skype extras manager - an amazing resource hog
Check this out - yep, the "Skype Extras Manager" (skypePM.exe) is taking up an amazing 50% of CPU cycles, and 741,164K memory *even when Skype itself is shut down*, and slowing my very beefy Ferrari 5000 with an AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 2.00 GHz CPU and 2 Gig of RAM to an absolute crawl.
The build of Skype I was running, admittedly an older version, was version 3.0.0.205.
There is no obvious way to turn off Skype Extras in the interface, and I can't be bothered screwing with msconfig and whatnot, so I'm going to update to the latest version of Skype and simply not install the Extras Manager.
To avoid the Skype Extras Manager, run the Skype installer, click on the Options button, and deselect "Install Skype Extras Manager".
Alternatively, you can apparently go to ...\program files\skype\plugin manager\ directory (or program files (x86) on an x64 system) and run an uninstaller in there, but such an uninstaller did not exist on my system.
After upgrading (and *not* installing the Extras Manager) my laptop is back to what it should be, with the biggest resource grabber being the Desktop Window Manager at less than 27,000K.
741,164K of memory is a ridiculous amount for Skype's Extras Manager to be using (and yes, at times the count went even *higher). And, for the process to continue running after Skype is shut down, is also not acceptable.
Bad coding. Bad, bad, bad, bad BAD coding.