Multitasking

Multitasking is a great invention; however it is only reasonable if you use it with a small amount of opened programs, because all running programs also need additional memory. Therefore, multitasking may slow down systems, especially systems with a small amount of memory. Simply, users forget about the amount of simultaneously running programs and get angry about the slow responding times of their systems. Today, I was able to overcome this annoying problem and replaced my old RAM with two pieces of 1 GB Kingston RAM. Therefore, my notebook now burns and all those programs can run simultaneously. Some people may ask why to insert 2 GB of memory. Once you’ve inserted this amount of RAM, you’ll never plug-in memory again, because it is the physical limitation of my (old) 32 Bit hardware system. This notebook is only able to serve up to 2GB, although 32 Bit may expect more. The next step is to upgrade the hardware, but this will take some time (I hope so).

Update: You are also able to switch off those SWAP file(s) completely 🙂

Update: It is mandatory to replace the current system’s kernel with an older version 2600.xpsp.051011-1528 on many Windows XP systems (also including SP2) to reduce problems during hibernating. This may affect notebook systems as well as desktop systems with installed memory larger than 1 GB. The according patch is in testing, thus only available via MS support directly or via a google search for the filename WindowsXP-KB909095-x86-DEU.ZIP. User running SP1 should use the following MS link instead. You should only install those patches, if you suffer from problems during hibernating with events 26, „Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API“ (Windows – Systemfehler: Nicht ausreichend Systemressourcen, um die API abzuschließen).