Pros
This is by far the best Virtual Screen Manager I've used for Windows. It's as good if not better than ones used in Linux.
Cool Features:
1. You can mouse hover over a desktop to see a tool tip of windows on that desktop.
2. You can right click on a desktop button and see all the windows in that desktop. You can then drag a program from one desktop to another.
3. Alt + Tab will only show you the Windows open for the current desktop you are on.
4. A desktop button will flash when a window on that desktop is calling for attention (maybe a pop up appeared).
5. It stays on top of all other windows.
Cons
There are a couple of minor bugs.
1. I've had it all of the sudden start switching desktops on me as I type. I then realized that somehow it's getting confused with the hotkeys for switching desktops. I had to change the hot keys to really obscure ones to prevent it from happening.
2. It'll sometimes get confused when dealing with programs like Excel. If you have Excel already open on a desktop other than the one you are on, and then you open another Excel file on a different desktop, it'll attempt to have it open on both and it just doesn't work.
3. If you switch screen resolutions to a smaller one, it will then be off screen and then only way to get it back is to switch to a larger screen resolution. This can be a little annoying when dealing with Remote Desktop/Terminal Services when the machine your terming into has a higher resolution than the one you are coming from.
These are somewhat minor bugs though and you can easily work around them.
Download it and buy it from the author. At $10 he is being VERY reasonable and with enough sales, maybe he'll fix those bugs.
Pros
It is a great tool for people who like to have lots of programs open at the same time but don't want a cluttered desktop and it is very easy to use.
Cons
Somehow it has managed to locate itself at the top of my screen with only the 5 desktop tiles visible and I am therefore unable to get to the options, close it or move it! Has anyone experienced this or can anyone help??
Read reply (1)
Reply by Kulero on July 23, 2010
1. Kill VSM using the Task Manager.
2. In regedit, navigate to HKCU\Software\ArmenM\VSM. Key MainWndPos is 16-bytes with 4-bytes (little endian) each for X1,Y1,X2,Y2 where point 1 is upper left and point 2 is lower right, relative to the upper left of the Primary monitor. Change this to all 0's. (Or 0,0,Width,Height ; you'll have to compute Width,Height). Be sure to leave exactly 16 bytes.
3. Launch VSM. It should appear at upper right of your Primary monitor. You'll need to resize it if you used all 0's. Move it back to where you want it.
Summary
Having never used a application such as this before, I cannot compare it to others of it's like. However, I find it to be very useful, easy to understand (learn) and use it each time I boot up the computer.
Summary
Good overall - easy to use and stable. Just a few wishes to make it excellent: a) the desktop switch window should be integrated into the taskbar. I'd rather not have another floating window cluttering space! (see IE programming techniques); b) hotkeys sometimes misbehave. Can we hope on that in ver. 3.0?
Summary
This virtual descktop works fine and fast on W2000, only has one problem: the hot keys only accepts CTRL, ALT or SHIFT, with some programs like Ultra Edit, don't work fine, perhaps the WINDOWS key for the next version will be configurable ?
