…it’s just icons and maybe 2 characters of the title along the bottom of your 1920×1200 screen (this is the Windows XP machine). Even with grouping turned on (so 3 open Microsoft Word documents are all under one button).
My rule: If you can’t read it, you should probably close it.
I have 1 GB of RAM in this machine and I think it’s not enough. I’m swapping out a lot when I switch between apps. Right now I have open and visible on the task bar: Outlook, Trillian, Copernic Desktop Search (rocking’ search application…I dumped X1 recently), FeedDemon, Microsoft ActiveSync, Firefox (I force everything to multiple tabs in one window), Dreamweaver, CuteFTP Pro (doing something that I need a stand alone FTP app), Word and ecto. I should probably get into the habit of closing applications when I’m done with them, but for some reason I only do that with Quicken and QuickBooks. Task Manager shows 89 processes running which is about average for me. PF Usage is 966MB. Is that a lot?
Judi Sohn 
3 responses to “You know you have too many applications open when…”
As for the not being abl to read wht is what problem, you should do what I do.
Unlock the taskbar and drag it up to make it double height so the icons stack, I’ve been running mine this way for years. =)
Yeah, but then I have less screen room for all those windows unless I autohide the toolbar which I don’t want to do. 😉
Turn off the default eye-candy XP theme and revert to classic. That’ll recover some lost pixels.
The dual-height taskbar is the only way to go. I actually drag my Quick Links to the bottom half and I add the Address bar as well. It’s much quicker than browsing file paths via Explorer and you can type URLs straight into it and have it launch in your browser.
Additionally, other toolbars, such as Media Player, go on the bottom portion.
Don’t forget to minimize to the system tray on any apps that support it (FeedDemon, Outlook, Trillian, ActiveSync).