CompTIA A+® Certification All-In-One For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

2.2. Getting the Most out of Multitasking

Multitasking is a computer's ability to balance the processing time given to multiple applications that are running at the same time. Multitasking comes in handy when running multiple applications at the same time.

The two basic types of multitasking are cooperative and preemptive. In this section, I discuss differences between the two types of multitasking; by the end, you should have a clear picture of which one is better.

2.2.1. Cooperative multitasking

Cooperative multitasking means sharing time on the processor by cooperation. By its name, you would think cooperative multitasking is the better form of multitasking. This is probably because cooperation has always been thought of as a good thing. If you needed to get a job done (like building a house) and you had five people to help you, you could get the house raised quickly through teamwork and cooperation. This is a good illustration of when cooperation works. However, if a couple of those people do not work with the rest of the team (they go to get more nails and never come back), their lack of cooperation slows down the process.

Likewise, with cooperative multitasking in the computer environment, a few programs that do not cooperate well with others can slow down the process. If you launch Microsoft Excel, for example, and start a large recalculation of the entire spreadsheet, Excel occupies 100 percent of the processor's time. At periodic intervals, Excel checks whether any other ...