Author Topic: Must-have apps in the System tray? (Read 213,522 times)

Curt · « **Reply #50 on:** April 16, 2007, 05:46 PM »

PS Tray Factory, M8 Free Clipboard, FastStone Capture and Sysinternals Process Explorer
- is all that I 'must-have' visible, except for the Windows Desktop Search 3.01 -bar:

PS Tray Factory will hide the rest until they are needed: "Hide icon when inactive" (= show icon when active). The sudden movement when the bar 'grows' from 4 to 5 icons, are enough to catch the eye. 32 out of 36 icons are not needed all the time, only some time. You can even hide the PS Tray Factory icon!

---

Ooops! Looking at the image suddenly made me realize Skype has failed to open!
Thanks for causing my attention!

urlwolf · « **Reply #51 on:** April 16, 2007, 05:54 PM »

For those of you using Tclock or any other fancy clocks, AND opera, remember that opera widgets are your friends and can save you some memory and tray space

Same for calendars, timers, counters etc. I saved about 40Mb. They are javascript, so very little CPU/memory overhead!

Curt · « **Reply #52 on:** April 16, 2007, 05:57 PM »

Quote from: urlwolf on April 16, 2007, 05:54 PM

... opera widgets are your friends..

Doesn't that take that I keep Opera open?

urlwolf · « **Reply #53 on:** April 16, 2007, 06:58 PM »

yes, but in my case it's always open, and minimized in the tray.
I assume a browser is one of the things most people have open most of the time, right?

Curt · « **Reply #54 on:** April 16, 2007, 07:50 PM »

Quote from: urlwolf on April 16, 2007, 06:58 PM

yes, but in my case it's always open, and minimized in the tray.
I assume a browser is one of the things most people have open most of the time, right?

Yes, you assume this. Its just; I don't know - you open this browser to hide it? Why then open it in the first place? I never understood most of these widgets; only being visible when the program they depend on, is open but not being used... I take it you have Opera placed in Start, then? And you surely must have some sort of Minimize To Systray?

f0dder · « **Reply #55 on:** April 16, 2007, 10:02 PM »

Curt: it's snake-oil... all that those "memory optimizers" do is to allocate a truckload of memory, forcing windows to page out other applications to disk. You might as well NOT run crap like that, and have windows automatically do the paging as necessary. Using them is detrimental to performance, as they tend to force more stuff out of memory than is necessary.

urlwolf · « **Reply #56 on:** April 16, 2007, 10:11 PM »

I use opera as my main browser. The widgets are always on top.
The timer for example is nice because I can increase the font size with + and - (a lot more customizable than any other floating clock/timer I have seen).

Opera uses a lot of memory when I have many tabs open, but the widgets theirselves, not at all. And even opera rarely goes over 100Mb + 100mb virtual memory. FF would do 150 easily.

Curt · « **Reply #57 on:** April 16, 2007, 10:19 PM »

I have used this machine for three weeks without any RAM freeing program, and for one week with, and performance has improved because of FreeRAM XP PRO. That is a fact from experience - experience from both my previous and my present machine, not some "crap" theory I might have read elsewhere, and not about "those" "memory optimizers", but experience with FreeRAM XP PRO on my stations.

Curt · « **Reply #58 on:** April 16, 2007, 10:38 PM »

Quote from: urlwolf on April 16, 2007, 10:11 PM

... opera rarely goes over 100Mb + 100mb virtual memory. FF would do 150 easily.

I tried Opera again, this time version 9.2, for two days, but the only skin I liked was buggy, so I removed it and went back to AOL as default (thanks, app103!). The reason is that I get a lot of e-mails with links, and I want a browser that will open these links fast. I have no need for Opera to be extended with this or that - if I know I am to browse for music / video / pictures, I will use Firefox, and to seek for informations I will use IE7 - because in my setup the third Internet browser must be 'slim' - and look pretty. Opera is kind of slim, but I don't like the look of the standard version and I didn't find a useable skin that I like.

f0dder · « **Reply #59 on:** April 16, 2007, 10:42 PM »

It's more likely that your performance boost has been because of the phase of the moon, really.

FreeRAM XP PRO still uses the crappy old technique of alloc-a-big-block-and-release, which is utterly stupid. It's "global memory compression" (which has nothing to do with compression and should be renamed "global working-set trim") is slightly more intelligent, based on Process Explorer I'd say that it iterates the processes in the system and does SetProcessWorkingSetSize(process, -1, -1)... which is basically what windows does in a low-memory situation.

The only situation where this kind of application could be helpful is if you're launching another application that allocated memory depending on how much memory is free... but that's not an all-too common practice, and for the applications that do it, you'll be better off shutting down some applications (you don't want too much stuff running on a low-end system if you're going to play intensive games, for instance).

Curt · « **Reply #60 on:** April 16, 2007, 10:55 PM »

Original post deleted; I lost my temper and wrote. Sorry!

lanux128 · « **Reply #61 on:** April 17, 2007, 01:38 AM »

well, as the cliché goes, you can't have enough memory.. that's why i started this thread, to see whether people prefer more or less programs in their system tray. previously, i need to close some apps so that my sluggish system can breathe easier.. but since then, i have upgraded my memory & graphics card so that i can run all the programs that i need without worries..

btw, i use this program called "Better Memory Meter" to quickly check the remaining balance of system RAM

[attach=#]

Edited to include the website address.

Darwin · « **Reply #62 on:** April 17, 2007, 03:06 AM »

This is a slippery slope - regardless of whether or not RAM optimizers are beneficial, *I* found that all they do is make me fixate on how much RAM I have free. I actually own licences for three shareware RAM optimizers (comments about fools and their money will be, politely, chuckled at) and have at least two other apps that feature RAM optimizer components, but I don't use any of them anymore. I *think*, but cannot prove, that these apps have little effect on the functioning of my system and just serve to make me obsess about the difference between 512MB free RAM and 100MB free RAM. I haven't actually observed much difference in performance no matter how much RAM I have free. Now, that said, I can imagine that if I didn't have a lot of RAM, a RAM optimizer might actually be very useful (certainly when I was running Win98SE with 128MB RAM I *thought* it made a big difference). With a gig of RAM there doesn't seem to me to be any benefit (my daily computer usage sees me running Xara Xtreme Pro, PhotoShop Pro, Office Professional 2003 - the only thing I don't run often is Publisher, Maxthon, ESRI ArcGis, etc.)...

Renegade · « **Reply #63 on:** April 17, 2007, 04:45 AM »

Quote from: lanux128 on April 16, 2007, 06:13 AM

Steve Miller's PureText is a very handy clipboard tool but its function can be replicated via Autohotkey, that's why no one mentioned it, i think..

e.g. Skrommel's PlainPaste
[attach=#]

Darn... I really need to find some time to check out more of these things...

tranglos · « **Reply #64 on:** April 18, 2007, 01:21 AM »

Quote from: Darwin on April 17, 2007, 03:06 AM

these apps have little effect on the functioning of my system and just serve to make me obsess about the difference between 512MB free RAM and 100MB free RAM.

Someone - may have been Joel Spolsky in his blog - made a valid point that free RAM is wasted RAM. As long as there is unallocated physical memory in my system, I *want* my apps to use it if it makes them more responsive. Trimming an app's working set means it'll take that much longer to come back.

I do use this feature in Firefox though (config.trim_on_minimize), because over time it allocates ungodly amounts of memory and is reluctant to release any when tabs/windows are closed. But bringing Firefox back later takes 10-20 seconds, on a fairly fast system.

Hirudin · « **Reply #65 on:** April 18, 2007, 02:17 AM »

I'm not trying to feed the flames or anything. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, I don't think I've ever used a RAM optomizing application.

I don't know how much these RAM program things are, but it would seem that their primary function is to free memory, so other programs can use it... RAM is so cheap these days, I'd say if the program is $30, it would be logical to spend $45 (or maybe more) to get more actual RAM...

app103 · « **Reply #66 on:** April 18, 2007, 02:58 AM »

I can see only a few instances where some type of 'memory manager' would be beneficial to me.

I have used a simple one line vbs script that accomplishes the same thing on my P1 (233mhz, 64mb ram) but only before opening extremely heavy applications that take a long time to load...like Paintshop Pro or Delphi. It does shorten the loading time.

I have also used it when I have experienced a connection problem where I get bumped offline and can't reconnect. Running that script seems to help me reconnect and it's a whole lot faster than rebooting for the same effect.

I would never have an application to do this running in the background all the time though, and I would never waste my ram running something that uses more ram than it frees. (which is why I use the script)

Open notepad and copy this to the first line and save it as FreeMem.vbs. Replace the number with what would be correct for the amount of ram you have on your system, making it no higher than 1/3 of your total ram. (if the number is too high, you will get an error message when you try to run it)

Code: (vb)

FreeMem = Space(20000000)

When you need it, just click to run it like it was an application. If it opens in notepad when you try to run it, right click the file and select Open. (Some system's security settings make all .vbs files open in notepad instead of running when clicked) If it still opens in notepad, check the file name and make sure it's really .vbs and not .txt.

lanux128 · « **Reply #67 on:** April 18, 2007, 03:28 AM »

Quote from: app103 on April 18, 2007, 02:58 AM

Open notepad and copy this to the first line and save it as FreeMem.vbs. Replace the number with what would be correct for the amount of ram you have on your system...

cool tip, app..

i can sense a Farr alias coming up..

Darwin · « **Reply #68 on:** April 18, 2007, 04:38 AM »

Quote

I don't know how much these RAM program things are, but it would seem that their primary function is to free memory, so other programs can use it... RAM is so cheap these days, I'd say if the program is $30, it would be logical to spend $45 (or maybe more) to get more actual RAM...

I think their primary function is actually to free MONEY from your wallet

Seriously, though, they run from oodles of free and opensource offerings through a range of shareware products that seem to run between $10 and $30 (but I'm sure you can pay much more).

f0dder · « **Reply #69 on:** April 18, 2007, 11:08 AM »

Anyway, here's a process working set size trimmer I wrote.

It's a command-line tool supporting wildcards, so you can do "trimws *" to trim all processes, or "trimws fir*" to trim (among others) firefox. Not that in the "*" case it'll mention a lot of errors, that's because system services are protected (and I'm not doing anything to circumvent that

).

I wrote this while looking into trillians "low memory usage", and just upgraded it to have wildcard support.

I still don't think using a tool like this blindly is a good idea, but at least this one is free, comes with source code, is tiny, and is a one-shot thing rather than a stupid bloated keep-running app.

EDIT: attachment removed, see later post for updated version.

rjbull · « **Reply #70 on:** April 18, 2007, 11:12 AM »

Quote from: Curt on April 16, 2007, 05:46 PM

PS Tray Factory, M8 Free Clipboard, FastStone Capture and Sysinternals Process Explorer

Curt,

I haven't tried M8 Free Clipboard, but looking at its Web site, it looks pretty limited in comparison with some of the other free clipboard extenders. Take a look at Mouser's own ClipboardHelp+Spell (CHS, CH+S), ArsClip, or Clipmagic.

Nighted · « **Reply #71 on:** April 18, 2007, 11:52 AM »

ClipX is also a very good free, and lightweight clip program. Be sure to get the stickies plugin though.

I'm a hard core ClipCache user, but I find ClipX much more suited for graphics work as you can see the thumbnails from the context menu.

app103 · « **Reply #72 on:** April 18, 2007, 12:24 PM »

Quote from: Nighted on April 18, 2007, 11:52 AM

ClipX is also a very good free, and lightweight clip program. Be sure to get the stickies plugin though.

I'm a hard core ClipCache user, but I find ClipX much more suited for graphics work as you can see the thumbnails from the context menu.

Whoa! That's pretty sweet! I think my daughter will like that very much. (and me too!)

rjbull · « **Reply #73 on:** April 18, 2007, 02:08 PM »

Quote from: Nighted on April 18, 2007, 11:52 AM

ClipX is also a very good free, and lightweight clip program. Be sure to get the stickies plugin though.

I'm a hard core ClipCache user, but I find ClipX much more suited for graphics work as you can see the thumbnails from the context menu.

A recent TechSupport newsletter had a quick review of several free clipboard extenders: he really liked Clipx, but thought ArsClip had the edge, especially as it can keep a much larger number of clips. The limit of 15 stated on the Web page refers to the number in the popup. Older ones get saved to disk, with a configurable number (by default 50) before they are completely deleted. You can have groups of permanent clips as well. The popup has preview of the clips. Not sure if this includes graphics.

I was a long-time big fan of ClipCache 1.41, the last free version, even registering out of gratitude without bothering to install the shareware version. But, eventually corporate bloatware at work kept crashing it, and even the shareware version which I installed in desperation crashed as well, if not as often. I found that Mouser's CHS was amazingly stable by comparison, only crashing once in several months of operation. My chief beef with it is that it's slow to pop up. ArsClip is almost instant. ArsClip is no-install and portable, too.

Nighted · « **Reply #74 on:** April 18, 2007, 02:24 PM »

ClipCache is currently 3.1.0 and has never crashed. It's clipmenus pop up immediately.

ClipX and ArsClip are 2 completely different applications and can't really be compared. ArsClip does not support graphics at all, so totally useless for me.