SysTray & Icons speed killers?

[sapi]

Just so you can compare, on my non-gaming box I have 30 processes running, and that includes 6 that I'd kill if I wanted to do anything intensive (3 from Apple alone). My sys tray has 3 icons, anti-virus, volume, and network.

50's not too bad, though - I'm running 86 at the moment, and the system is still perfectly smooth (admittedly that's on a vista system, which has more OS processes as far as I can tell, but most are still from apps and haven't slowed me too badly)

[Ramses II CP]

It all really depends on what they are and what kind of machine you're running. I personally find auto-updaters to be pigs, especially the ones that work totally in the background, but my non-gaming machine is just a 512 RAM 1.8ghz box. When I dump those six processes it's not really their idle load I'm worried about, it's preventing them from deciding to do something while I'm working. If you're running a higher end box you might not notice when some service decides to do that vital bit of maintainence.

[Makanyane]

this database thingy looks like it might be useful
- it did at least tell me what a couple of things with complete gobbledygook names where in my start up menu (sound card related bits it turns out that I don't think I need on there)

I'm trying to sort out how to stop some auto update bits too, for a supposedly good machine mine's running like a pig at times, and especially at start up.