Review: Dexpot makes virtual desktops feel like a native part of Windows - lupientorty1994

At a Peek

Expert's Rating

Pros

Fast and responsive
Free for personal use
Very configurable

Cons

Nary quick-search in Window Catalogue mode

Our Finding of fact

If you're banal of constantly minimizing, maximizing, and resizing Windows, you need to try Dexpot nowadays.

Large screen background workstations ofttimes consume more than enough sort real-estate: One operating room two 24-inch monitors afford mint of room for a deputation-critical application, plus individual chat or email windows alongside. Only if you're a laptop user high by with a single 15-inch monitor (or perhaps something even small), a virtual desktop might be the next best thing to an extra Monitor. Dexpot (25 Euros, which is $33 on 2/21/12; free for personal habit) is a great way to get yourself one. Or quintet.

Dexpot's taskbar plugin lets you control virtual desktops without having to use a extraordinary window.

If I had to describe Dexpot in one give-and-take, I'd peck "customizable." I can buoy't think of a single aspect of Dexpot you bottom't custom-make: the vivification (or deficiency thereof) utilised to switch betwixt virtual desktops, the number of desktops, hotkeys and tropic corners for switch desktops using keyboard and mouse, whether or not a virtual desktop spans all your monitors are just one, and the list goes happening.

When an application decides to go all-out on customization, the upshot is usually bloat. Dexpot tries to let you eat your bar and birth it, too, by compartmentalizing features into plug-ins you hind end enable or disable as you prefer. Disable the animations add-i, and sure adequate, the animations go gone—and so do the options for controlling them. So not only can you customize the options to your liking, you can customize whether or not the options are even in that respect to Begin with.

Using practical desktops productively is a enlightened skill. That's because it's a paradox: A GUI assumes being able to find out your applications. Hide them in an imaginary desktop, and you mightiness well bury to follow back to them later. To surmount this, Dexpot includes visual hints keeping the virtual desktops and the applications they contain in view. Rightful to form, Dexpot offers several so much features, ranging from a tiny indicator in the system tray showing the number of the background you're on, through a heavyset desktop switcher improved into the Windows taskbar, all the way to an Exposé-like feature that tiles your screen with scaled-down versions of all Windows from entirely desktops, so you can well click the one you desire without having to think what desktop it's on (you can't nettle it by typing its title, though). There's likewise a full-screen preview mode, subdividing the screen into severalize desktops which you can and so haul windows 'tween.

The Chockful-Cover Preview mode zooms verboten so you buns view all realistic desktops on one physical screen and drag windows around.

When relegating a window to another essential desktop, some users prefer to have it vanish from the Alt-Tab task switcher and taskbar; others prefer to have it stay on that point. Dexpot leaves this up to you, making it easy to experiment.

The Window Catalog is similar to Exposé connected the Mac, putt miniatures of all of your windows happening the screen in real time.

Dexpot's staggering array of plug-ins and powdery form options substance that to benefit from the covering you need simply agree with its basic preface, that realistic desktops give the axe be a useful affair. The rest is negotiable, flexible, and adjustable.

If you've got a keyboard shortcut obsession, Dexpot would personify happy to accommodate your every whim.

Being able to customize everything means you might have to experiment with Dexpot for some time, until you hit a combination of settings that make sense for you. Simply if you take the meter to do this, you might realize that a single 15-inch supervise is not so small afterward all.

Bill: The Download button on the Product Entropy page volition download the software to your scheme.