Thinking About Desktop Eyecandy

An anonymous reader writes "This article ponders over whether excess eye candy and special effects being incorporated on the desktop is a good trend after all? The author explains why he thinks the users are taken for a ride by the OS companies in compelling them to upgrade their hardware in order to enable these processor intensive and memory hungry special effects."

Removing it is always the first thing

[linuxbaby]

Every time I help a friend set up Windows, it's always the first thing I do:

Control Panels --> System --> Optimize for Best Performance
It turns off ALL the fuzzy, fading, stupid stuff, and surprises them how much better it responds.

Linux/BSD?
IceWM [icewm.org] on top, but with KDE libs underneath, so you can run any KDE or Gnome apps, but don't need all that mem-hogging desktop candy just to run KMail or whatever.

Author doesn't know what he is talking about

[RingDev]

"For example, a person using Windows 2000 will be forced to buy a copy of Vista if he needs the added security and extra features like better search. And to install Vista on his computer, he will most certainly have to embark on a spending spree to upgrade his PC to accomodate the extra special effects that are integrated into the OS."

Apparently, the author failed to notice that Vista has the option of the running classic interface, the XP interface, or the new Aero (ie: processor intencive) interface. So while a 2k user may want to buy a copy of Vista for security concerns, they should not have to upgrade their hardware in order to do so.

-Rick

Re:No thanks.

[jekewa]

I'd look at the in-your-face, under-the-hood, and behind-the-back services before blaming the eye candy. Unless you mean the eye candy as the instant messanger, anti-virus, quicktime and office quickstart programs, and the other notifications you have in your icon notification area. Nearly all of them is tapped into a running program, stealing cycles from your system. Also look at the services started on your behalf, including the built-in (and arguably nearly useless) firewall and other security checkers. Unless you're running the game in a window you're not using the eye candy anyway.

That and you should get the up-to-date drivers for your video card, and verify that the refresh rates in your desktop settings match your expectations.

Running the same game [s2games.com] on the same PC dual-booted to Windows will get 80fps while the same game on LINUX will get 125fps on ye ol' AGP nVidia 6600. Native versions of the game, mind you, not any kind of emulator.

Eye candy has some nice fringe benefits...

[anthropolemic]

I've been testing the next release of the "unnamed proprietary operating system" in question, and I have to say that a great deal of the eye candy goes a long way to making things easier. Getting a live preview of a window if you hover over its taskbar button or flip between windows is a nice feature, as I constantly have a ton of windows open in the same app. Being able to move a window around without spiking the CPU to 60%+ is another subtle but nice benefit. In my testing of this release I've found that the UI is more responsive and smooth when the compositor is active versus when I have it switched off. This is on a 945 chipset's integrated graphics, too - you don't need a GeForce 7800GTXOMGBBQ in order to run the new UI smoothly.

Like Easter...

[dedeman]

It would appear that eye candy is a necessity, but only with the idea that there are different levels of eye candy, that the eye candy can easily be made to go away/less sweetening, and that it will work well with an average hardware base.

That last idea would be the difficult to figure out. However, how much is decided by the user when they see screenshots, what is the coolness factor when icons appear to be crystal/brushed aluminum/iridecent blue/etc? How great is it when windows will shuffle like pages in a book, or are transparent?

No matter how pragmatic the average /.er might be, there is something to be said about design and usability. How else would you explain the popularity of the iPod? Otherwise we'd all be driving one of these [about.com] around.

Of course my latest and greatest hardware is circa 2001, I don't know what people consider hardware hogs to be. I can still run BF2 on my PIII 1.4.

Re:Don't underestimate the value of feedback

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the spinning beachball is when the app isn't responding. If it actually crashes you get a dialog box telling you so. And an animated curser is eating up all your CPU cycles? Well, that's what you get for running OS X on an ENIAC.

Re:Don't underestimate the value of feedback

[Anonymous Coward]

"personally I just wish they'd spend that amount of care with finder - when you close an OSX app it doesn't close.. you have to right click on the taskbar and select 'close'"

Actually this is a fundamental difference between OSX and other OS's. In OSX (and all Mac OS's) you "Quit" a program, you never 'close' the window/application. Where is the task bar and right click in OSX?? To quit an application, go to the menu that has the title of that application (left of the 'file' menu) and select 'quit'. The keyboard shortcuts are different (cmd-w closes a window; cmd-q quits the application). Different OS's work differently, not everything is windows. If something is difficult, perhaps that's not the intended way of doing it?

Re:Don't underestimate the value of feedback

[ingoldsby]

Erm, just hit command tab to leave safari and you can force quit just fine.

Ratpoison

[sleepingsquirrel]

Ratpoison [nongnu.org].

Re:Don't underestimate the value of feedback

[foniksonik]

New kill mantra.... apple+option+esc

come on, everyone's doing it... it's like the ctrl+alt+delete your parents used to do