Free Desktop Manager Reduces Clutter, Improves Work Flow

- 2006.08.11

Looking into Desktop Manager after reading an article about it, I find it to be the best tool to really produce quality work.

Think: You're writing a quarterly income report for your boss in Pages, working on the company website in iWeb (you have a lot of jobs), need to edit some photos in Gimp 2.2 or Photoshop (which depends if you feel like buying or using open source), and to top it off you have your favorite Led Zeppelin tune going (pick your band, but that's what I'm listening to at the moment).

Instead of cluttering your desktop, wouldn't it be nice to have different workspaces?

That's something we'll all gain with the Spaces feature in Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), but Desktop Manager works right now with OS X 10.3 and 10.4.

Personal Experience

At this moment, I'm running Adium X 1.0 (a beta chat client), Safari, Pages, and iTunes - all this on a 13.3" MacBook screen - and would you believe that I only have one window up without any minimizing or hiding?

If you don't, then you didn't read the first paragraph.

Desktop Manager is the perfect program for those who have a million things to do but don't own two 30" screens (wouldn't that be nice!). The program has helped me out a great deal since I downloaded it (it's free - another bonus).

I've been able to open any four programs (you can have more than four virtual desktops, but I only have four right now), and you can switch "desktops" with a simple keystroke, Option + Command + the right or left arrow.

One very cool feature is "Program per Desktop" (I made that name up; I don't know what else to call it).

Let's say I have Safari open on one desktop and Pages on another while I'm writing a report and need to look something up. Instead of switching tasks manually, if the programs are on different desktops, Desktop Manager automatically detects what is on which desktop and switches for you. Now that's convenience!

Professional Use

The ability to work on many projects at once definitely helps when planning big (I'm working on three articles at the moment). A program like this can come in handy when juggling the quarterly report, the presentation you forgot to do for the meeting in 20 minutes, maintenance to the corporate website, and the email to your wife explaining why you'll be late for dinner for the third time this week.

This is a very good program for those who juggle several things at once and have a limited workspace. That's just about everyone.

Link: Desktop Manager

Recent Advantage Mac articles

Free and low cost ways to bring some Leopard features to Macs running Tiger, 2007.10.29. You can't make Mac OS X 10.4 do everything 10.5 can, but you can get about 80% of the way there with freeware and shareware utilities.
Vintage Macs provide a less distracting writing environment, 2007.09.18. A Mac OS X user finds an old Macintosh IIsi and discovers the joy of writing undisturbed by music, messaging, and streaming content.
The GIMP, a free alternative to Photoshop, 2006.09.13. Although it's not as powerful or polished as Photoshop, the GIMP may be all the image editing software you need.
More in the Advantage Mac index.

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