Every time I take a good look at the task manager UI, I get lost when I try to build a menatl model of what a 'task' is.<p>The old task manager showed 'Applications' and 'Processes', where an application sort-of is 'something with a UI'. Control panels, however, have UI but aren't applications (but they are tasks: you can run them from 'new task…' just as well as you can run 'dir' from it). Firefox manages to create multiple applications for one process (even the Error Console gets its own application)<p>Now this design: I think it is a huge improvement, but I think it would help if they weeded out some terminology, and used it consistently. We currently have:<p>- Background process (one of them named 'Fast User Switching Utility Service'. Is 'Utility Service' a term for services that aren't services, or do these appear in multiple places?<p>- Service<p>- Windows process (one of which is called 'Desktop Window Manager'; 'Task Manager', however, has become an application)<p>- Runtime Process<p>- Subsystem App (not an application)<p>- Driver Host<p>- Facility<p>Disclaimer: most of the comparisons I made are w.r.t. Windows XP. It is the only Windows version I have at hand to check against.
I thought I was seeing some screen shots from Mac OS X.<p>see: <a href="http://www.informit.com/library/content.aspx?b=Mac_OS_X_Unleashed&seqNum=51" rel="nofollow">http://www.informit.com/library/content.aspx?b=Mac_OS_X_Unle...</a><p>Please note that the above book reference is written in 2001.<p>I think they have incorporated many features from Sysinternals' (now part of Microsoft TechNet) famous Process Explorer.