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Does Desktop Clutter Reduce System resources

C

Caveman

Platinum Member
Does a clean desktop free up any RAM resources... Do multiple icons for program start and/or word/excel files on the desktop slow performance at all?

How about if all programs start icons are stored on the taskbar, instead of the desktop? Any performance advantage there?

In a nutshell, do desktop items eat into the system RAM?
 
If the icons on the desktop are shortcuts, I don't think it matters how many there are. If they are actual files or executables, then yes, they will slow down desktop loading. (Not sure why, I've just seen it empirically).

I don't know if it makes a difference to have icons in the short-cut bar vs the desktop. I suspect that it won't make much difference at all.

I remove most of mine, because they clutter the desktop, making it harder for me to find the ones I want. YMMV.
 
I suspected as much... Yes, it would seem that shortcut icons only steak 2-3k each but a 10 MB spreadsheet (not a shortcut to a spreadsheet) sitting on the desktop would hog RAM...
 
Originally posted by: Caveman
I suspected as much... Yes, it would seem that shortcut icons only steak 2-3k each but a 10 MB spreadsheet (not a shortcut to a spreadsheet) sitting on the desktop would hog RAM...
Click to expand...

Why would it "hog RAM"? The desktop is just a folder, except its contents are being displayed on the screen all the time.

Files on the desktop only eat up RAM (besides a tiny, tiny amount to store their attributes/size information/icons) if they are open, just like any other files.
 
I think maybe the icon files themselves are in memory, and the names of the files, and therefore the more icons on the Desktop, the more memory that will be used. I don't want to talk about performance though, because if that's the case, the amount of memory used by this would be so small as to not really have much of an effect on anything. That's just a guess though.
 
Originally posted by: Matthias99
Why would it "hog RAM"? The desktop is just a folder, except its contents are being displayed on the screen all the time.

Files on the desktop only eat up RAM (besides a tiny, tiny amount to store their attributes/size information/icons) if they are open, just like any other files.
Click to expand...

As I mentioned earlier...I've found that if I have a number of FILES on my desktop, as opposed to shortcuts to them, my initial desktop load time is slower. I didn't bother looking at CPU%, memory usage, ongoing slowness, just that initial desktop load time is slower.

 
Originally posted by: Woodie
Originally posted by: Matthias99
Why would it "hog RAM"? The desktop is just a folder, except its contents are being displayed on the screen all the time.

Files on the desktop only eat up RAM (besides a tiny, tiny amount to store their attributes/size information/icons) if they are open, just like any other files.
Click to expand...

As I mentioned earlier...I've found that if I have a number of FILES on my desktop, as opposed to shortcuts to them, my initial desktop load time is slower. I didn't bother looking at CPU%, memory usage, ongoing slowness, just that initial desktop load time is slower.
Click to expand...

Not surprising, since it has to read the icons and metadata for each of those files from the disk while booting up. But your RAM usage shouldn't change much, unless you have thousands and thousands of files on your desktop.

 
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