Real Desktop Standard

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on December 19, 2011

We like our computer desktop like we like our actual, physical desktop: tidy, well-organized, and nice to look at. As such, we don't have a lot of patience for desktop enhancements that mess with the familiar look and feel of our virtual workspace; as far as we're concerned, things are fine the way they are. These types of programs keep coming, though, and we keep trying them out, hoping against all odds for one that really will enhance our desktop. Unfortunately, Real Desktop Standard is not the one. It's innovative and has some interesting features, but once the novelty wore off, there wasn't much about it that we really liked.

The easiest way to explain Real Desktop Standard is to compare it with a three-dimensional room in which all your desktop icons are laid out on the floor. The "walls" of the room contain links to the publisher's Web site and online tutorial videos, though we couldn't get them to load. The user's perspective of the room can be shifted using the camera feature. The graphics aren't of particularly high quality, and our icons appeared pixelated and somewhat washed out. In many ways, the program features like a normal desktop, letting users move files around, place them in the Recycle Bin, and so on. But we weren't crazy about the fact that folder names were invisible unless we moused over them; if there was a setting to change that, we didn't come across it. A so-called mini tutorial provides menus for Control, Selection, File operation, and Changing the camera, although the User Manual button didn't seem to do anything. Overall, there was nothing blatantly wrong with Real Desktop Standard, but it didn't do much to impress us, either.

Real Desktop Standard installs a desktop icon without asking but uninstalls cleanly.