Desktop Icons

[Tsutarja]

I know that we all have seen members' desktops in the screenshot thread here, and you can use that to tell who uses icons or not, but I thought I'd get into a little more specifics..

Do you use desktop icons? If so, how do you organize them? What size do you have them set at (small, medium or large)? And do you clean them up on an ordinary basis? Anything else specifically you do with your desktop icons?

I have always used desktop icons, and aligned them to the left, usually in order by alphabet. The size I set them to is medium so I can at least see the design of the icon, and I try to keep my icons at no more than 2 columns just to prevent them from being cluttered. I have a folder on my desktop called "Dump" where I put stuff that was on my desktop for easy access but just as a cleanup and I don't want it thrown away.

 

[Purple Materia]

I used them up until a year or two ago, when I realized that pressing the Start key and typing whatever application I wanted to run, then pressing Enter was a lot faster and more comfortable for me.

So usually my desktop is empty.

 

[New Eden]

I used to use them when I was seventeen or so and used fences to organize them, but now I've used launchy to bring everything up in seconds.

 

[Firox]

I have 10 desktop icons, my most used programs. I keep them organized based on my background image, as to not cover part of the image I want to display - small sized.

 

[Callīope1]

I know some people dislike icons, and keep their desktops as clean as possible, but..

BOKU NO ALL OF THE ICONS.

And that's after I did some cleaning last night. > >;

They're handy, and since Windows 7 has that button that lets you jump to the desktop, it's not really like I have to fight through windows to get to them. /shrug

 

[Starry Windy]

I used the Desktop icons when it's needed, and I usually set the Desktop icons at the small size because it'll make more room for many apps that I have. I cleaned up the desktops occasionally though.

 

[Cordelia]

I don't use any desktop icons. I just use the start menu like a poster above mentioned. It works quite well for me.

 

[Megan]

My Windows desktop is full of icons, because I put nearly everything I do on it. Linux on the other hand has no icons whatsever. That's mainly because menu customization is so easy on it (also Terminal usage is so much better in Linux than Windows)

It's funny, because for the last couple of weeks I've only used Linux xD

 

[Catalyst.]

They drive me insane. My desktop is always empty, and whenever an installer adds one I immediately delete it. Only the recycle bin is there :P

I'm the same way about mounted drives on the desktop in OS X. If they're not being used, goodbye.

 

[Krazzikk]

I feel like if a desktop doesn't have things on it, there's no reason for it to be there...

My desktop is relatively clean, and I have all my games at the top, my commonly used programs on the right, sorted by relevance, little notes and text documents in the top right for quick reference, and shortcuts to common directories.

For some reason my start menu is also kinda weird and chooses not to show any of the shortcuts on it...
Start Menu:

Spoiler:

Desktop:

Spoiler:

 

[Frequency]

I don't bother using desktop icons anymore for the simple fact that bbLean makes it easy enough to access any of my files on my C:\ anyway. Since I don't use the basic windows shell (explorer.exe) anymore, I can just Right-Click > Desktop straight from bbLean.

 

[Legobricks]

They drive me insane. My desktop is always empty, and whenever an installer adds one I immediately delete it. Only the recycle bin is there :P

If you don't even want Recycle Bin there, right click anywhere on desktop → Arrange Icons By → uncheck Show Desktop Icons. This also means you won't have to remove any that are automatically added.

 

[donavannj]

I absolutely abuse my desktop as a place to dump files, but I rarely use any of the shortcuts that are on there. They go there so that I remember to organize them at some point. Sometimes I forget to do that and the desktop overflows with files, though.