Computer Tip – Virtual Desktop Manager

Do you find that you quite often have more than one application open on your desktops at a time, or perhaps even as many as five, six or seven applications open. The ideal situation would be to have two monitors, but the downside of that is (a) space on your desktop and (b) the price of a second monitor.

With a single monitor, you can tile your applications on a desktop; navigate between applications by pressing alt/tab several times to find the application you need or an alternative to those options is installing the Virtual Desktop Manager. Desktop Manager is a free download from Microsoft for XP computers.

After installing Desktop Manager, enable it by right clicking on the taskbar and selecting Desktop Manager. Once it is active you will see a series of new buttons or tabs on the taskbar. Each of these buttons, from 1 through 4, represents an independent virtual desktop. Click on any of the buttons to switch between desktops.

Now, why would you want more than one desktop? You can keep different applications on each desktop, switching between the desktops to activate each desktop separately. Think of Embird on one desktop, perhaps a video tutorial on Embird on another desktop, your e-mail program on another desktop, making it much easier to toggle between applications. Each desktop can be customized with their background wallpaper so you will quickly know by just looking at the desktop which one it is. You cannot change the wallpaper for the virtual desktops through display properties. The correct way is to right click the MSVDM within the taskbar/configure desktop images and follow the prompts to specify a different background image for each desktop.

Another quick tip is that if you do not want all open applications displayed on the taskbar of each desktop and you would prefer to keep each desktop completely separate, it can be done by right clicking MSVDM and de-select the shared desktops option.

Finally, if you are a keyboard person, MSVDM/configure shortcut keys options will allow you to define your own custom keystroke combinations for each desktop.

If you are using Vista, there is also a virtual desktop manager available.   For more information on the Vista virtual desktop manager, please click here.