One big difference between Windows and Linux is Windows has only one desktop, and Linux KDE environment has a few. For example KDE comes default with four desktops and can have up to twenty. But in Windows, it can only have one until you use third party software to do that. The good thing about having multiple virtual desktops is you can organize your running application better by reading email on one, browse the web on the second, do your work on the third and etc. I’d say that one of the most popular tool for Windows is Sysinternals Desktops because it is very small in size and takes very little memory usage.
Here’s another tool that one called DeskHedron recommended by one of the forum member Ismail which switches the desktop by using 3D effect. At first I thought it was another virtual desktop creator but the 3D effect really got me impressed.
When you run DeskHedron, you will only see a tray icon at the notification area. Right clicking on the icon will only allow you to add (up to 9 virtual desktops max), remove virtual desktops, and go to the next or previous desktop. A better way would be using the hotkey Ctrl + Shift + Z to enter into 3D view. Then you can either use the mouse wheel or left and right cursor to switch between the virtual desktops. As attractive as it is, it can only run on Windows 2000 and XP and doesn’t support multi monitor environment.
There are some things that you need to take note of. Let’s say you run DeskHedron, the first virtual desktop is running Firefox, second desktop running Outlook and third desktop running uTorrent. If you are at second desktop and you terminate DeskHedron, all running programs in first and third desktop will be temporarily gone. If you want to retrieve all of them back, just run DeskHedron again and the original desktop with running programs will appear. Now if you switch screen, your second desktop is still there. As for the third one, you’ll need to add another desktop and it will automatically retrieve back what was previously running in third virtual desktop.
Although DeskHedron takes very little memory usage, but it runs an additional explorer.exe whenever you add another virtual desktop. Even removing the extra virtual desktop and terminating DeskHedron doesn’t seemed to release the running explorer.exe. So do you use virtual desktops? Do share with me which one is your favorite.
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