What apps do you run?

[GNEP]

Over the years, I have never stopped "waiting" for the computer in front of me to do stuff. Now computers are an awful lot faster than they used to be, but things are no quicker seemingly.

Now there are two main reasons for this as I see it: (1) that our perceptions of speed are relative to what we have now, rather than relative to what we had last year, and (2) that we do a lot more on our computers simultaneously now. So this got me to thinking: how many apps do people have open at any one time?

All day, every day, I have at least the following running:

-Outlook
-Explorer
-Bloomberg, + DDE plugin
-Excel (with several big spreadsheets, sometimes enough make this (reasonably good) machine fall over)
-A couple of internally-built (in VB) trading apps
-A couple of Citrix windows onto big servers/ treasury management system databases
-Internet Explorer (of course )
-And either word, powerpoint or whatever else is needed at the time.

So no wonder things slow down at times. Although the limiting factor does quite often seem to be the network speed (I am in a big corporate).

Compare this to some years ago:
Either WordStar or Lotus 1-2-3 depending on whether I was doing words or numbers

Do I get more work done now? Probably not...

What do you lot run on a day-to-day basis?

gnep

[Slougi]

internet explorer, winamp, mirc, outlook, word, nav, norton personal firewall, putty (to school)

usually i have those running all the time

[Drizzt]

At work, I have a Celeron 466 with 64 MB ram, never formatted since the past 3 years, with Windows installed over and over a few tenth of time.
Usually I keep open Visual Basic to work and Explorer to read the Murc. I avoid opening folders (like C:\), as the system lock itself for a few minutes while reading their content.


At home I have a Duron 800 with 512MB PC333 where I open OE if I want to read post. Then I close it and launch the game I'm playing at the time (I always play one game at time until I've finished it).
Then I shutdown.

More info needed or is it enough?

[GNEP]

Hmmm - Drizzt you seem to confirm my suspicions that the more power we get, the more we run on a single machine at once - rather than have the same (one or two) things run faster.

Games, of course, I run on their own at home...

[RichL]

My works machine is a Compaq Deskpro micro-format desktop with a P2/350 (overclocked to 400 ) with 128mb ram, 6gb hdd, ATi rage onboard graphics and a 24x cd drive, running Windows NT4.
On this awesome example of corporate computing I regularly run Lotus Notes 5, IE5.5sp2, MS Word 97, MS Excel 97, McAfee AV 4, Calc and frequently 3 or 4 telnet or pingplotter sessions.
Crashes are suprisingly rare - it just takes longer and longer to do stuff, to the point where I give up.

My home PC (spec in my sig) usually runs KazzaLite 1.7 (only 8mb of the last episode of SAAB to go ), ICQ, Mozilla 0.9 mail, Realplayer 8, IE 5.5sp2, MS Word 97, McAfee AV 6, Zonealarm 2.6, Motherboard Monitor and TClock.
To get this one to BSOD on me, the most effective method is to swap back and forth between the G400 and Voodoo5500 a coupld of times when playing a 3d game.

[Tempest]

I fear the early computers have left a scar in me... My first PC was so slow that a plugged-in joystick or a loaded mouse driver slowed the machine down even when the programs did not use those devices
SO I'm a purist & performance freak, I have absolutely no background tasks active. No messengers, no mail proggys, no virus scanners, nothing. All extra UI finesses and services tweaked away, no quick launch/system tray icons, only two icons (My Computer & IE) on the desktop. Machine is, of course, Athlon XP 1800+ with 512 MB of DDR333 and Win2K SP3.

But what I have open most of the time is Internet Explorer, Winamp and Paint Shop Pro.

[RichL]

Tempest, that means you can do nothing very very quickly?

I know what you mean though. Its only since I got >256mb that I started having a Windows wallpaper, and I still dont run Menu effects.

[Tempest]

I know a lot of keyboard shortcuts - - - > But no "Windows" keys of course, **** no, my keyboard is from 1987...

Done quickly, why? Just today I once again realized how everybody is busy these days... I don't get it, are they in a hurry to die? I'm one of those people that feel pressured if they have to send a simple e-mail and they've only scheduled one hour for it... On the other hand, I believe I see and enjoy many things and details that busier individuals are in too much hurry to even notice.

[GNEP]

Similar to you at home Tempest - but generally with more apps running unless gaming. Win2k stripped down. Although recently stripping out the Quick Launch bar has started to annoy me so that might go back

Do MP3s play faster with a "bare-bones" system?

[Tempest]

Originally posted by GNEP
Do MP3s play faster with a "bare-bones" system?

Yep, they average ~0.017 BPM faster than on a basic installation I'll also be able to watch a two-hour movie in 0.12 seconds shorter time than the average person. Also the movie starts 2 seconds faster. Too bad is that unless it's a DVD movie, I spend 5 seconds longer when searching for the shortcut to my Media Player

[GNEP]

LOL

[agallag]

At work, it's generally:

-Lotus Notes R5
-IE6
-Outlook XP
-Word/Excel XP
-RDP Client for managing W2K domain controllers
-Various other utilities as needed

My ThinkPad T21 (800MHz/256MB) with XP SP1 handles all that pretty well, with some extreme swapping thanks to the notes client. NEVER crashes.

At home, it's either:

-IE6
-Kazaa Lite 2.00
-OE
-Winamp 2.81

or:

-Game of the week

System specs for that machine are in my sig. It rarely crashes, but some games can go poof once in a while.

I turn off menu animations and most of XP's effects on both machines, because they're just pointless fluff. Overall they're both quite stable machines, and the performance is more than fast enough.

[Jammrock]

Win2k, M$ Outlook, at least 2 M$ Word, at least 1 Winblows Exploders, Trillian, At least 2 IE, one running a java ticketing system (from Peragrine who just filed for bankrupcy) and some music player.

Jammrock