How do you multitask?

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• OzzFan - Sunday, April 3, 2005 - link

  My typical usage:
  
  SysTray:
  CachemanXP (mainly used for free RAM display)
  SoundMAX control software
  RealVNC server and listening software
  BOINC (Seti@home)
  Norton Ghost (for auto archiving to my file server)
  WeatherBug
  MusicMatch Jukebox
  WordWeb dictionary
  AIM
  Norton AntiVirus
  AnyDVD
  CloneCD systray
  Ad-Watch monitoring software
  
  
  Software running:
  A few instances of Calc
  FireFox with anywere from 1 to 9 tabs running
  Excel
  Outlook Express (currently demo-ing IncrediMail)
  Internet Explorer (for pages that don't render in FF)
  Notepad (I like to write my basic HTML by hand)
  Command Prompt
  Nero Burning ROM (or cloneCD)
  Nero Vision Express (or CloneDVD2)
  AIM software
  Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 (for viewing program documentations online)
  (Sometimes I might be running) Ad-Aware scan
  Windows Media Player * or MM Jukebox * or Nero Showtime
  (Sometimes I might be running) Norton Anti-Virus scan
  A few Windows Explorer windows open for file copying (either over network or to USB pen drive)
  WinRAR or XP's ZIPping function

• Excrazymac - Sunday, April 3, 2005 - link

  I've run 3dsmax while listening to Winamp and chatting on AIM.
  
  Other multitasks include converting 20-30 minute video files from one codec (DivX) to another (usually Cinepak) so it plays nice in some of my DVD editing programs.
  
  I've tried to multitask with Virus Scanning, but it never works. Games run choppy once it starts, it'd be interesting to see if Dual Core can fix that or if HD access time is more of the bottleneck.
  
  My Two cents.

• PandaBear - Saturday, April 2, 2005 - link

  Also, forgot to mention that most of the "multi-tasking" people talk about here aren't really that hard core, since most of those task are running in idle most of the time. In that case if lower latency (quicker response) is required, you can always manually change priority in task manager for the process and reduce the time slice for your OS.

• PandaBear - Saturday, April 2, 2005 - link

  The compiler I use at work is quad threaded, so hyper-thread and dual core definitely help. My experience is that hyper-thread on a 2.8GHz P4 improve speed by about 8%.
  
  Other than that I run the debugger and a test tool (both poorly written via infinite loop) and manually set one to lower priority than the other, so my response will not be too slow.
  
  At home I usually burn DVD or defrag in addition to browse web or bit torrent. I think single core is fine for me in this case.

• rookwood - Saturday, April 2, 2005 - link

  Looking for a new notebook to replace my Dell Inspiron 8500. Probably BOXX or Hypersonic (Clevo D900T unit). P4 660 EM64 & HT; 4GB DDR11 RAM; Dual 60GB 7,200 RPM HDD; NVIDIA Quadro FX Go1400 256MB Graphics & Dual DVD burners. Running Revit, ADT and Photoshop requires OpenGL and P4.
  
  Stardock
  Outlook
  Autodesk ADT (2D cad)
  Autodesk Revit (3D cad & rendering)
  Adobe Illustrator
  Abobe Photoshop
  Excel

• brownba - Saturday, April 2, 2005 - link

  #41 is right on.
  
  i'm laughing at most of these comments -
  i don't believe anyone who says their typical computing experience involves burning dvd's, encoding divx, compiling code, bt with 4 torrents, photoshop'ing... all at the same time - that's just either retarded or a gross exaggeration.
  
  that being said - i usually have firefox, thunderbird, winamp, mcafee, zonealarm, acrobat, ssh secure shell, vs .net... all open, but the only time i'm truly multitasking is when i might be coding on a project while another project is still churning

• Brian23 - Saturday, April 2, 2005 - link

  I ALWAYS have the following programs open:
  
  Outlook express
  FireFox (30+ tabs)
  Windows Explorer
  Winamp
  
  In adition, I usually have at least 2 or 3 of the following open.
  
  Microsoft Visual Studio (C++)
  Adobe Acrobat
  Word
  Excel
  Orcad Pspice
  LabView
  
  Of course I also run other software. It would not be uncommon for me to have a lot of the above software open and then play a 3D game (HL2, Doom3, UT2004) on top of it.
  
  I generally have 400 to 900MB of memory used at once.

• Poser - Saturday, April 2, 2005 - link

  I don't multitask, and neither does >90% of everyone else who uses a computer.
  
  I do frequently task-switch, where I'll go from email, to web, to excel, to photoshop, but I'm not doing multiple things *at the same time*. The only time I ever end up really multi-tasking is when I start something that the computer will take a long time to do and (importantly) doesn't require my intervention for the next minute or so. Those cases are pretty damn rare, and are (for me & 90% of others) things which are hard disk, or CD/DVD speed limited. The number of times when I've waited for more than a minute for the *CPU* to do something can be counted on one hand -- one no-fingered fist if you don't include the times when I ran out of RAM and started thrashing the hard drive.
  
  If I was running voice to text transcription software while listening to a lecture and simultaneously recording video and taking notes in Word or Powerpoint -- that'd be a good test. It's the sort of thing I'd really love to do, along with thousands of college students, but I'm doubtful that the software & hardware are quite there yet.
  
  On a mostly unrelated note I think Voice to Text will be 6 different flavors of wonderful if it ever gets reliable. You can Google your text archives, but you can't your audio ones. And you can skim a page way faster than you can listen it.

• Sahrin - Saturday, April 2, 2005 - link

  My current systray:
  
  Steam
  AOL IM
  Bulletproof FTP Server
  Google Desktop Search
  Folding@HOME
  
  AND
  
  These things in the background while I run the following apps:
  Outlook
  2-6 IE Windows
  ATI TV Player or Windows Media Player 10
  
  OR
  
  I play a game (HL2, Homeworld 2, UT2004, Rome: Total War)
  
  OR
  
  I watch a video in the form of DVD or .avi file on WMP 10.

• jonodsparks - Saturday, April 2, 2005 - link

  My wife (the queen of multi-tasking) has actually caused a year old powerbook with 1 gig of ram to generate a low memory warning.
  
  Typical programs running on the home office:
  
  Mac:
  IE
  Firefox (5-10 tabs)
  Safari (5-10 tabs)
  Pages
  Word
  Excel
  iTunes
  Flash MX
  Dreamweaver MX
  Photoshop (had 130 seperate images open)
  Imageready
  Maya
  Alias Sketchbook
  Acrobat Pro
  Fetch
  Fireworks MX
  Freehand MX
  Corel Painter
  Mail
  5 Finder windows
  (long live Mac's cache)
  
  PC Server:
  DHCP
  DNS
  IIS
  IAS
  Application server
  File & Print Server
  SX Spider (renderfarm utility)
  Word
  Excel
  Maya
  Photoshop
  Imageready
  Acrobat
  bit torrent
  dreamweaver mx
  homesite
  flash mx
  freehand mx
  fireworks mx
  firefox
  IE
  outlook
  itunes
  
  3 PC renderslaves
  
  SX Spider
  Maya renderclient
  bittorrent
  United Devices