The Daily Ping

The Ping is self-aware.

May 21st, 2004

Desktop Backgrounds

A colleague was complaining about how slow his computer was. Knowing that he had a tiled image as his desktop background, I told him that not having a desktop background can significantly increase performance so that the OS only has to write a single block of color to the screen rather than redrawing a multi-million color image.

However, he was unwilling to remove the picture from his desktop. This got me to thinking about how attached some people are to their desktop wallpaper. Everywhere I look people are using these gigantic 1280×1024 high resolution images as their backdrop. They generally decrease usability since they’re just photographs and work to obscure desktop icons, in addition to the noticable performance decrease. And really, wouldn’t a picture in a frame next to your monitor be more satisfying?

I’ll occasionally come across a picture that I’ll use as my desktop background for a week or two, but I always use a small version of it (400×600 on a 1280×1024 desktop) and I never tile it. But generally, I’m sporting a solid background color and enjoying the fact it doesn’t take my computer 30 seconds to minimize windows.

What about you?

Posted in Technology

Divya October 9, 2007, 8:19 am

when i set a background on my desktop,its not clearly and icon symbols are on the desktop should not in normal view .how can i solve

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