Out of the blue, a question popped in my head: “why do I click on refresh button when I am staring at my Desktop?” – I didn’t know the “Technical” reason and since curiosity got better off me – I read this, this and this and I learned that: It does nothing! Neah, it does something – it redraws the icons on desktop. What does it mean? Have you ever changed the view of the desktop and messed up the icons? I remember I have and If you “refresh” your desktop at that moment – it would redraw the icons on the desktop. other than this, it does nothing!

I just learned that and so I thought I would share that with you!

anyhow, I also wanted to see the “negative impact on performance” of “keeping the F5 (refresh) on hold while on Desktop”. See what It did to my machine:

Before:  10-25% CPU Usage

With other things constant (Ceteris Paribus), I kept the F5 key (refresh) on Desktop on hold. Result? 50-65% CPU Usage. 

Conclusion:

So unless I want to redraw the icons on my desktop, I would not bother refreshing my Desktop ever again..