>>Jerry,
>>
>>I personally think that everyone should know what's running in their task list. Maybe I'm paranoid about it, but I try to run a pretty lean system (not much in the sys tray, etc.). One reason, is that my box at home is pretty out-dated, so I need every ounce of power I can get. The side effect it has is that it helps me sniff out problems like this one, not to mention if all of a sudden the computer starts acting strangely, like a virus may have someone gotten in, I can check to see what's going on.
>
>
>That's two of us!
>I've had folks call me because my one of my apps was "running slow".
>I am supporting nearly 30 applications that I have written with VFP in the last 5 years. I have about 300+ users. It amazes me how many of them load the screen savers that use 95% of the cpu resources, and keep open 6 - 10 apps all the time, even if they only use them once during the day. Four or five gaming apps, several WordPerfect and Quatro Pro files, Lotus Notes, a couple of mainframe connections, and other stuff. No wonder apps are running slow.

Boy does that sound familar. I looked at the department's secretary's computer the other day, and she had so much stuff running in the system tray that it went half-way across the bottom of the screen. I'm not exaggerating either.

>We are slowing upgrading users to 730MHz+ boxes that have 256MB RAM, but it seems they just keep more stuff open. And WinXX doesn't multi-task very well as it is, depending on how the time-slicing is set. I don't even do that on my Linux boxes, even though they can multi-task extremely well and still sustain the speed of an app.

If my new box is any indication, it looks like the standard new box around her is a 933 running Win2K. Most folks are still much below that, and are running Win95B.

>I just saw a study that said that folks who use their computers to multi-task are not as efficient as folks who do one task to completition before moving to the next. I think part of it is how much the PC slows down with so many apps open at once, and another part is something we all experience as programmers: when you are deep into the logic of a program and you are interrupted, it takes a few minutes to get your mind around the code again.

Same here. Lately, it's been work on something, get interrupted by something that may take an hour to a couple of days to finish, then hope you can remember what you were doing before you got interrupted. It's my biggest frustration.