Eleven months ago I looked at three options for Virtual Desktops for Windows machines. Shortly afterwards I switched to Vista and never pursued (nor needed) to explore virtual desktop options. I basically just forgot about the whole thing and moved on (I do that all too often, really)
Since then, however, I’m back to XP for work (read more on that). I’ve also been quite busy lately with a wide variety of projects and tasks – lots of remote sessions to Windows and Linux machines, code editing, database management, etc. Often all going on at once.
Earlier this week I decided that getting some virtual desktop action going again would only be helpful to help contain some of my desktop chaos. I get a bit freaked out when I have too many windows all open at once.
A quick look at last year’s article and related sites showed me that only one of the options is still under development: VirtuaWin. So I downloaded and installed it a few nights ago to have another look.
In general I liked it but it just wasn’t “gelling” with me. I couldn’t figure out what exactly I was missing but it didn’t take me long to realize I was still making a big pile of windows/apps on one desktop and not realizing any benefits.
I uninstalled it earlier tonight and started looking for other options.
Fifteen minutes later I reinstalled it – my other options involved using some of the available VirtuaWin add-on modules to address what I was looking for. I forgot to check those first.
Three modules have got me re-hooked:
- SwitchDesk – This one allows me to customize the desktop in each session. This really helps me stay aware of where I’m at and what I should be doing in a given session
- vwPager – a nice light-weight pager module. Not overly fancy, but gives a quick way to see what’s up where and click to switch sessions. It can be a bit quirky to move around though…
- VWDesktopIcons – Customize desktop icon displays per session. For instance, I have one session that I “reserve” for Linux management and on that one I keep the Cygwin and Xming shortcuts. No need to have those showing up on all the sessions.
Will I still be using this in a month? Who knows! But today I’m infatuated.
Oh, did I mention how much I love the “bump switching” option? Just bump the mouse on the screen edge and a short delay later it has toggled over to the neighbor session. That, combined with the “mouse warping” option has me doing most of my sessions swapping with the mouse.
When using virtual desktops, how do you arrange yours? In a line or in a grid? I’ve always done a 2×2 grid, but right now I’m trying 1×4 just to see how that goes… not really sure it makes a difference except with my mouse navigating I have more screen to roll through to get from one end to the other.
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July 23rd, 2008 
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On my desktop, I usually do a grid 2 rows of 4 or 6 (ie. 8 or 12 vdesks total, depending on what I’m doing)
On my laptop, a single row of 6 vdesks.
Mostly, because when I’m on the laptop all I do is work stuff, and when I’m on my desktop, I do work and personal stuff at the same time
And I don’t do mouse navigation between vdesks, I use keyboard shortcuts (Shift+alt+arrow) to move around…then again, I avoid the mouse as much as I can.
8 or 12 vdesks?!? I’d feel obligated to have something running on all of them and then never find it again
Wow!
Good point on the keyboard shortcuts. I should’ve mentioned that too. For virtuaWin the winKey-arrow combos work great to go through the virtual desks.
But bump switching is cool when I’m dragging a window over to the “next door” session (but yeah, there are keyboard shortcuts for that too)
Pingback
Nice to read that my module (vwPager) helped you get re-hooked.
) And the quirky moving around will be fixed in the next release; I’ve had too many comments about that.
I’m sure VirtuaWin will stay installed; I’ve been using it for several years now.
Ingo
@Ingo – yep, I’m still using VirtuaWin daily. Loving it and your vwPager helps quite a bit (can’t wait for the moving around fixes though!).
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I use virtuaWin mainly for remote desktops. Is there a keyboard shortcut to switch when you are inside a remote desktop session? Windows+Arrows won’t work obviously.