mischievousAnyhow, I just now discovered the joys of using the task manager to adjust process priority. Currently, the CPU is pegged at 100% doing mp3 encoding. However, I've set that job to "below normal" priority -- and, as a result, everything else is responding as if there wasn't any CPU load at all. It's like magic, or something. *grin*
In other news, I also decided that if this computer was going to be sitting on most of the time, I should put my spare 1993-vintage soundcard in it and hook it up to the stereo system, instead of having the only mp3-playing computer be the dual-processor room heater (with loud cooling fans) that I only run occasionally. That working, I found a decent mp3 player that doesn't claim to need a 500MHz CPU at bare minimum (funny how including "gnu" in the google search terms when looking for software seems to help in finding that sort of thing...), and have stuck the vast majority of my mp3 collection into it on random.
I shall intend to use this to strike fear into the hearts of potential visitors. Hey, it beats housecleaning....
