A PC user is frustrated with the Task Manager and is calling for an improvement because the applications keep moving. Now the inventor of the tool has responded to him.
Why is the user annoyed? On X.com (formerly Twitter), a user named “seaweedanxiety” expressed in an annoyed tone that Windows should release a Task Manager that stops moving.
The user wants to point out that the applications in the Task Manager “climb” up and down when they are sorted by CPU usage, for example.
Windows has a lot that normal users do not know or understand. Why the first drive is always called “C” is also such a “mystery”:
A button has been stopping the Task Manager for 30 years
What does the inventor reply? David William Plummer is considered the inventor of the Task Manager, which was first released in 1996 and integrated into Microsoft Windows.
Plummer responded to the Twitter user’s post and clarified that he invented a Task Manager in 1994 that can be paused. That was 30 years ago.
The user only needs to press a key to pause the Task Manager, Plummer further revealed.
How can you pause the Task Manager? As Plummer explains, it can be done with a single key press: CTRL.
If you press the CTRL key, you pause updates in the Task Manager, so the applications no longer change their position. However, you have to keep the key pressed.
What reactions were there to the inventor’s response? Many Twitter users found it amusing that Plummer himself appears in the comments of the post explaining how the Task Manager works.
Additionally, there are many users writing that they also did not know that this was possible – although of course some already knew the “trick”.
Here are some reactions to the interaction:
- “Just imagine, the inventor of the Task Manager gives you tips on how to use it!”
- “Literally no one knew that, Dave.”
- “It’s funny how […] we tend to assume that a program lacks obvious features rather than trying to find them.”
- “Why am I only finding out about this 30 years later?”
Besides the Task Manager, the Control Panel is also a feature that Windows users have known and used for 30 years. However, with Windows 11, Microsoft is set to phase out the Control Panel and remove the feature from the operating system soon: Microsoft bids farewell to a feature that you have been using for 30 years in Windows
The title image is a symbolic image: Photo by punttim on Pixabay.
