desktop short cuts

[saintpeter48]

is it true that desktop shortcuts slow your computer down and are not a good idea. help please, thanks for any useful tips.

[squarebear]

No, who told you that?

[ChuckFickens]

Not to any degree worth worrying about.

In theory the more icons the longer it will take to read the desktop icon cache when the screen redraws, but the difference on a modern computer will be so minute (unless you really have thousands of icons on the desktop) that it's not worth worrying about.

[saintpeter48]

i've been using a computer for about 15 years or so and have always had shortcut icons on my desktop, but speaking to a friend of a friend who is a computer geek, unlike me, he said that icons on the desktop slows the computer down and are not recommended. I was worried that after all of these years I may have been getting it all wrong!! Thanks for all of the advice, much appreciated.

[squarebear]

Your friend is mistaken.

[rojash]

"speaking to a friend of a friend "

I was going to say, "If I had a pound for everyone who's said that to me..." then I realised that over the years I've probably collected hundreds from people who've said that to me.

Although we are primarily b2b, our offices are in the sticks, so locals tend to turn up when they have a problem. More often than not the problem was caused (or at least exacerbated) by "a friend of a friend who is a computer expert".

[NazNomad]

Nobody is ever a computer expert, but they always know somebody that knows one ... lol

[ChuckFickens]

:)

the only source of information in the world that is less reliable than a friend of a friend is the bloke in the pub.

[NazNomad]

Actually, the bloke in my pub is more reliable, as he knows a computer expert.

[bookbinder]

Last year I called a local computer expert to fix my PC. It needed a new NVIDIA card, so he took it away to fix it. When he brought it back, there were 29 shortcuts on the desktop that weren't there when he took it away. I'm not worried about them, but my point is: I don't think that he would have put them there if they were likely to cause a problem (he has a contract to maintain the PCs of a local company, so he's not an amateur). So I don't think that you need worry about your shortcuts.

[rojash]

"Actually, the bloke in my pub is more reliable, as he knows a computer expert. "

... or at least, a friend of one of his friends does.

[boxtops]

The best short cut is the one to the pub