How do you multitask?

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• Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 1, 2005 - link

  Thanks for the input guys, keep em coming!
  
  GT - I can guarantee you'll see at least half of that by July :)
  
  Take care,
  Anand

• CheesePoofs - Friday, April 1, 2005 - link

  ^^^ That was me BTW ... forgot to enter my name.

• Anonymous - Friday, April 1, 2005 - link

  I often run Spybot, Ad-Aware, defragment, listen to music, have Outlook open, and 8 Firefox tabs open. And in the background I have seti@home running, plus AntiVir guard and Trillian (my IM client).

• poco153 - Friday, April 1, 2005 - link

  Firefox with 5-12 tabs open
  iTunes playing
  Trillian
  Thunderbird
  Backgound programs: Windowblinds, M$ antispyware,Speedfan, FAST defrag2, gmail notifier, mouseware, ATi stuff, Mcafee security, Gigabyte VGA utilities, nVIdia sound controls
  
  Sometimes I have Fireworks MX, Dreamweaver MX and photoshop open, and the occational Word or Excel document.
  
  This is all using the Explorer shell.

• Michael2k - Friday, April 1, 2005 - link

  How about 'casual' multitasking? This is Mac specific, but you can 'translate' it to PC:
  
  iTunes open and playing from a playlist
  iPod plugged in and synching from iTunes
  Mail open
  iChat open and three chat windows open
  Safari open and 10 tabs open; AnandTech, Slashdot, ArsTechnica, Yahoo News Yahoo email, a couple articles from Slashdot open, a couple articles from AnandTech open, and the Ars Forum open
  Terminal open
  Four Finder windows open
  Email being typed into while people send you IMs
  
  If you want to up the complexity:
  Rip a CD while doing the above in iTunes
  Download a Linux ISO as well
  Compile Mozilla
  Run Mozilla
  
  This was 'normal' on my single CPU 400MHz system three years ago. I want to see how dual CPU systems deal with this (as a justification for buying a dual CPU!)
  
  Benchmarks... I don't know how to measure this. Time page loads? Time compiles of Mozilla (not bad idea)? Time launch times? Time how long ripping a CD takes? Count the number of beachballs, and how long?

• Brandon - Friday, April 1, 2005 - link

  Right now, the processor I am using is a Pentium 4 3.2GHz with HyperThreading. I've heard all the flak from those who say it was a huge waste of money and that I should have purchased an Athlon 64 because they're faster and cheaper. I eventually made a leap and purchased a 3000+ (s754) on the nForce3 platform, but I wasn't impressed by it's performance with my usage. Sure they can perform faster (generally) in situations where there is only one application running. I can even admit for sake of arguement that when there are many CPU intensive applications running, the Athlon 64 will complete the tasks faster than a P4.
  
  But what I've noticed when I am comparing both platforms in my usage situations is that when there are CPU intensive applications running, that the Athlon 64 platform will have a much higher response time when using Windows (like clicking on the Start button, switching between applications, etc) than the P4 platform, which does those basic tasks almost instantly. Sure the Athlon 64 may complete the intensive tasks faster, but in terms of productivity, the P4 will allow ME to do work simultaneously which means more efficiency overall. I'd rather be able to work the whole time on the computer versus sitting and waiting every few moments I try and do something. I don't know how this would be able to be measured, as a lot of the real-world benchmarks I see don't focus on this end of things (they concentrate more on which CPU can perform all the tasks faster).
  
  With dual core CPU's coming out, I really think that in multitasking, Windows (and application) response time would definately improve. Maybe you could have a few CPU intensive apps running and measure the time it takes to switch between applications, or for the Start menu to come up...or opening a new application?

• GTaudiophile - Friday, April 1, 2005 - link

  What sort?
  
  Well, when I play games, that's pretty much all that runs, aside from the standard Windows, Norton services, etc.
  
  It's when I get into web development that I really start to multi-task: Adobe PhotoShop CS, Macromedia Studio MX 2004 apps, Notepad, uploading photos from camera, uploading pictures to server, favorite mp3 player running for music...
  
  Anand: Any chance you can have a "Dual-Core AMD64 / ATi R520 SLI" review up by July?
  
  

• red and black - Friday, April 1, 2005 - link

  Compiling a program, playing music, and loading web pages in a couple browser tabs.