus Aequis

[iisbob]

Your desktop is actually a folder in windows 9 or in your profile in an NT enviroment ) and yes kay, your monitor still has to refresh the icons on the desktop when you have other windows open because your desktop is never closed ( ie; explorer )-however now in XP you can safely remove all icons from the desktop and it does not adversely affec the OS, unlike in 95 systems where removal of the recycle bin/My computer can cause faults in the explorer module.

The video card takes most of the brunt of the refresh work-so you need at card with at least 4MB's of RAM-and in today's PC world that's hardly a probelm . http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

If your monitor is a 15"-set it at 800*600, {it's native resolution} in 16bit, 17" in 1024*768 ( 16bit ) , and so on-the reason i don't recommend 32bit is because we ( humans ) can't distingush all of 16 million colors, much less 32 million. I don't care what anyone tells you. it's physical imposssible for you to distingush between the two-and all you do is overwork you video system trying for that little " little extra depth ".

There are several programs out ther for 95/98 that will make your desktop invisible; however they usually eat up a lot of system resources. So when i ran 95/98 i only had the recycle bin/my computer on the desktop-as goonz pointed out i put most of my links either in the top of the start menu or Qlaunch-they don't use any extra resources that way and their 1 click access by default.

You can also set up a seperate toolbar for them without impacting any extra system resources.




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iisbob

Computer-Show me the Enterprise; no bloody A, no bloody B, and no bloody C-just the original...Mr Scott { from a STNG episode }

[kfh]

Hi iisbob,
This may sound silly to you, How do you remove the recycle bin from a desktop.
No delete from right clicking.
OS Xp Pro.
thanks,
kfh.


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Sequitur Patrem Non Passibus Aequis

[iisbob]

No such thing as a stupid question. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif Just improper ones. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/tongue.gif


Right click on your desktop and under " arrange icons by> " scroll down and de-select " show desktop icons ".

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif



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iisbob

Computer-Show me the Enterprise; no bloody A, no bloody B, and no bloody C-just the original...Mr Scott { from a STNG episode }

[kayofcircles]

Umm..okay. Understand answer to original question. (Don't like it, but understand it. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif) Can figure out Quick Launch. But that's for programs? My old Desktop was littered with folders that I frequently browse through...can one put those on Quick Launch?

[YODA74]

sure I have put pics into different folders and then put the folder into Quick launch.

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YODA74@windows-sucks.com
CCMR (http://www.dreamwater.net/tech/yoda74/index.html)

[rond36]

This is for Windows XP only
Something that I have done right click on an empty spot in the quickstart tray choose toolbars choose desktop to create a desktop toolbar. Than remove the icons from the desktop as issbob posted. Now I have a menu similar to the start menu labeled desktop >> only on the other end of the quickstart tray. If I click on the >> a menu pops up with my desktop icons and folders and sub menus for folder contents (like the start menu) and I autohide the taskbar. Now I have an empty desktop and it is even easier to access my programs that are in folders because I don't have to open the folder to get to the contents and I don't need to go back to the desktop for anything. It is easy to change back because nothing is deleted. I can even view the contents of the recycle bin and restore files without opening it. Also because My Computer is on the menu I can access any file on any drive through submenus and if I enable show control panel in my computer I can also access all of the control panel applets without opening it. I can even browse my network from this menu. I think this menu is more functional than the Windows start menu.

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How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q255867)
WindowsBBS.com (http://www.WindowsBBS.com/index.php?referrerid=115) Is back online, check it out



[This message has been edited by rond36 (edited 04-18-2002).]

[rond36]

I found that you can do the same thing in Windows ME but to remove the icons from the desktop right click on the desktop choose active desktop click on show desktop icons to deselect it, the rest is the same.


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How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q255867)
WindowsBBS.com (http://www.WindowsBBS.com/index.php?referrerid=115) Is back online, check it out

[hiredgoonz]

I have my taskbar double height and have added "My Computer" as a toolbar...that way I have quick access to all my drives as well as My Documents and Control Panel...sinec it is also auto-hide, I don't lose any desktop real-estate either...

KAY you can add any folder/drive to the taskbar, just right click and go to new toolbar...

As far as 16-bit vs 32-bit, I used to think you couldn't tell the difference, but 16-bit is only 65,536 colors, 24-bit is 16.7 million and 32-bit is 4,294,967,296 colors. I don't think you could tell between 24 and 32-bit, but 16 vs 32 is noticeable...anyone who runs XP should try 16 and 32 and look at the difference in the way icons appear...

That said, I run 16-bit color on all but my fastest desktop system that has 64mb of ddr video memory...there's not a big difference...

------------------
When all else fails, read the instructions.

Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;rid;kbinfo)

Drivers (http://www.driverguide.com)

Google (http://www.google.com)

[kayofcircles]

My thanks to everyone. My Desktop will soon be as pristine as yours. Now my toolbars, however, may get awfully cluttered, and I am not sure I could handle the "hide" stuff. For old fussy types, having things "disappear" is a bit disconcerting. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif

[RKBA]

Far be it for me to disagree with Pete, but I think his comments must have been misinterpreted or taken out of context. Anyone have a link to the thread kayofcircles mentioned in the first post?

Please pardon me for stating the obvious, but what you see on your monitor screen is simply a two dimensional view into a large chunk of RAM memory that resides on your video card. Each byte (256 colors), halfword (65,536 colors), or word (16,777,216 colors - I think only 24 of the 32 bits is actually used, though I could be wrong about that), represents one pixel. The video card scans the RAM memory onto your monitor screen converting each byte, halfword, or word into one color per pixel (which consists of three dots of varying intensity, one each for Red, Green, and Blue, or is it Cyan, Magenta, Yellow(?) - I forget). It scans continuously at whatever your scan rate is set to, regardless of the contents of the video RAM (ie; what's displayed on screen).

What makes some video cards superior to others is in their ability to rapidly move chunks of RAM representing icons or other images, around within that RAM or to write new contents into it (and thereby on your computer screen) whenever something changes. I assume virtually all video RAM's are double buffered (ping-ponged) so that the video controller has the full screen refresh time plus the vertical blanking period to update the image in the unused buffer if it has changed). The point being that even if your video display was a totally randomized pixel array, the video card wouldn't work any harder than if all the bits were zeroes or ones. The only time the video card has to do any work aside from the normal refresh, is when things need to be moved around or drawn into the video RAM.

Video memory is the same as regular old RAM, except that I think it usually has faster access times depending on the resolution and pixel clock rate of your adapter. The linear addressing is mapped into columns and rows to correspond to the scan lines on your screen - so there is nothing "behind" an image that appears on your screen. Video memory is a two dimensional array, it isn't three dimensional - so called 3D effects are just shadings to approximate perspective views of things. Someday, maybe we will have true three dimensional holographic displays, but even a modest 800x600 pixel display that is say 600 pixels deep would require 800x600x600*16 = 614.4 MB bytes of RAM for 16 bit colors, not to mention outrageously fast pixel clock rates (unless all planes could be refreshed in parallel).

I haven't kept up with new video technology much, and it may very well be that the graphics adapter keeps some frequently used icons, images, etc, in a "off screen" portion of it's RAM so that all it needs do is copy frequently used icons or other images from offscreen to onscreen as needed rather than reconstructing it from a bitmap potentially stored on disk or in cached memory.

The point is that neither your monitor or video adapter card have to work any harder to display a bitmapped image regardless of how cluttered it is. It's only during the time the image is changing that the video card has to do extra work.

It's a whole different ball game with vector displays of course. In that case, every single image on the screen is drawn independently by manipulating the video beam to paint specific images rather than always scanning from left to right and top to bottom, but the only time I've ever seen vector displays were for special purpose systems, and the last I heard they were very, very expensive.

Perhaps I'm an old fogy and radical changes to display adapters and monitors have taken place that I'm oblivious to. If so please enlighten me.

-- Ron

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Centerfire (http://home.pacbell.net/rsdotson/) "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." -- Thomas Jefferson

[kayofcircles]

Half of what you just posted, RKBA , sailed right over my head, but I have most icons down on toolbar now..have four: My Computer, Recycle Bin (don't have the "show desktop" option that iisbob mentioned, that stupid Network Neighborhood (gotta find my notes on how to get rid of that one), and an Inbox icon that refuses to be deleted that I accidentally loaded with a word processor program left on Desktop to deal with. May be my imagination, but not getting all the screen flickers I was before on this old puter..and I am getting to where I actually like the whole toolbar, Quick Launch, concept. As I am typing this..my former Desktop is right here in the same window. Pretty handy actually. Sometimes you CAN teach an old dog new tricks! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif