A Little Computer Pet Peeve [56k no]

Ok, just decided to make a little post, see what you guys think or have to say about the issue.

Here is the deal, as we all know, we all are
computer nerds (face it guys, we are geeks). Now, I'm sure we all know
at least some bassics about computers and know about how they work and
such. Like, that RAM is Random access Memory and what it does, and what
a processor does. Ok, we all know that yada yada yada. So, I noticed
that when I go to a friends house, they are running default programs,
such as Windows Media Player or IE.

Now, when using their computers (usually a Dell,
running on 256mb RAM, Pentium 4, and at 800x600 resolution ((i really
hate 800x600, I always make it highest possible))) I notice how slow
everything is. I know that partially it is due to the system being not
to good. But, I was wondering what else could be slowing them down.

So I set out to see what is slowing them down and how programs like Firefox or WinAMP can be benifitial.

The Results:

Windows Media Player - Playing a song (Feuer Frei - Rammstein *5.21mb)

13,936K of RAM (roughly 14 mb)



That's a lot of RAM wasted due to just having a song playing.

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WinAMP - Playing same song (Feuer Frei - Rammstein *5.21mb)

6,028 of RAM (roughly 6mb)



Thats A difference of 8mb! Now
that may not seem a lot to us, but to someone with 256mb of RAM and is
usuing it going on the internet (IE most likely), AIM or MSN, maybe
some folders open, a few programs running in the backround like
Limewire (ew), That 8 couldn't do anything but help.

Now, my IE has a virus because it's IE. And I can't compare it to Firefox. But, I'm sure it has to use much less RAM.

Now aside from RAM, their are just the plain old options and things you can do with the program.

WinAMP and Windows Media Player are very similar. They play media
files. Not much else to say. And, there is already a thread on
browsers. So we can see the advantages.

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Now, the pet peave part of all this.

Just the fact that people aren't doing themselves a favor and using these programs. It's like, not optimizing a map!

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http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/8521/windows981dk.jpg

Nickelplate is my dad

I did a similar experiment with MSN-chatclients. The most notable
difference was between MSN 7.0 en Miranda. (I tweaked miranda to have
the same options (notifications, buddy icons, ...), except for voice
transfer, but that wasn't used in the test)



I've got some hints and tricks:

• Use alternatives for some
  software: Browser (Firefox, Opera), Media Player (Foobar2000 - which is
  my favorite very customizable, take a look at this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v320/Forceflow/foobar.jpg
  or Winamp), Bsplayer to play video files, Openoffice instead of Ms
  office, ...</li>
• Disable unnecessary services.
  The Blackviper site had an excellent description of all the Windows XP
  SP2 services and their functions and recommended settings, but that
  site seems to be down. Just google for "xp services black viper" and
  you will find a mirror for it. Saves me up to 30 megs of precious Ram.</li>
• Disable visual effects.
  Do you really need mouse shadow, smooth menu sliding or other stuff
  that doesn't matter ? Right-click on my computer, choose properties,
  and edit the settings.</li>
• Defragment, defragment and defragment.
  This sure is important, and it doesn't take too long either on NTFS
  systems. (on Fat32, a long-time-not-defragmented disk can take a while)</li>
• Disable unnecessary startup programs.
  You don't need all those "helper" things in your system tray. I hate it
  when I see some computers with their systray stacked with useless
  icons. Honestly, who ever used the winzip quickstart icon ? The adobe
  acrobat quickstart icon ? That's just a shallow way of those developers
  to pre-load the program in order to reduce start-up time of the
  program.
  
  </li>
• And all those helper things
  that startup too ... you don't need them at all, really. If you want to
  change a setting for a soundcard or anything like that, you can go to
  the configuration screen any time you want. Save that RAM, and disable
  the services.</li>
• Wipe temporary files. As
  in the name "temporary", you don't need them at all. And it's not just
  disk space you're gaining. Clearing IE's cache can fix some display
  problems that occur when it's full. There are dozens of programs out
  there to do this. My personal favorite: www.ccleaner.com</li>

I love to have my system as clean as it can be.

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:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer

Here is the deal, as we all know, we all are
computer nerds (face it guys, we are geeks).

The term nerd and geeks has been redefined over the past decade.
Surprisingly I don't think we are geeks or nerds. When I think of geeks
and nerds I think of the bad hygene and piply face - people who don't
take care of themselves. Generaly geeks and nerds are not inteligent,
and have no or little skill at anything (maybe they know about what
alt-F4 does, but thats NOTHING). And generally have no social
interaction outside of the internet world.

I think the definition of geeks and nerds has changed, now they are
those who use the terms: "ey pwn n00bs" "eym teh l33t winzor
& u r a n00b luzur". And have no techincal/gamming skill at all.

I'm sorry for pointing this out, but I don't believe that because we
are computer savy, doesn't make us nerds or geeks, because I know alot
of us do take care of ourselves, have a social life outside of the
snarkpit/computer room, and we are actually good at video games. Now if
you wanted to call us gamers/game developers, thats fine. We here make
3d enviroments, and show off our artistic tallent (something nerds and
geeks don't have). So in my humble opinion, calling us nerds at the the
snarkpit is an insult.

Anyways back to topic:

I wouldn't blame your friend for running these programs. Its not their
fault that they aren't computer savy like you Mr. High and Mighty. =P

/my 2 cents

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Posting And You

lol, but they do know about these programs, I shove it down their
throats 24/7 and they refuse to change it. Just because they thin their
Dell is better then anything ever made :-P.

Your a nerd in denial Omega :smile: (joking)

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http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/8521/windows981dk.jpg

Nickelplate is my dad

That's my freakin pet peeve right there!

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

I did a similar experiment with MSN-chatclients. The most notable
difference was between MSN 7.0 en Miranda. (I tweaked miranda to have
the same options (notifications, buddy icons, ...), except for voice
transfer, but that wasn't used in the test)

Makes me wanna try Miranda.

---

What the Snarkpitters listen to!

I use WMP not for its ram usage but its interface. Just never liked WinAmp.

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

What's slowing that computer down? I'd say the fact that it's using 600mb+ of RAM when it's got 256mb physical. If that screenshot was taken after startup then I would sincerely recommend reinstalling windows cause it would probably be less bother than to remove over 2000 items of spyware.

i had miranda for about 3 months before it stopped logging me on

before then even i had to tell it to log me on like 5 times

of course this only happened when i used my 56k

I use Miranda, I prefer it over MSN because its not bloated. I also use Winamp for the same reason. WMP has a lot more crap than is neccessary to play a song.

It doesnt bother me that people dont use alternatives however, since I rarely use other peoples computers (apart from uni computers, but I dont do much on them).

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Firefox uses 72 megs on my computer (why?!) and iTunes uses 40. I
thought it would use more since its so damn sluggish on my computer.

You do realize using memory isn't what "slows" anything down ... right?

Of course it may cause the page file to be accessed for something else (which Windows commonly does anyway for reasons that are not always sound)

In your example, WMP10 and such uses a lot of memory ... it's nothing but images! BMPs at that. Each one needs to be loaded into memory, same with the song. WinAmp has a smaller graphical interface, so it uses less memory. Pretty simple. (That's why if you want to use WMP you use classic)

Most of those processes running are ... questionable. In other words they look like adware.

Look them up online and see about removing them. This will relieve congestion on the system as well.

BUT, there's more. You can specify in Windows what you want to give precedence to. Background applications can split the processor usage equally (which is not the default). It's under system properties.

Also, another BIG clue that you have viruses and adware and all that garbage is if you have over ... 30 (maybe) processes running that you didn't personally start.

That person has 116 ... That's 116 programs loaded into memory ... and asking for processor precedence and you're wondering why it's bogged down?

The specs aren't a great indicator. For example, I can do things fairly quickly on my laptop, which I'm right now. Which is running XP ... it's only 233Mhz with 163MB ram.

Proof if there ever was any.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

How many processes do you have running?

27 processes. But I have a lot of things running. Look at Nickle, he's got 18.

It includes, AIM, Mozilla, AntiVirus, Acrobat, Wireless utilities. Open Office ... some other stuff for printers and crap. The most memory is being used by Mozilla and Acrobat Reader (I f**king hate this program so much)

My page file right now is 222MB and my processor usage is around 12%

Physical memory usage: 35MB free.

And again this is on my laptop: XP pro, 233Mhz P2, 163 MB something slow speed RAM. I only have 4GB HDD total too.

Anyway, as you can see, it's nothing blazing. It's a ten year old machine and it's running better than most people's computers ... unless you want to play a game. (Lags with HL1 in software mode lowest settings. Terrible video chipset)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I was at 43 processes and I got worried that I had spyware or something
(even though I'm pretty smart about being careful). I took your
advice and googled all the process names and I was relieved to find
that there was nothing fishy running.

Yeah. A lot of times you'll have stuff running in the background that's stuff you installed. Point is: you probably don't need them running. Like, mozilla for example, as great as the "quick load" feature is, you don't really need it. Use it enough and it'll load pretty fast.

But things like realsched, itunes, um .. you have to look out for acrobat a lot of times, since it NEVER closes unless you kill the process. I think it may if you open it specifically in reader, but if you're doing it through a browser it doesn't close ... at least it never does for me (on any system I use). It's very annoying.

There's just a lot of things you don't need running. Like your system at idle, non-use stage, shouldn't have 40 something processes running. What could you honestly need running all the time? Just kill it and it'll open when you need it. What's the use of using up memory, right?

But, it's really when you get above 50 or so that you gotta get a little suspicious. I said 30, because, I also said, "If you didn't run them" that includes from personally installing something (realplayer).

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Any idea why I have six svchost.exe's running? What does that mean? Is it normal?

I don't know. I have about four running at all times or more. I know it gets exploited sometimes though.

Actually, there are viruses with the same name as all the standard windows applications floating around out there. They're dummies or fakes.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I have 1 gig of memory so I have no slowdowns whatsoever on normal work. Sometimes me Win just likes to crash

But nothing fatal.

And if you look at the amount of processes in there... I so wonder how
the hell he can live with such thing! I bet he has viruses, infections,
torjans, spyware and adware. VISTA for short.

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HL2 tutorials 'n' stuff: http://madedog.pri.ee
217.159.236.34:27050 - CSS Server - Clean | koffer.ee

73 processes for me, of which I'm pretty sure none are spyware. I think I'd better spend a while optimising...

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My site

Any idea why I have six svchost.exe's running? What does that mean? Is it normal?

Yeh, that's completely normal. All the windows services run in the
"Service Host", but they are grouped together by function (network
services, printer services, disk services ...). So you've got multiple
svchosts.exe's running.

As I said, you can reduce the amount of svchosts.exe's (or at least the memory they take) by disabling unnecessary services.

http://web.archive.org/web/20041128084144/http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

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:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting wil5on</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>WMP has a lot more crap than is neccessary to play a song.

</DIV></DIV>
i agree to that. the only thing non-musical that i like is visualisation, so i have a modern winamp skin with high time-responsive visualisation, which is why it uses much ram. So it also depends on preferences whether alternatives are better suited or not.

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These words are my diaries screaming out loud

Crono, I have 116 processes running because there are 5 people who use the computer, all who wich don't log off (just switch user) and leaver their things (like AIM, firefox, or random programs) running. And I already know that slows me down. Duh. I'm just saying, looks at the difference between WMP and WinAMP.

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http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/8521/windows981dk.jpg

Nickelplate is my dad