Virtual desktop software for Windows
In the comments to my post about backup strategies, Steve Gigl asked what virtual desktop software I use, and would I recommend it.
And the answer is VirtuaWin. And yes, I’d recommend it. It’s currently up to version 3.0, although I’m using version 2.11.
It was relatively painless to install, although it took an evening or two to customize it and figure out exactly how many desktops I wanted, how much time to pause with the mouse on the edge of the screen before flipping to the next, etc. (This is critical to fine tune, because in windows you spend so much time near the taskbar that it’s easy to switch desktops when you don’t mean to if you set the value too short. If you set it too long, it takes too long to get from one desktop to the other.)
The only downside is that by default it doesn’t have a panel with the virtual desktops that you can click on to get from one to the other. There appeared to be some sort of goofy skin DLL or widget or plugin written by some German guy that would pop up a window to do it but I only fiddled with it for a couple minutes before giving up.
It’s very stable, and quick. And I like the “Gather all windows to this desktop” feature, it makes it much easier to shut the computer down and be sure that you didn’t miss some program way off in desktop 5. It also exits and restarts without a hitch. Works great with multiple monitors too.
One slightly annoying thing is that if a program has the focus, and is doing something very CPU intensive, when you move from one desktop to another, the window “follows” you to the new desktop. It will be in exactly the same place it was on the previous desktop, but is suddenly in the new one, without you explicitly dragging it there. I’ve learned to live with this, but it tends to happen most often with iTunes, Lightroom, Winamp, and Photoshop Elements.
Occasionally, some program will throw up a critical dialog box or window that will exist in exactly the same spot on all of the desktops. I can’t remember any examples off the top of my head, but so far, all of those dialog boxes and windows were ones that I really did want to show up on all screens because I wanted to know as soon as the long-running process was over, or whatever the reason was.
My only real gripe is that I can’t click on an icon to move from desktop to desktop. Overall I give it a thumb and a half up.
February 7th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Thanks! Although you’re right, it would be really nice to have the legend thingy to switch between desktops faster. I’m thinking I’ll need something like that at work soon, hence the question.