Not long ago, it was fairly common for power users to reference Windows' process list as if it were a barometer for the machine's speed. I can recall forum debates between members bragging about how few processes their system ran at startup, and I remember being adamant about ensuring that only essential items were running on my system. In that same vein, it was also common for folks to seek and destroy non-critical Windows services for speed gains.

In an age of hexa-core CPUs, dirt cheap RAM and flash storage, it seems those concerns have faded from enthusiasts' consideration. My relatively modest PC runs north of 100 processes daily (many of which are Chrome tabs) without breaking a sweat and I can increase or decrease that figure by 50 without noticing a difference in usable performance. How many processes are you currently running and do you pay attention to them anymore? Did you ever?