Three Options for Virtual Desktops on Windows
Posted on August 14, 2007
17 Comments
Sometimes, one desktop just isn’t enough. When adding more monitors isn’t an option, look at virtual desktops instead. Working on multiple projects or tasks at once? Tossing each in its own virtual desktop to help reduce clutter and logically group apps/windows together can help keep you productive.
Here are three for the Windows users that people might find interesting. I should note, in the windows world, I’m still running XP. I’ve no clue how these stand-up in the Vista world.
VirtuaWin
I’ve been running this one on my laptop for the past week. At first, I absolutely hated it, but after getting used to it I’ve grown to like it.
The key, for me, was getting used to its window list and what can be done from it.
(click for a clearer picture)
See, at first I was annoyed that I couldn’t drag a window or application from one virtual desktop to another. Turns out, that’s what the “Assign” section there is used for.
The fact that it takes about 5MB of memory is nice — and you can have up to 9 virtual desktops. A nice feature is that moving the mouse to the edge of the screen will transition you to the neighboring virtual desktop.
Virtual Desktop Manager
Here’s a classic that I’ve used on quite a few machines over the years. It is part of the Microsoft Power Toys collection, which is another way of saying, “neat, free and totally unsupported.”
The ability to have a different background in each virtual desktop is a feature that I find useful.
Tip: Don’t set the backgrounds via the display control panel. Instead, you’ll need to do it via the virtual desktop manager toolbar menu (Configure Desktop Images).
With this VDM, you can have have any number of desktops that you’d like, as long as you’d like 4. You’ll get a new toolbar to add to your taskbar with a button for each. There’s also a button that will give you a tiled preview of all 4 sessions — handy if you’re looking for an app.
I haven’t a clue as to the memory footprint of this one as it’s a bit more than “just” an application to find in the task list. The ability to set distinctive backgrounds and tile desktops makes this a favorite of mine.
Virtual Dimension
Finally, I’ll mention one that I haven’t used — yet. A co-worker swears by it, so it’s something I intend to try soon. In fact, after glancing at the features, it almost appears to be a combination of the other two I’ve used.
Unlimited desktops, there’s a preview and desktops can have custom wallpaper.
Anyone have thoughts to share on this one? I notice the last version was July of ‘03, but hey… if it’s as complete as it looks, I guess that shouldn’t scare me off, true? There’s that beta from May of 2006 on the downloads page as well.
How about other options? I see tons more listed for Windows at the wikipedia virtual desktops page.
Tags: desktop, PowerToys, virtual-desktop, Virtual-Dimension, VirtuaWin, Windows
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17 Responses to “Three Options for Virtual Desktops on Windows”
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Uhm….<debates with himself> …uhm…<debates some more with himsef>
You could use linux instead, where virtual desktops are part of nature, even when in non-GUI mode
<runs away laughin’, happy that he won the debate with himself>
I second the use Linux option. I use Ubuntu pretty much full time, and I love the built in multiple desktops. Although I would love to see some of the features that you are refering to built into the virtual desktop functionality. Especially the application preview(Ubuntu does a very basic version of this), and diferent backgrounds for each desktop. Although that has become less of an issue with compiz-fusion and the virtual desktops on a cube. That makes checking what is open on each desktop pretty easy.
There was a reason I put “on Windows” in the title of this post.
i like also more the linux option
Only one thing for it… time to spray for penguins, obviously there’s an infestation.
lol, Rich!
@Nathan: There’s an Expose-like thing for KDE and another one for gnome, you can surely find them…I think the one for KDE is on kde-apps.org but am not completely sure. And if you like 3d desktops, metisse has an even better way to do it than either Compiz or Beryl.
@Chris: Sure, you put “on Windows” there…but you are not going to tell me you expected a post like this to happen without at least me bouncing in with “use linux”, did you?
I would love to have 2 monitors, but until then thanks for the links, I like the Virtual Dimension one
@Vox, amazing what we’ll do to get folks to comment, isn’t it?
@eve - you’re welcome! Thanks for stopping by.
I have two monitors… So there is no need for a virtual desktop!
Hmm.. not bad, nice article & options, but I’m not really interested in virtual desktops and that kind of thing. I’ve got enough to deal with already
So if I replace my Windows XP with Linux I get virtual desktops for free. Great!
Now can someone please explain to me how I get Outlook, Visual Studio, IE, IIS and SQL-server to work in Linux? I need those tools to do my work as a developer.
Or maybe I should just just Linux at home. Can someone explain to me how I get Half-Life 2, Bioshockm Crysis and Call of Duty 4 to run under Linux?
I’m actually half serious here. I really would like to try Linux.
Good questions David. In some cases, you can’t — you look for alternatives. In other cases you dabble with VMware Client (free) and/or WINE.
Gaming is the tough one though…
Shame on me: I forgot Cedega (http://www.cedega.com/) Worth a look for the gamers.
I agree that there are some apps that it are hard to give up. I use vmware server or virtualbox( i would recomend vmware server for your case) which are both free. I couldn’t live without outlook. We use Exchange and Evolution only comes so close and Outlook 2007 raised the bar that much higher. Installing XP in vmware server is really wuote easy and it runs really well.
As for games, there are lots of posts on getting games to work in linux. some work some don’t, sometimes you need cedega. If that is something you really do a lot of a dual boot is a great option that will allow you to use linux for your day to day work, and windows for gaming.
Good luck.
In Virtuawin you can enable under the “Mouse” tab “Enable mouse desktop changing”, which allows you to drag windows to other desktops. It works more intuitively if you also enable “Mouse warping” so that the cursor (and window) arrives on the connecting side of the new desktop.
As you note, you can also just use the assign function as well.
The crappy thing about the Powertoy application is that if you have your taskbar positioned on the right or left (like myself) it becomes *very* thick in order to show the four virtual desktop taskbar icons laid out in their horizontal fashion. It should position them vertically, or have the option to do so. I don’t like a super thick taskbar on the side.
Virtuawin has tons more (useful) options than the Powertoy app. I don’t know about the other ones. I don’t really have the need to use anything other than Virtuawin. Also, you may use hidden desktops that do not show up in the tray icon, which are accessed by your own definable hotkey. Very nice.