Ask Slashdot: Which Multiple Desktop Tool For Windows 7? 359
First time accepted submitter asadsalm writes "MacOS has spaces. Windows had no out-of-the-box utility for multiple virtual desktops. Which Multiple Desktop Tool should one use on Windows 7? Sysinternals Desktops, mdesktop, Dexpot, Virtual Dimension, VirtuaWin, Finestra are the few options that I have shortlisted." So, if you use both Windows and multiple desktops, what's your favorite method?
Desktops from SysInternals (Score:5, Informative)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881 [microsoft.com]
Seems to work pretty well and fast in my limited use.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Desktops from SysInternals (Score:5, Informative)
Plus MS owns Sysinternals so that's the closest thing to an "official" solution you're going to get.
GoScreen FTW (Score:3, Informative)
I've been using GoScreen for years and years. It is perfect.
http://www.goscreen.info/
Dexpot does everything I want out of the box. (Score:5, Informative)
For a simple system that's pretty much completely hidden from users who don't know about it, Dexpot is hard to beat. Fully configurable keyboard shortcuts for fast switching, moving and copying windows, permanent assigning of windows/programs to certain desktops, and a bunch of plugins (I don't use any of 'em, but they're there if you need/want them) for visual effects and Win7 taskbar integration and such... It's pretty slick.
And most importantly - it's blazing fast.
Re:Nvidia Drivers (Score:5, Informative)
ATI might have an answer. (Score:4, Informative)
I was looking around the Catalyst Control Center and found something called HydraVision, which to my knowledge, allows multiple desktops.
Someone who's actually used this will have to confirm though.
Re:I'm happy with VirtuaWin + two extensions (Score:5, Informative)
I'll second the recommendation for VirtuaWin. I have a Linux background, and VirtualWin lets me set things up just as well as desktops under Fedora/KDE. Features that I like include:
- ability to define your own hotkeys to swap between desktops (I like ctrl+left/right arrow)
- ability to move windows between desktops
- ability to control window behaviour (e.g. make calendar pop-ups appear on all screens and on top)
- a nice minimalist indicator in the taskbar showing which desktop is active
Windows tends to only "see" the applications on the active desktop which is sometimes good and sometimes not. Occasionally certain applications won't recognise keyboard input when you switch to another desktop, but you can click on another application and then back to make it work. Maybe this bug has been fixed n a newer version.
The best answers to questions (Score:5, Informative)
The best answer to questions often invalidate the question's assumptions. For instance (while daring hyperbole) "How can I cut down on beating my wife?" is a flawed question because it presumes that a "lesser" quantity of wife beating will make it okay.
In applicaiton to current circumstances, trying to patch a "multiple desktop" abstraction onto Windows is tehcnically probelematic because the underlying OS is -not- intended to support that modality. It can be done, but it has some very negative corner cases and it consists of making the display "lie about" the underlying condition of the system.
To compare and contrast:
Since the various windows in a X-server implementation are -factually- distinct all the way back to the OS-level process abstraction, the practical mechanics of de-realizing the window (withdrawing it from the display without destroying it) is a real, first-class operation. This is true even before considering things like staring multiple X-servers on different virtual terminals etc. That is, under linux you can make semantic -or- programatic desktops, or both, to acheive the "multiple desktop" effect.
Since Windows uses a common event queue to post information to all windows, and that event queue goes all the way to the bone in the OS (it is the same event queue that, say, asynchronous IO events are returned with), the windows cannot be de-realized, they can only be hidden. So in this case the "multiple desktops" are illusory. This may be good enough for casual work, but it is terrible if you need to actually isolate actions between the actual "desktops". One of the primary symptoms of this is that in the Windows virtual desktops, windows "on desktop X" can spontaniously reassert themselves onto whatever desktop (e.g. desktop Y) you are seeming to view. Hidden modal windows can seize things up oddly and so forth.
So while the original poster, it may safely be assumed, was being troll-like in tone, he wasn't particularly incorrect.
(Of course the identical troll, with no explination, occured to me when I read the main article... I just held it in... because someone already had it covered... 8-)
Windows Pager (Score:5, Informative)
http://windowspager.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Its a lightweight free one that stays on your taskbar, like the linux ones I am used to. You can move windows either by dragging or right-clicking on the title bar. My favourite feature is "keep on top" that I have become dependent on with my linux desktop. :)
PS to run it, just run it. To make it run every time, put a shortcut in the "startup" folder.
VirtuaWin works for me (Score:5, Informative)
I couple of years ago I was in your position. I went looking for the best Windows desktop manager. I was coming from a Linux / X world and was spoiled with my rich desktop environment, but I am stuck with my corporate laptop with Windows XP. I looked at a few multiple desktop tools and VirtuaWin was the best and most stable for me. The other tool I tried for a while was the tool from Microsoft, but it was worthless.
The features I use most are
- Switch desktop (dah!!) (using Windows Key + Left/Right)
- Move Window to another desktop (via mouse clicks on desktop tray)
- Keep window on top (via mouse clicks on title bar... very handy)
- Always show Window (via mouse click on title bar)
I don't expect much of my desktop switching tool, just that it has the above functionality. It does have one bug that crops up 2 or 3 times a year, and that's that all the windows will appear on one desktop, even hidden windows that should never be seen as a window, like desktop tray items. I am just presuming this is a VirtuaWin bug, but I can live with it.
Sometimes when a process that is linked to a window is under heavy CPU load (like Excel sometimes) VirtuaWin won't be able to handle the Window very well. I think this is more of a MS Windows problem than a VirtuaWin problem, and this issue was extremely bad with the MS Multi Desktop tool.
The developer does not seem to be making updates very frequently, but there are no features or bugs I need fixed.
Re:The best answers to questions (Score:4, Informative)
MSDN disagrees with you. [microsoft.com]
While Microsoft's implementation of multiple desktops is far from perfect it's incorrect to say they didn't intend to support it when the API is both present and clearly documented.
Furthermore, every window on Windows is associated with a desktop. I've yet to see a case where a window appeared on the wrong desktop or the input was handled incorrectly between desktops.
LiteStep (Score:5, Informative)
I am primarily a Linux user and rarely boot into Windows but when I do, I use LiteStep. Well, I used to. I only recently converted my Windows install from Windows XP to Windows 7 and haven't tried it on Windows 7 yet.
http://litestep.info/ [litestep.info]
It may not be exactly what you're looking for. It gives you an entirely different desktop look and feel. It's modeled after the NeXTSTEP desktop so if you're an AfterStep user in the Unix world, LiteStep would be the Windows equivalent. It does offer multiple desktops which was one of its primary attractions for me. It crashed like mad on Windows 98 but was rock solid for me on Windows 95 and Windows XP. The only current support for Windows 7 is in an experimental build you may want to try out. It looks like the project may have stalled but it might still be worth looking into.
Re:Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Eh? Do you actually know the slightest thing you're talking about?
The kernel is a modified Mach kernel, a descendent of BSD Unix - unlike Linux, which has no code inherited from Unix at all. The userspace is almost entirely the FreeBSD userspace, with plenty of GNU tools thrown on top. The only thing that remins from the proprietary OS released in 1984 is the overall look of it. Other than the graphics layers, OSX is very much an updated version of Next. OS1-9 were very definitely nothing to do with Unix. OSX is Unix, unlike Linux which is merely Unix-like. Sure, it doesn't use X, but X doesn't make something Unix.
Re:Mac OS X *did* have Spaces before Lion (Score:5, Informative)
You can still reorder, arrange, and configure your virtual desktops in Mission Control. Just drag and drop them into the order or arrangement you want while in Mission Control, and if you want to configure which apps appear in which desktops, just drag them onto that desktop while in Mission Control, or else go to that desktop then right-click on the icon in the Dock and set it to appear on that desktop. The only major Spaces feature I'm aware of that was dropped was the ability to arrange your desktops in a two-dimensional fashion. Mission Control only supports a line of desktops.