I spend a lot of time on the internet, both at home and at work. At work I'm mainly on it looking up solutions to problems, or finding out information about new software and products. At home I'm on it for fun, looking for random pages that I can enjoy. No matter where I surf the net from though, there are always three blogs that I check religiously; Gizmodo, IO9 and Lifehacker. Gizmodo is a gadget new blog, but also features other geek related news. IO9 is a sci-fi blog that covers anything related to sci-fi news. Lifehacker is a blog to help improve your life through different methods, including health tips, general how-to's and more importantly software to help make using computers easier and more fun. Most of my new software comes from articles I've read at Lifehacker, and they've even lead to a few other web-pages that I get some from also.
I was looking at some articles on Lifehacker one day and I came across an article on VirtuaWin (here). I always have multiple windows open on whatever computer I'm using, so I decided to try it out. I have been using it ever since that day, and I love it!
VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop application. It creates upto 20 separate virtual desktops. On each desktop you can have different windows open so you can organize your windows into categories, and view then separately. For example; at work I always have Outlook, Firefox, MSN Messenger, ICQ, WMP, and upto 3 different work related programs. One one desktop, the taskbar gets very cluttered and hard to find what I'm looking for. With VirtuaWin I now have one desktop for Outlook, one for Firefox, one for MSN and ICQ, one for each work program, and one for WMP, with my music list. So I can have all my programs open and maximized, without taking up tons of room on the task manager.
VirtuaWin's main control is in the taskbars notification area. Depending on how many virtual desktops you are using, it either shows up with the number of the current desktop, or a square divided into either 2 or 4, and an indication of which desktop your viewing. Double clicking on that icon brings up the setup menu, where you can customize it to what you prefer. You can control how many virtual desktops are available, and how many rows and columns they appear in by changing the X wide and X deep numbers. I find that 9 virtual desktops are adequate for my needs, and I have them setup in a 3x3 configuration. You can change that to one long line if you wish, or any other combination. That configuration defines how you will navigate through the desktops. When you first start up VirtuaWin, you need to navigate through the different desktops either using hotkeys (which can be configured in the setup menu) or right clicking on the VirtuaWin icon in the taskbar and clicking next or previous.
Once you have some windows open in different desktops, you can now use the window list to jump straight to any window in any desktop. To access the list, by default left click on the icon in the taskbar, or setup a custom hotkey for it (I have a hotkey setup for it, and have mapped the search button on my mouse to that hotkey, so I can get the list right from my mouse). The windows list has three section: Switch To, which will switch to a window in a certain desktop when clicked; Move Here, which will move any window from any desktop to the current desktop; and Always Show, which will make the selected window appear on every desktop (handy for IM conversations).
So far I havn't run into any major bugs or annoyances with VirtuaWin, although there are a few minor annoyances I've run into. I recently joined iLike and added the iLike bar to WMP. For some reason, this automatically shows up on every desktop, even though WMP doesn't. I've solved this by putting WMP to the very edge of the screen, so I can't see the iLike bar. Also, when loading up a program, you have to make sure you stay on the desktop you wish it to be on until it is fully loaded for it to stay on that desktop. A couple of programs will move desktops on me if I change to a different desktop while it is still loading, so I've had to learn to be a little bit more patient when programs load.
Overall I give this software 9 out of 10. You can learn more about VirtuaWin, and download a copy from their page here. Or, if your like me and you use different computers throughout the day, you can also get a portable version from here. Full installation instructions can be found on the page. It works exactly like the main version, but it's small enough to fit onto a USB key. Very handy!
Well, there it is, my first software review. I hope you liked it. PLease leave comments below if you found it helpful, or if you have any comments on the software. Also, leave any suggestions you might have if you thought this needed any improvments. At first I was going to try to do one review a day, but now that I have finished my first one, I think I'm going to start off a little slower, and maybe only do a couple a week and see how that goes.
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2 comments:
you can fix these "bugs" with "Windows Rules" :p been availably on Virtuwin for ages, also if you just had read the "help" file, you would have read how to fix that with "windows that wont go away"
It agree, rather useful idea
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