I have my taskbar set to Auto Hide and I just looked at what is on it. I was amazed. (the task bar is that bar on the bottom of your monitor that has the files or programs you are running)
All I have is the Straight Dope also. I have an old laptop that we keep in our living room for random surfing and email checking, and one or two windows is about all it can handle.
BTW, my taskbar is at the top of the screen. I used an Amiga too long to have it any other way.
sigh…I’ve had my taskbar on the top of the screen ever since I first got win 95. With the move to XP I discovered that I can add nifty stuff like a Run Application/website field and a bunch of little program link icons. With this, I decided for the first time to leave it docked, instead of auto-hide. It turns out that windows really DOES want you to have it on the bottom. programs load ASSUMING there is ~50 pixels in use at the bottom, and often puts the title bar BEHIND the taskbar, forcing me to rightclick and maximise everything (where it fixes itself) in order to reach the pulldown menus. Still…I’m not moving it to the bottom. I wish M$ would consider US though!
anyway…as to not hijack…running programs are IE with this page, a couple of AIM windows, and an open folder. That’s not much for me compared to usual…but you caught me at 1AM
Straight Dope, Winamp (currently playing Nelly), the Trek boards I hang out at and my email client.
I’ve been playing email tag with an admin over there. They changed the board software while I was changing email addy. Hilarity ensued. sigh It looks like we’re about to finally get this figured out and fixed.
Couple of Straight Dope windows, plus a bunch of other stuff that I think is related to this place where I’m sitting that demands I come in every day, I forget what it’s called — oh yeah, my “job.” I should probably get back to that. Hmmm. Oh look, another interesting thread title.
I don’t have the taskbar, since I’m running Mac OS X, so I have the Dock (it serves the same purpose)
Dock settings: auto-hide, auto-zoom, bottom of the screen.
Icons in the dock (not all open at the same time): Finder, Mail, IE, iChat, iTunes, System Preferences, Sherlock, Disk Copy, Disk Utility, Terminal, Jedi Knight II, Jedi Knight II Multiplayer, my Applications folder, then the Trash.
If I were at work (which I’m not), the answer would be:
Little “You are logged in to network” box that won’t go away;
MS Outlook;
Internet Explorer (our browser-based work area);
Internet Explorer (The Associated Press internal site);
NewsDesk (newspaper software);
QuikLayout (related to NewsDesk);
A text file containing a bunch of HTML codes to copy and paste;
MS Word (runs with NewsDesk);
Quiklayout control panel, which gets its own taskbar item for no reason at all; and
Another Internet Explorer with SDMB in it.
Occasionally there will be more, like 7 Word windows or Freecell or AIM or something, but I can get by on those listed above. Those are the basics.
On my home computer right now, I’ve got Eudora and IE. Yawn.
