Re: Minimum specs, "funky" defaults, and old machinery

[Joel Becker <jlbec evilplan org>]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 07:48:03PM +0100, Tim Janik wrote:
> however, i see telsa's and your point that thumbnailing
> a) isn't always wanted on _slow_ machines (i'm running it fine on an 
>    old pentium without noticable slowdowns though)
> b) badly affects battery usage on notebooks (i'm also turning it off
>    on my laptop when battery-powered)

	First off, let me preface this by saying that I find the
thumbnails to be always out of sync and hard to see, so I turn them off.
But I also noted they were very painful on my laptop, which has a p166
cpu and a 800x600 screen.  The panel is a 24x24 panel, which makes for a
tiny deskguide, and I mostly use it for paging, not for window hunting.
	An automatic CPU-found default would be neat.  But try and allow
for multi-homed users.  eg, have three states "on", "off", and "unset".
if "unset", check CPU on every startup and draw or not.  If set, honor
the user's preference.  That way a user gets a gee-whiez default on his
2GHz alpha, and nice running issues with his 166 old box.
	As far as battery goes, a deskguide-remote command would allow
you to switch it on and off from apm.d.  This is how I handle suspend
from my laptop (when I have ac, don't ever suspend).  While APM is
pretty hard to call portable, most platforms have *some* ability to
recognize it,a nd then they can hand-cook whatever they need to call
that remote command.

Joel

-- 

"I almost ran over an angel
 He had a nice big fat cigar.
 'In a sense,' he said, 'You're alone here
 So if you jump, you'd best jump far.'"

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