For what it's worth, I need to interject here. I know many people
(myself included) who turn desktop icons off, not because I keep many
windows open all the time (it's easy to access desktop as Cosimo wrote),
but because I hate to look at the messy, unevenly shaped, partially
overlapping icons, sometimes with large gaps between them. More than,
say, 5 or 6 icons on the desktop simply demand my attention; they
scream: "Drag us around! Make us look neat!" Then I have to keep doing
that for every new couple of icons that land on the desktop.