Post your desktop

[Bryant5493]

^^

Oh, okay. Thanks, agentsteel and PennDOTFan.


Be well,

Bryant

[agentsteel53]

I don't know why I actually have a desktop background image, when I usually have 15-20 windows open, at least one of which is maximized.

[Andrew T.]

A bit anticlimactic, isn't it?

[Truvelo]

A bit anticlimactic, isn't it?

^ What ancient version of Windows is that

[Scott5114]

Looks like 98 to me.

[Andrew T.]

^ What ancient version of Windows is that

It's Windows 2000 Professional; albeit disguised with Windows 95 icons.

[cu2010]

Yay hockey!

[mightyace]

^ What ancient version of Windows is that

It's Windows 2000 Professional; albeit disguised with Windows 95 icons.

Those settings are still on Vista, so my desktop and laptop still have the old Win9x look, which I prefer.

EDIT:
Also,  I typically don't use wall paper as I almost always have at least one window maximized on the screen.

[agentsteel53]

I like the Win9X look.  I've never seen the point of the brightly colored garish look of XP and later.

[mightyace]

I like the Win9X look.  I've never seen the point of the brightly colored garish look of XP and later.

Agreed.  The XP look is the worst, it looks like a cartoon or at least belongs on a child's PC.

[J N Winkler]

I have seen the Windows XP look criticized as "MyFirstWindows" or "MyFisherPriceWindows," but personally I prefer it to the "classic Windows" look (no three-dimensional rendering) which XP has as an option--I feel the default colors for that are too bold.

I don't particularly care what Windows looks like on the screen as long as there is some element of customization that allows me to give my own computer a personal stamp.  For me the desktop wallpaper and login icon are sufficient for that purpose.  (It actually took me about three years to discover that the login icon could be changed.  Prior to that, Windows had randomly assigned me a picture of a guitar as a login icon, which is very strange--to say the least--for a deaf person.)

[Truvelo]

I have the Win9x look even though I have Windows 7 Professional with the Aero schemes. I set everything for speed so there's no animation of windows or fancy mouse pointer shadows either. Windows 7 takes about 15 seconds to boot and about 2 seconds to shut down

[agentsteel53]

Windows 7 takes about 15 seconds to boot and about 2 seconds to shut down

boot? shut down?  I tend to do neither.  if for some reason my computer shuts down, it does so in milliseconds... but with the UPS behind it, it has no reason to do any such thing.

[myosh_tino]

First Macintosh Desktop!


Wallpaper pays tribute to TechTV's "The ScreenSavers" before G4 ruined the network.

[corco]

boot? shut down?  I tend to do neither.  if for some reason my computer shuts down, it does so in milliseconds... but with the UPS behind it, it has no reason to do any such thing.

Is your computer slow much? Computers like to be restarted every couple days at least.

[agentsteel53]

Is your computer slow much? Computers like to be restarted every couple days at least.

I tend to kill the individual apps when they get slow.  Firefox, Photoshop, Inkscape all start coming to a crawl in a few days, so I just kill those one at a time as needed.

[Scott5114]

Is your computer slow much? Computers like to be restarted every couple days at least.

scott@bolivar:~$ uptime
00:00:16 up 9 days, 14:50,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.04

Correction: Windows likes to be restarted every couple of days. Linux considers it an annoyance. Really the only need a Linux-running computer has to be shutdown is if you're performing a hardware or kernel upgrade. I've gotten uptimes of 30 days several times, and I believe the world record is somewhere around two years. Most issues can be fixed without a reboot by killing whatever process, or, at worst, logging out and back in again.

[agentsteel53]

heh I've had Windows XP up for about 6 months now.  The last time I powered on the computer was when I moved to my current residence.  

two years sounds awfully low for a Linux world record.  I'm sure there's some box that's been up for more than that.  Surely someone's still running a 2.4.5 kernel somewhere.

I know at least one of our boxes at work has been up since it got moved to the new building, which took place in September 2009.

[Scott5114]

Yeah, it's been a while since I read that, so I'm sure someone has had a box up for longer, especially if they're actually trying for the record and don't want to trifle with stuff like kernel upgrades.

[mightyace]

Correction: Windows likes to be restarted every couple of days. Linux considers it an annoyance. Really the only need a Linux-running computer has to be shutdown is if you're performing a hardware or kernel upgrade. I've gotten uptimes of 30 days several times, and I believe the world record is somewhere around two years. Most issues can be fixed without a reboot by killing whatever process, or, at worst, logging out and back in again.

But, not required, my workstation at the office had been up continuously for 3 months when I shut it down for us to move offices.  It is running Windows Server 2003.

[J N Winkler]

I have had Windows sessions running for multiple weeks on a number of occasions, but as a general rule I like to restart Windows on a more or less weekly basis.  I have turned off automatic updating because it has a tendency to disrupt processes that I leave running overnight with the screen off, but I try to stay current with updates otherwise.  Plus I try not to have Windows running for long periods of time when a background maintenance service has crashed and I cannot restart it (the Diskeeper service is the worst culprit in this regard).

[KEK Inc.]

I'm still using the same rainmeter theme.  It's been updated several times since I started this thread.  Still looked like the Windows 8 preview that was released a month ago.

[Bryant5493]

Be well,

Bryant

[route56]

After seeing my family's electric bill (!!!), I've been getting into the habit of shutting down my computer and cutting power at the power strip when the computer is not in use to reduce energy consumption.

[J N Winkler]

After seeing my family's electric bill (!!!), I've been getting into the habit of shutting down my computer and cutting power at the power strip when the computer is not in use to reduce energy consumption.

I think about latency before I do that.  It is all well and good to have the computer shut down altogether when it is not in use for extended periods of time, but:

*  I try not to cycle my laptop screen on and off frequently.  I used to do so but gave up when the screen backlight failed prematurely and I had to send the computer away for about ten days so it could be replaced.  This was a major inconvenience since I use my computer almost every waking hour of every day.  The nominal 50% failure rate for a cold-cathode tube is around 50,000 hours but I don't think I got more than 10,000 out of the tube that failed (computer was purchased October 2006, tube had to be replaced May 2009).  The tube itself costs only $10, but replacing the tube rather than the whole screen unit is a difficult DIY job and it is challenging to find repair shops which will attempt tube replacement.  I paid $160 for installation of the new tube; a new screen unit, including labor, would have been around $400.

*  I have hibernation enabled and have for a long time used it in preference to suspend, because it uses zero power.  However, I now have a Seagate FreeAgent Go portable drive which I use for backup, and for a technical reason which Seagate has so far refused to acknowledge or repair and which did not exist with the earlier generation of FreeAgent drives, the drive becomes invisible to the USB controller after hibernation but not suspend.  Since having the drive suddenly "disappear" is a recipe for master file table corruption, I have had to script my backup routines to put the computer in suspend rather than hibernation.  I would rather use hibernation instead but first I need to fight Seagate technical support and win.

We still have some way to go before technology stops incentivizing power-piggery through the back door.