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Virtual Desktop suggestions?

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J-Mac:
I've used Manage Desk for a while, though I'm not using any currently - dual monitors has satisfied my desktop needs for now.  Manage Desk has most of the same features as most VD applications, but I found that it also gave me the distinct feel of actually having many desktop - with separate icons, taskbars, etc.  Small outfit, so the developer was pretty responsive most of the time, unless he was on the verge of an impending release or the like - definitely a one-man show there.

Jim

laughinglizard:
I've dug up another one, its called Multi Screen Emulator for Windows.

http://www.sicomponents.com/msew.html



Its ok, much like the one that comes with Object Desktop from Stardock.
It has a few fatal flaws for me to use it - you can't move the bar around, your only choice of position is one of the four corners of your screen.
The other is that it shows several blank, numbered desktops in addition to the ones you use.

CWuestefeld:
Following suggestions here, I've been playing with Dexpot for a few weeks now. At first it was just a toy that I wanted to play with and try out, but it's become pretty useful to me, and I thought others might me interested in how I've been using it.

For me, I've found two key advantages: protection from distractions, and protection from mangling due to resolution changes. To take advantage of this, I've set up four virtual desktops: General, Games, and Development. General holds my email, web browser, etc.; Development holds Visual Studio, MSDN docs, and related tools; games should be obvious.

Distractions - When I'm doing development I don't want to be distracted (which is, unfortunately, all too easy (ooh, look, there goes a bunny :( ). The things that can distracty me, like Outlook or Firefox, are kept away from my development desktop, so when I'm trying to concentrate, I can't notice that an email has just arrived.

Layout mangling - All work and no play makes Chris a dull boy; he needs a game once in a while. Games love to suck the display into all kinds of goofy resolutions, and when they do this, other windows get resized and shuffled around. I'm very anal about my desktop, and this drives my up the wall. By keeping games in a single desktop, and only ever starting them there, I ensure that the serious stuff in the other desktops aren't affected by resolution changes.

So this has been a pretty successful experiment and I plan to stay with it.

Darwin:
Thanks for posting your experiences with Dexpot, Chris  :Thmbsup: I might have to give it another whirl...

rssapphire:
Currently, I'm looking at VirtualBox which runs on all the OSs, but this is not true of them all. Also thinking I will make Linux the base OS since I have more confidence in its security and insulation from threats and that will be the OS most used for internet etc.
-Dormouse (November 21, 2007, 05:38 PM)
--- End quote ---

That's what I did in late October and after a few initial problems getting some KDE applets to work in Gnome (my solution, don't autostart them as autostarting them would mess up Gnome every few reboots), I found it works well. I'm running XP in VirtualBox's seamless mode. It has a few minor issues (for example, it needs something besides the taskbar displayed or it does not play well with Compitz Fusion -- I display a PowerPro minibar), but works nicely and seems faster than VMWare every was. All the XP Windows display in the same virtual desktop. You can't scatter them between virtual desktops, although I suspect you will be able to with a future version of VirtualBox.

VirtualBox doesn't do DirectX so it can't run many Windows games. I'm not much of a gamer, so this isn't an issue for me. My favorites seem to run well enough in WINE.

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