Author Topic: What's living in your taskbar notification area right now? (Read 50400 times)

lanux128 · « **Reply #25 on:** July 27, 2015, 03:08 AM »

120MB on my desktop (idle)
-tomos (July 26, 2015, 11:27 PM)

same here, on Win7 64-bit.

lanux128 · « **Reply #26 on:** July 27, 2015, 03:10 AM »

perhaps this is the reason.

Dropbox may seem like it doesn't need a lot of RAM to operate. The truth is: there's a lot of complexity under the hood!

For instance, Dropbox has to keep track of a lot of information about your files in order to make sure it can sync files quickly and efficiently. The more files you have in your Dropbox folder, the more memory Dropbox will need to keep track of them. That said, we are constantly working on making Dropbox more memory efficient and we continue to have significant improvements with each major release.

For our advanced users

Want more details? Dropbox stores metadata on your files in RAM to prevent constant and expensive database lookups while syncing. The metadata includes paths to files in your Dropbox, checksums, modification times, etc. We are working hard on making this information more compact and are working on several fronts to improve memory usage. Our techniques are not limited to rewriting pieces of our source code and writing custom memory allocators.

Source: Why is Dropbox using so much RAM? - https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/144

eleman · « **Reply #27 on:** July 27, 2015, 03:28 AM »

perhaps this is the reason.

Dropbox may seem like it doesn't need a lot of RAM to operate. The truth is: there's a lot of complexity under the hood!

For instance, Dropbox has to keep track of a lot of information about your files in order to make sure it can sync files quickly and efficiently. The more files you have in your Dropbox folder, the more memory Dropbox will need to keep track of them. That said, we are constantly working on making Dropbox more memory efficient and we continue to have significant improvements with each major release.

For our advanced users

Want more details? Dropbox stores metadata on your files in RAM to prevent constant and expensive database lookups while syncing. The metadata includes paths to files in your Dropbox, checksums, modification times, etc. We are working hard on making this information more compact and are working on several fronts to improve memory usage. Our techniques are not limited to rewriting pieces of our source code and writing custom memory allocators.

Source: Why is Dropbox using so much RAM? - https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/144
-lanux128 (July 27, 2015, 03:10 AM)

Translation from corporatespeak to plain English: We can't be bothered to write optimized code for each and every OS. Instead we chose to waste your ram on generic libraries which are built to work on multiple operating systems, rather than for efficiency.

Shades · « **Reply #28 on:** July 27, 2015, 08:56 AM »

Although I agree with eleman here, whenever an application requires to a (full-fledged) database to operate, it is a serious consideration to store the results of queries etc. into RAM. Using more RAM for the application means it will be much more responsive, because retrieving and storing in a database is "expensive". Not only time-wise (responsiveness), but you also introduce an extra factor for reliability, especially when you need to access databases off-site.

Nowadays computers have quite a lot of RAM onboard and usually decent connections to (off-site) databases. However, you cannot trust to have a decent connection 100% of the time, while the RAM is a much more stable resource. For a good (newbie) user-experience, the trend is to use the most stable resources at hand.

Deozaan · « **Reply #29 on:** July 28, 2015, 03:38 AM »

While we've kind of digressed into application memory usage, can I ask what those using the Dropbox client show it's memory usage as?
-4wd (July 26, 2015, 09:30 PM)

15,300K while idling on my PC (Win7 x64).

cshnik · « **Reply #30 on:** July 29, 2015, 05:11 AM »

I'm not a software geek

so my system tray icon's set looks like:

Intel Rapid Storage Technology
NVidia Settings
Nokia PC Suite
f.lux
TaskLayout
Miranda

PS TaskLayout is my own project.

Curt · « **Reply #31 on:** August 02, 2015, 05:06 PM »

I think Win 10 all over is ugly, and the least ugly part is the ugly taskbar notification area!

app103 · « **Reply #32 on:** August 02, 2015, 06:03 PM »

I think Win 10 all over is ugly, and the least ugly part is the ugly taskbar notification area!

(see attachment in previous post)

-Curt (August 02, 2015, 05:06 PM)

If I didn't know any better I'd think you installed Win 1.0 instead of Win 10. What a step backwards in icon design!

MilesAhead · « **Reply #33 on:** August 02, 2015, 06:54 PM »

I think Win 10 all over is ugly, and the least ugly part is the ugly taskbar notification area!

(see attachment in previous post)

-Curt (August 02, 2015, 05:06 PM)

If I didn't know any better I'd think you installed Win 1.0 instead of Win 10. What a step backwards in icon design!
-app103 (August 02, 2015, 06:03 PM)

What is up with that? Are there actually smart phones with b/w screens?

4wd · « **Reply #34 on:** August 02, 2015, 07:13 PM »

Actually prefer the clean, monochrome, easily identifiable icons over multi-coloured, wtf is that blobs.

wraith808 · « **Reply #35 on:** August 02, 2015, 08:08 PM »

Actually prefer the clean, monochrome, easily identifiable icons over multi-coloured, wtf is that blobs.
-4wd (August 02, 2015, 07:13 PM)

agreed.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #36 on:** August 02, 2015, 10:19 PM »

Actually prefer the clean, monochrome, easily identifiable icons over multi-coloured, wtf is that blobs.
-4wd (August 02, 2015, 07:13 PM)

I guess I have few enough blobs that I know what most of them are easily. (List sometime if I get to it!)

Deozaan · « **Reply #37 on:** August 03, 2015, 01:11 AM »

I think Win 10 all over is ugly, and the least ugly part is the ugly taskbar notification area!

(see attachment in previous post)

-Curt (August 02, 2015, 05:06 PM)

I have no idea why yours looks so bad. Mine looks nice and neat, just like it always has:

Ath · « **Reply #38 on:** August 03, 2015, 04:52 AM »

@Curt, is your taskbar on the right (yeah

) side of your screen, instead of at the bottom? That could explain something. Your other taskbaricons then are hidden behind the > icon.

Deozaan · « **Reply #39 on:** August 04, 2015, 06:15 PM »

@Curt, is your taskbar on the right (yeah ) side of your screen, instead of at the bottom? That could explain something. Your other taskbaricons then are hidden behind the > icon.
-Ath (August 03, 2015, 04:52 AM)

I think it's on the left side of the screen. Hence the extra space on the right, and the > which would expand into the open space on the right.

Deozaan · « **Reply #40 on:** August 08, 2015, 10:00 PM »

Join.me (can't figure out how to disable launch on startup)
-Deozaan (July 22, 2015, 09:15 PM)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run -> join.me.launcher

Of course, whenever you use it, it adds it back
-wraith808 (July 23, 2015, 10:12 AM)

Windows 10 Task Manager has a new Startup tab where you can see and enable/disable your startup items. Nice!

Disable Join.me Startup.png

4wd · « **Reply #41 on:** August 09, 2015, 12:55 AM »

Windows 10 Task Manager has a new Startup tab where you can see and enable/disable your startup items. Nice!
-Deozaan (August 08, 2015, 10:00 PM)

That appeared in Windows 8.

There's also the Last BIOS time indicator, (in Win8 anyway), which displays how long it took from pushing the power button to displaying the Windows loading screen, (for those interested in that kind of thing):

2015-08-09 16_26_17.png

SuperUser Q&A about it.

Curt · « **Reply #42 on:** August 09, 2015, 03:30 AM »

Sorry it has taken me so long to reply. I didn't quite know how to answer your various comments and questions to my ugly taskbar / notification area, because right after posting "Reply #31", I installed Stardock Start10, but in my setup it really looks the same as Win 10 (but without the errors), so only a few would ever notice the difference... But it's still not pretty (here on top of a black wallpaper):

With Start10:

At the moment my clipboard is Clipdiary from Softvoile.

Deozaan · « **Reply #43 on:** August 09, 2015, 10:52 PM »

Windows 10 Task Manager has a new Startup tab where you can see and enable/disable your startup items. Nice!
-Deozaan (August 08, 2015, 10:00 PM)

That appeared in Windows 8.
-4wd (August 09, 2015, 12:55 AM)

Cool. I've never used Windows 8, so I didn't know that.

FYI, I don't see anything about a Last BIOS time in Windows 10, so that may not have survived.

4wd · « **Reply #44 on:** August 09, 2015, 11:31 PM »

FYI, I don't see anything about a Last BIOS time in Windows 10, so that may not have survived.
-Deozaan (August 09, 2015, 10:52 PM)

There's specific system requirements that need to be available before it shows up from what I gather, one of them seems to be a UEFI BIOS.

The only system running W10 atm is my netbook which, like yours, is too old for UEFI, as such it doesn't show the Last BIOS time info.
My main system is still W8.1 but has a UEFI BIOS so that's where the screenshot came from, so as yet I can't precisely tell you if it occurs in W10 or not.

There may be other requirements, eg. someone mentioned GPT formatted HDD, mine are all MBR so that appears to be wrong.

Josh · « **Reply #45 on:** August 09, 2015, 11:50 PM »

mouser · « **Reply #46 on:** August 10, 2015, 01:42 AM »

Screenshot - 8_10_2015 , 1_34_30 AM_ver001.png

Note: some of the apps i'm using i'm just using because i'm too lazy to move to something better, so don't take my choices as my recommendations for best tools.

lanux128 · « **Reply #47 on:** August 10, 2015, 02:46 AM »

(see attachment in previous post)
Note: some of the apps i'm using i'm just using because i'm too lazy to move to something better, so don't take my choices as my recommendations for best tools.
-mouser (August 10, 2015, 01:42 AM)

mouser, how do you do that in SC? I tried expanding the canvas but the text got cut-off.

mouser · « **Reply #48 on:** August 10, 2015, 02:53 AM »

exactly as you said, i used the expand canvas feature.

usually what i do is like this: i expand the canvas a LOT, more than i will need,
then after i add all the text i want, i crop the image to get rid of the extra space.

x16wda · « **Reply #49 on:** August 10, 2015, 05:33 AM »

Sorry it has taken me so long to reply. I didn't quite know how to answer your various comments and questions to my ugly taskbar / notification area, because right after posting "Reply #31", I installed Stardock Start10, but in my setup it really looks the same as Win 10 (but without the errors), so only a few would ever notice the difference... But it's still not pretty (here on top of a black wallpaper):

With Start10:

(see attachment in previous post)

At the moment my clipboard is Clipdiary from Softvoile.
-Curt (August 09, 2015, 03:30 AM)

Curt, this is off topic, but out of curiosity did you use Start8? I have not seen an email about an upgrade from Stardock. Also wondered how you are finding Clipdiary, how long you have been trying it out.