Pushing the limits of 867MHz

[cheshirekat]

I'm back in my old habit of having numerous applications and windows open
simultaneously. On my old Mac, I could expect trouble with more than 8
applications open - depending on the apps, of course. I think I spend a
lot of time counting how many windows were open all the time.

I bought my TiBook with only 256MB of RAM and increased it to 768MB
within weeks. I've had very few application crashes/hangs and minor
system glitches. (The main system glitch seems to be the display which
gets what looks like "interference" as seen on tv when the local station
is off air. But, I can't find a rhyme or reason for it, even if only one
application is running.) Otherwise, nothing happening to inhibit use of
my PowerBook.

Anyhow, I happened to notice I had 14 applications open today - some with
more than ten windows. (I counted 34 open documents in Smile - what a
robust application!) The system was calm, cool and collected without any
noticeable slowdown and a few files downloaded from Safari without a
hitch, iTunes smoothly providing background music.

Obviously, I'm doing a lot in between applications with major window and
application switching all over the place. I can't multitask my way out of
a paper bag at work, but with my Mac, it's all about assuasive control
after a good dose of iTunes therapy on the commute home. For others, how
many applications do you find are open at once? Are you more likely to
check what other applications are already running, or do you just launch
and worry about it if and when a problem arises? Anyone ever had so many
applications open that opening one more they immediately noticed
decreased performance? Has anyone else noticed that having to restart
requires several minutes to close windows and applications, as well as
being surprised how many documents had not been saved recently? I don't
feel compelled to save as frequently with OS X because the aliens stopped
jumping into my computer and making it crash for no reason. (Just
checking to see if you are paying attention.)

I realize those doing graphic rendering or whatever might have noticeable
performance hits with numerous open applications, but for the semi-normal
(on the days I get enough sleep) people running only a few really
"intense" applications, how the heck do you explain to pc folks that it
isn't living dangerously to immerse yourself in multiple-window-multiple-
application multi-tasking without going insane? My co-workers are
constantly closing up windows and applications on the pc I have to use at
work, to my irritation. It just seems more natural to flow in and out of
different tasks than to waste time launching and closing.

I'm gonna have to save money for a new PowerBook, because I can already
see myself running 50+ applications at a time in Panther. So, I'll need
to upgrade to a G5 just so that I'll have mega-RAM capabilities for
multitasking. I now have 40 documents open in Smile. And Safari 1.0
doesn't seem phased by multiple tabs in a dozen windows. How many tabs
can one load on one browser page? Is there a limit?

-- 
* 867 PowerBook G4 * OS X 10.2.5 * 768 MB Ram *
* Addictions: iTunes 4 * WarCraft * The Sims *