Help or Hindrance (TechSuperior, MultiDesk)

Member Name: aljones

Product:	TechSuperior, MultiDesk
Date:	06/03/02 (583 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Origanise youur work better

Disadvantages: Poor options dialogue

MultiDesk is a 'Virtual Screens Application'. In laymen's terms, that essentially means that it allows you to arrange all your windows onto multiple desktop spaces. For anyone who has used Linux, you'll be familiar with this concept as it is a standard part of most Linux OS's. For anyone who hasn't used Linux, let me explain. You should all be familiar with your PC's desktop, the main screen your looking at now. Most of you should have a 'task bar' at the bottom, with all your open programs listed along it. That's your desktop, the taskbar and all your open programs. But have you ever found you've opened 10 or more windows, and have got a very cluttered task bar? I know I have, as I've almost continually got about 8 windows open as a minimum, all will often have 15 or more windows floating about. By that time, the icons on the task bar are so small they are virtually useless as far as identifying the programs goes.

MultiDesk solves this. It allows you to have up to 9 desktops on your single PC. So, you can arrange all your open programs into related groups, and keep each desktop nice and clean with just 3 or 4 open programs. Now, before I go much further, some people will be thinking that if they have more than that number of programs open anyway, their computers will grind to halt. True, older systems will, but newer ones won't and will quite happily run many programs at once. The system requirements for MultiDesk to run are pretty low, and it uses only a small amount of resources, but it will only be useful to you if you have a decent PC that can run many programs at once.

OK, so that's the jist of what it does, so how does it do it? For the majority of the time, MultiDesk will sit quite happily down on your system tray. Click on it, and an options dialogue window with 5 tabs on it will appear. This is the one and only window of MultiDesk, and to be quite honest, it's not great. The tab
s don't seem to be any sort of logical order, and aren't the most accurate in describing their contents either. The button to quite MultiDesk is mysteriously hidden away under one of the tabs, rather than being out on the main part of the window. Some of the items under each time would be better placed under one of the other ones.

As far as options go, it provides pretty much all you want in such a programs. You can choose whether you want an icon for each desktop to be visible in the system tray, or just one. If you're only going to have 2 or 3 desktops, then you may well elect to have an icon for each in the tray. If you have more, you'll realise the benefit of having just one icon, as having all nine desktops represented would make the system tray truly huge. If each desktop is represented, then you just click the relevant icon to switch to that desktop. If not, then there are two other ways to switch. The first is to hold down a couple of keys (selectable in the options, I use Ctrl + Alt) and then press the number key corresponding to the desktop you want to navigate to. Alternatively, you can set the mouse buttons up so that they by clicking on the system tray icon you cycle through the desktops.

As you may have gathered, you can choose options to determine just how the program works, and in that way it's pretty good. The mouse buttons can be configured to do what you want them to do. For example, I've set it up so that left-clicking the icon brings up the options dialogue, while right-clicking scrolls upwards through the available desktops. In the options, you can also select what key combinations need to be pressed to allow you to select a new desktop by pressing the corresponding number button. A check box allows you to set MultiDesk to open when Windows starts, and another enables sounds (though personally I haven't heard a single sound from it!).

One tab lists all your open programs, listed under expa
ndable lists for each desktop. From this list you are able to move your windows from one desktop to another, though I hardly use this unless I decide the window I've just opened would be better off on another desktop.

And that's it. It doesn't do anything else. I'm not sure whether or not I like this tool or not. At the end of the day, when I was using Linux I always made use of the multiple desktop feature that came as standard, so there is no reason why I shouldn't on Windows using MultiDesk. But, to be quite honest, most of the time it sits down in my system tray with an icon that says '1'. I don't change desktops that often, and still end up with my usual 15 windows along the task bar. But it does the job, so it's got to be good, right? No, while it does the job, and does it quite efficiently, the options window is really poorly designed that does make using it a bit of a chore. I would recommend it to anyone who makes use of the facility provided by Linux and has always wanted the same for Windows, but most others would probably be wasting their time. For the record, MultiDesk is available from www.techsuperior.com. Really, make up your own mind. If you would make use of the facility, you might as well give it a go, as it does provide some basic functionality that could prove useful.

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