Desktop Appearance

[Guest]

[roger]

A black desktop enhances icon appearance when using the OQO in stand alone mode.


Set this up using

Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Personalization
Windows Color and Appearance
 Appearance Settings
  Color Scheme: Windows Vista  Basic
Advanced
 Advanced Appearance
  Item: Desktop
  Color 1: Black
 

[Bungee]

Roger, I'd like to know to turn off the desktop background in Vista (so that the desktop colour shows)? For what I think you're trying to achieve, I'd change the desktop background from the default Vista wallpaper to black under 'Solid Colors'.

[roger]

Roger, I'd like to know to turn off the desktop background in Vista (so that the desktop colour shows)? For what I think you're trying to achieve, I'd change the desktop background from the default Vista wallpaper to black under 'Solid Colors'.

Just follow my instructions to get black my way.

Your way also achieves the same result.

For a long time I used 'Van Gough's Irises' as wallpaper but it seems to be no longer available.

I have a 2 line Task Bar with 20 shortcuts.

My desktop has 38 icons.

[kyone]

Roger you should become more familiar with the windows start menu system.  Your setup is from the windows 3.11 days.  The desktop should be like your work desk.. only the absolute essentials on the desk while the other stuff stays neatly tucked away in your draws.  Keeps things more clean and manageable.

You may have a very messy desk where your computer sits haha

[roger]

Roger you should become more familiar with the windows start menu system.  Your setup is from the windows 3.11 days.  The desktop should be like your work desk.. only the absolute essentials on the desk while the other stuff stays neatly tucked away in your draws.  Keeps things more clean and manageable.

You may have a very messy desk where your computer sits haha

The whole idea of PCs was to allow users to suit themselves how they chose to operate! 

[Dave P]

Roger you should become more familiar with the windows start menu system.  Your setup is from the windows 3.11 days.  The desktop should be like your work desk.. only the absolute essentials on the desk while the other stuff stays neatly tucked away in your draws.  Keeps things more clean and manageable.

You may have a very messy desk where your computer sits haha

The whole idea of PCs was to allow users to suit themselves how they chose to operate! 

While I will defend to the death system crash your right to do it your way, removing icons and using the start menu does have a small benefit in terms of system performance.

I have a solid gray background and use the high contrast white color scheme which I find is easier to use in bright light.

[stuartguthrie]

While I will defend to the death system crash your right to do it your way, removing icons and using the start menu does have a small benefit in terms of system performance.

Really? Is this the case if you only have shortcuts not big files on it? I'll have to admit that I'm a bit like Rog and have my desktop crowded with frequently used programs and shortcuts to documents, folders and websites. 

Stu

[charlieboy]

Plain coloured desktop and as few items on the desktop as pos is the way to go. I tend to save things to desktop first and then file them appropriately later. This makes a difference on low powered machines like the OQO. If you use a 10mb image as your desktop that use 1.5% of your memory just for that, this has a performance hit of 5% or more. It might not sound much but there are other things that the 5% can be better used for.

OQO can do everthing I need it to do, but it cannot do everything I might want it to do. For example i have a great 3d fractal image on my Media centre PC with 3gb memory and a dual core processor displayed on a 46" monitor. On my 8 core macpro with 16gb memory on a 30" monitor similar sort of thing as it is pratically impossible to run out of power on these machines . But have no interest in doing this on an OQO.

[Stuart]

Even assuming a 32 bit per pixel image, the OQO display is only 1.5MB.  A performance hit from the memory usage will only happen after you run out of memory.  Until then there would only be a performance hit if the desktop needs to be redrawn.  If ypu are are using a full screen app, the hit is zero.  The performance hit from a link on the desktop is next to nothing.  The desktop is a large icon list control.  The same lightweight control used in most apps.  The performance hit for a task bar link and a desktop link is virtually the same.

There are many other things that are many times more significant.  It's been years since the desktop image made a significant impact.

[roger]

While I will defend to the death system crash your right to do it your way, removing icons and using the start menu does have a small benefit in terms of system performance.

Prior to departing Australia, I removed icons and programs aplenty to such an extent I experienced a Windows stop error.

Rather than trying to sort this out, I adopted the quick and dirty solution of restoring a month old image and reloading programs I wanted. This and Nokia N series software from a relatively late N82 purchase left my desktop as you see it.

I had been experimenting with various backup strategies and had loaded Symantec Norton Ghost 14. It would not run as advertised and was a nightmare to uninstall. I blame my problems on it as I have always found Semantec products unsatisfactory. Clever advertising regrettably persuaded me to give them another chance.

I do agree that my start-up and desktop set-up is a mess but getting around to tidying it up is low on my list of priorities.

In my old age I have the philosophy that 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

[stuartguthrie]

Thanks Charlieboy and Stuart for clearing that up for me.

Stu

[charlieboy]

Stuart

I am not an expert on how memory re desktop images, but i was under the impression the whole image was held in memory from when you first boot the machine till you log off. Not just read from HDD when the desktop is drawn. Certainly if you hit the windows and M keys together to go to desktop there is no noticeable delay, ie not coming from the HDD. However if you open up a few large apps and edit some big graphics files and try again you will see the delay, this  I had guessed was caused by bringing the desktop image from the pagefile on the hdd. But if use a plain background this does not tend to happen.

I am not saying that the desktop image is a real speed killer but it has not useful pupropse in computing terms so I just ditch it along with desktop clutter. But I would be interested in a more scientific description of how it works if anyone has it.

[Stuart]

Charlie, the desktop image is held in memory, but the largest amount of memory you need for the OQO display is 1.5MB.  It doesn't matter if the source image file is 10MB, you only need to hold enough in memory for the resolution of the device.

[Dave P]

While I would agree that the memory requirement is insignificant, the processor requirement is where you see a performance hit. You are constantly recalculating what is displayed as the display changes. This is why Aero is so bad for performance. It is also the idea behind solid color desktops, 16 bit versus 32 bit color, and other graphics simplifications.

If you always work in full screen windows, as I do, this is not a problem. But I find that the start menu is more easily accessible for me and less obtrusive than showing the desktop.

To each his own (as long as it doesn't involve clamshells).

[Stuart]

There's a big difference between aero and the desktop background.  Drawing translucent windows with rounded corners is much more intensive than a solid image.

If aero is 100 and a solid background is 0, a desktop image would be 5.

Even if your not using apps in fullscreen, the painting of the background only occurs when you move or size a window.  While you're working in an app window, the desktop displayed outside the app isn't redrawn.

Under typical use, you get a better performance improvement if you turned off menu effects and smooth scrolling.