The Golden Rules Of Windows

Thursday, April 04, 2019

Never Close, Never Minimize

Our eyes are our best tools. We can scan data with our eyes faster than we can scroll with our hands.

For this reason it makes sense to maximize our Windows; I do a lot of work in Windows, yet only once per week am I likely to be using a window that is NOT maximized.

To maximize a window - Alt-Space and then tap the letter "X".

(If you insist on using the mouse, a much slower device, at least double-click in the blue title bar - it's a bigger target than that tiny icon in the top-right corner of your screen)

Back in the Good Old Days of DOS-based personal computers, when a 4.77 MHz 64KB machine was the norm, and a 5MB hard drive was a luxury, it made sense to shut down programs that were not in use.

Indeed, with only 64KB of memory, it was necessary to shut down one program just to make enough space for another program to run.

Along came Windows, and with it more RAM memory, bigger and faster hard drives, faster CPUs and, of course, bloated programs.

Memory speed and capacity, and disk speed and capacity has far outstripped the software bloat, and to make matters better (for once!), Windows is better at juggling tasks. Windows simulates memory on your hard drive; if you have a computer with 2GB of RAM, you will find a 2GB file called PageFile.sys on your hard drive; it is as if you have a 4GB machine.

Windows is very good at determining what programs can be swapped out of your high-speed RAM memory onto disk to make room for another program.

Windows can determine the optimum candidate9s) and deal with them in less than a blink of an eye.

We leave it to the computer, now, to determine the best fit of memory.

So, never close a program.

Ever.

Let's face it, when you shut down your computer, Windows closes the game of Solitaire without you needing to do anything, and if you have an unfinished document, Windows will prompt you to save it.

Otherwise, why do you care?

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