Best Free Virtual Desktop for Vista?

So I just bumped into this foreign concept called a virtual desktop that sounds perfect for my ADHD style of computing. Finally a way to separate my business from my pleasure and one thought from another.

Any opinions on the best free virtual desktop program for vista. I often work with a second monitor so something that has some kind of dual monitor configuration would be great (but not a deal breaker).


PS
I really know nothing about virtual desktops so any information to enlighten me would be appreciated

 

Microsoft has one called Vista & XP Virtual Desktop. It has a full screen Expose type switcher for switching desktops. It also allows you to hotkey and even have different wallpapers.

 

I believe hes referring to Virtual/Multi-desktop like compiz-fusion. Allows you to have 4 desktops which you can switch too.

Theres a few windows equivalents but not as good as compiz. Check out CubeDesktop

 

Stardock has a few desktop and mac like tweaks worth checking out.

 

You could try the Virtual Desktop Manager XP Power Toy. It lets you have up to four desktops (maybe more - haven't played with it much) just like you can in many Unices. This one is designed for XP in particular, but it's free and from Microsoft. I've never heard one way or another if the XP Power Toys actually work on Vista, so it's worth a try (though it does say "Checking Operating System Version.

FYI, virtual desktops basically means you have the main desktop, and then a little icon on the taskbar where you can click on a number 1-4 to jump to another desktop. You can open programs on each desktop to seperate your work or just not have to deal with overlapping windows so much. Quite handy actually. Here's a few screenshots...



Here I'm on desktop 1, which has Opera open. The programs on the taskbar are on multiple desktops. Note that there's a box around the "1" on the taskbar.



And here I've clicked on the "2" and am now on Desktop 2, where I have Calculator and SkiFree open (which is now a free Microsoft game btw, for all Windows versions since at least 3.0). If I were to click on the Opera tab on the taskbar at this point, Windows would bring Opera over to desktop 2 for me - many Unices would just take you to the Opera instance in desktop 1 instead (thus automatically switching which desktop you were on). Either way it can be quite handy.

I don't actually use virtual desktops much in Windows, but I do quite often in Unix/Linux. Never used dual monitors though, so can't say much about that, but the basic concept is getting the space you'd have with multiple monitors while only actually having one physical monitor.

Stardock may have something better - they're a good company that actually cares about customers at any rate, one I'd certainly do business with (I have bought one of their games).

 

Which is the powertoy has the same functionality. I haven't tried it on a multi monitor setup. I only use it on my laptop. time to try it out.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried vista/xp virtual desktop and didn't really like it so I went to youtube and searched around. Right now I'm running CubeDesktop which looks really cool but seems to have a couple bugs. There are 2 other desktop views and one window viewer. There are a lot of customizable options although I wish there were a couple more. Here's a screen cap of the program at work.