"RoseGarden" - - - - - - - from - nscave

Often we want to close as many running programs as we can to save resources while we are setting up for a game or doing intensive graphics work on our computers.

And more than likely we click on the X on the title bar to close it, or for us keyboard types we hit Alt+F4. But does that really close the program?  Even though we take it for granted that it does, often it just removes it from the desktop. The program is still running in the background, and sometimes a little icon will show up in the system tray, but not always.

For example here I have clicked the X to close Messenger. However the green moron (be nice), is still showing up in the system tray indicating the program is still fully running. Clicking that icon brings Messenger back to life. So it was only hidden, not closed. That saves little resources, if any.

I use Messenger only as an example, there are many programs that do the same, Snagit, WindowWasher and many others. The programmers do this so the program is readily available. In the case of Messenger you would still receive the message popups should someone send you a message.

This doesn't do you any good at all if you are closing programs to conserve resources. The only way you can be truly sure if a program is completely closed is to use Task Manager and look under Processes. If you don't do that, at least check the System Tray to see if any icons there indicate the program you just closed is still active.

-=One Day At A Time=-

This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License