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ChrisGreaves.com - WinTips
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Never Close, Never Minimize
In a previous lesson we learned how to use the Alt-Tab sequence to move between several programs.
In this lesson I want to explore one of the Golden Rules of Windows: "Never Close, Never Minimize".
In real life we don't close and minimize; our wooden or steel desktop is cluttered with coffee mugs, papers, books, diaries, phones and calendars, photos - the whole range of known human artifacts.
Why should the computer be any different?
For this reason I suggest "Never Close".
Furthermore, our eyes are our most powerful data-gathering tool, and we can read information from the screen much faster than we can move our finger, hand and arm muscles.
For this reason I suggest "Never Minimize".
I'll deal with the arguments at the foot of this argument, but for now, let's practice our program-switching techniques (Alt-Tab) while learning a fast way to maximize any Window.
Alt-Space-X
Whatever program is open on your screen, hold down the Alt key, tap the Space bar, and observe that a small menu opens in the top-left-corner of the window. After releasing the Alt key, tap the letter "X", without quotes. Your window will be maximized.
Alt-tab to the next program. Alt-Space and observe in the little menu that within the word "Maximize" "x" is underlined. Now you know why Alt-space and the letter "x" has the effect of maximizing your windows.
Continue to visit each program maximizing each window as you go.
Note too that using Alt-space-x to maximize a window that is already maximized has no deleterious effects.
I will concede that Solitaire, when maximized, is a tad awkward to use, but the essential message is this: For any revenue-generating activity (email, web browsing, word-processing, spreadsheet analysis and inspection) a maximized window gives your eyes and brain the maximum amount of data to process.
Sure you still need to scroll down, one screen at a time, but you'll be using your (slow as molasses) hands less than you used to. Your eyes will get the most "bang" for the "buck".
Arguments Against
Am aware of those who maintain that leaving programs open consumes resources. Sadly no-one has ever been able to provide me with factual data to support this contention.
Here is My Take:
Back in the days of DOS we had to close one program before we could open another program. Even with a so-called multi-tasking DOS, we were still constrained by memory considerations (my first microcomputer has 4K of memory) and my first hard drive was a miserably slow 3600rpm 20MB hard drive).
You can't buy a laptop with less than 2GB of RAM (five hundred THOUSAND times the size of my first computer) and a 7200rmp (twice the rotational speed) one-inch (one fifth the diameter of my original drive) with less than 130GB (six thousand five hundred times the capacity).
And Windows, for all its faults, is pretty good at working out what is required in memory and what can be temporarily "swapped out" to a paging file on disk.
When I am processing 400 Word documents all at once, the first pass takes about ten seconds; thereafter each pass takes about one second. Why? Because the image of each document is retained in RAM memory and Windows has no need to re-read the document from disk.
Windows can make better sense of what needs to be removed from memory and what does not.
Besides which, what takes more time - Windows doing a quick swap-out, swap-in, or You saving your document, closing your document, closing your application, re-opening the other application, and opening the spreadsheet by navigating the folder tree?
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Another reason for "Never Close": I have just taken a call from a colleague; he typed up the text in Microsoft Word, copied it to the clipboard, closed the Word document (without saving!), went to paste into the email - nothing there!
Text lost.
All of it.
Now, MS Word isn't the smartest of programs, but at the very least, had MS Word not been closed, my colleague could have returned to Word (Alt-Tab) and essayed a second time with the copy.
Or better yet, saved the document before proceeding.
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Toronto and Mississauga, Thursday, April 21, 2011 5:49 AM
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