[SOLVED] Do apps slow down your computer even though they barely take up space?

[ShangWang]

Let's say I had 100 apps that were only 1mb each, versus a SINGLE app that takes up 100mb. This means they take up the same amount of disk space. They are not apps that run in the background or anything, they just exist.

Is the only reason why having a lot of apps leads to a slower computer is because it takes up disk space, and nothing else? Will my described two situations have no difference between each other in terms of affecting computer speed?

I'm asking this because I know there are a couple of apps that windows pre-installs for you that are very small in size, and I don't know whether or not it's even worth uninstalling them if they do reduce performance. I'm on a SSD.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

the amount of applications you have installed and the space each one takes up has nothing to do at all with system usage %.

you can have a 100MB-100GB benchmarking application or game that when run can use up to 100% of CPU, GPU, RAM, etc.
but this same software will be using absolutely 0% when not running.
all it is doing is taking up space on a disk.

you can also have a <10MB piece of software that constantly runs in the background using up percentages of your system at all times.
so besides taking up space it is also always using some system resources.

the size of the applications has nothing to do with resources required or the % of those used.

Is the only reason why having a lot of apps leads to a slower computer is because it takes up disk space, and nothing else?

i have ~3TB of games & ~15GB of applications installed.
this does not cause any type of computer system slowdown.

there are only a few applications that i allow to run in the background for monitoring system stats.
these use up less than 3% of my CPU resources and less than 15% of my memory.
without them running Windows alone uses almost the same amount, just about 1% less.

there are a couple of apps that windows pre-installs for you that are very small in size, and I don't know whether or not it's even worth uninstalling them

Windows 10 loads a few unnecessary applications into memory for quick access but these aren't actually using any CPU resources until you launch them like Photos, etc.
i just leave them alone.

anything you know you will never use that sits in Task Manager just go ahead and get rid of them if Windows allows it.
Edge, Cortana, and a few others have proven difficult to remove and keep that way.

 

[ShangWang]

anything you know you will never use that sits in Task Manager just go ahead and get rid of them if Windows allows it.
Edge, Cortana, and a few others have proven difficult to remove and keep that way.

Yep, I just keep cortana disabled on startup, though I don't know what exactly that would do but I would not uninstall it in case anything goes haywire. Based on your explanation these installed apps don't do anything to affect performance unless their installed space overfills the hard drive or are actually a background process, thanks!

 

[chrysalis]

Depends on the nature of the app, if its not an app that runs a service then there will likely be no performance hit just from installing it.

Thankfully windows isnt android which constantly starts installed apps even when you dont use them.

 

[lordmogul]

The only point of difference between one big thing and lots of small things is in file transfers, where the set of small files have a bit of overhead and will take longer than the big file for the same amount of data.
Besides that there is pretty much no reason why one should have more impact than the other.