ManageDesk -> Flexbeta.net review

Team Flexbeta, 28 April 2004

Introduction

ManageDesk allows you to run various desktops on your computer and easily manage them. Apart from managing each desktop can be easily customized as far as selecting a different wallpaper and name for each desktop giving the user more breathing room and multi-tasking simpler. Let’s take a quick look at some of the features and what they have to offer.

I won’t go into much detail of the installation just to mention that it is simple and straight forward.

Once the program is running, an icon showing four choices is located in the lower right hand corner of the taskbar showing the four desktop environments which are accessible. Clicking on any of the desktop icons will automatically take you to the desktop of your choice; something which definitely comes in handy when multi-tasking is what you mainly due. Right clicking on any of the desktops brings up plenty of features such as hiding or closing all windows; sleep timer with a countdown to hibernate, turn off, restart or standby your computer. There is also a presentation feature which lets you rotate the desktops according to the time settings specified by the user.

Within the Desktop Manager Settings, there are more settings and tweaking to play. The desktop manager tab shows all the current applications running on each desktop. You can right click on any individual window under any desktop and close it, or even make it transparent. Though the transparency effect caused my system to freeze for a few seconds; there may be some bugs in this feature that need to be worked out.

Options - conclusion

There is also a process viewer tab which, similar to the Windows Task Manager, enables control of each service and process currently active on your machine. You can also set keyboard strokes to do a certain task. Under the Hotkeys tab you can set hotkeys to do multiple actions such as switching to another desktop, opening a certain web page, or launching a file or document of your choice. The Auto Run tab allows you to choose programs or documents to be launched automatically on the selected desktop.

The options feature tab is one which I found very attractive. I won’t go into the desktop settings because just by looking at the screenshot and reading each one they are pretty much explanatory. The resolution setting is something which caught my eye. You can set different resolutions for different desktops. I can give you one example where this comes in handy. Many web pages are better viewed using one resolution and other pages are better viewed using a different resolution. This feature makes it possible for a user to just have to click a button and switch desktops instead of having to change the resolution every time they visit a certain web site.

If you are constantly multi-tasking on your pc and consider yourself a busy geek, then ManageDesk is right for you. It will definitely offer some breathing room and comfort. There is a free trial download available.