Desktop cleanup reduces Finder switch delay?

Apr 17, '02 09:12:15AM

Contributed by: robg

An anonymous tipster submitted the following a few days ago:

I found today that I could get rid of the dreaded spinning technicolor ball whenever I switched to the Finder by moving all the zillions of files on my desktop to a folder on my desktop. Now I don't get the spinning wheel when I go the the Finder!
I'm posting this hint in the hopes that others may be able to validate its functionality. As a rule, I keep very little stuff on the desktop, and I've never experienced a delay when switching to the Finder. But I'm not sure those two things are related.

As an experiment last night, I added literally 100 or so aliased items to my desktop and then spent some time using the system. The result? No change. I tried this on both a G4 tower and our 2001 iBook/500, and neither system seemed bothered by a large number of aliases on the desktop. I'm not sure if results will differ with actual files instead of aliases, but I'm not going to move that many actual objects out to my desktop to find out.

So how about it? Is this tip true? Can a loaded desktop cause the spinning cursor when switching to the Finder? Anyone care to test it out for themselves and post their results? I went zero for two in my testing, but maybe I missed something.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020417091215467