The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

Was looking for opinions on multiple desktop switching applications.
Current portable contenders are:

Dexpot 2.22 MB

VirtuaWin 203KB

Yod'm 3D 6MB

Monitors 666KB

BossKey 14KB

I just tried the new portable version of Dexpot, and was impressed, so I gave BossKey a go and to be honest I'm gonna stick with BossKey as it does what it says on the tin and is so damn small!

Any other opinions/suggestions...

Really depends on what you're trying to do. Mix Dexpot Portable with Toolbox and you have your own portable desktop, which you can switch to and password-protect at any time (Toolbox didn't work as well with other virtual desktop programs like Virtuawin).

i ran bosskey for about a hour, then it crashed. i did everything in my power to switch back to my other desktop which had an unsaved document in it. nothing worked. i've not gone back since.

just thought i'd throw that out there...

garbanzo wrote:i ran bosskey for about a hour, then it crashed. i did everything in my power to switch back to my other desktop which had an unsaved document in it. nothing worked. i've not gone back since.

just thought i'd throw that out there...

Cheers for the info, def. worth knowing.

I Love Yodm3d! The way it moves from one desktop to the other is awesome. That being said I have had a few problems with it. The problem being the exact same as what Garbonzo mentioned about BossKey. I use Office 2007 @work and something about Outlook 07 is it seems to hate Yodm3d after I have been idle for a while and my screensaver comes on. However with Yodm3d, everything returns to my desktop if I go to task manager and Kill the Yodm3d process. However, enough is enough and I can only take so much of that at work, so I switched to VirtuaWin only on my work PC. I have never had a problem with it. Even when I don't restart my computer for weeks. VirtuaWin isn't as pretty, but it always works. Even on some slower PC's I have tried it on like my EEEPC 701 runing Windows XP.

Ok, think I'll give VirtuaWin a shot.

I vaguely remember something similar to what you (Ameri-CAIN) experienced with Yod’m 3D, enough to put me off at the time at least.

do the same job, "desktop switching" I am using virtual PC. its free and very easy to use.
Try it.

Cheers!

freewareking101 wrote:do the same job, "desktop switching" I am using virtual PC. its free and very easy to use.

Interesting observation, but desktop switchers and virtual machine systems (like virtual PC) are really intended as solutions to quite different problems. desktop switchers are aimed at the issue of desktop clutter and having a number of open applications running concurrently. Virtual machines are aimed at having multiple, independent machines. The memory and performance requirements of virtual machines are significantly higher than those of a desktop switcher. Also, a lot less setup is required to implement a new application window under a desktop switcher than a virtual machine system.

You missed DM2, which comes with a virtual desktop plugin. Not entirely sure why you'd want multiple desktops with DM2 since the float icons eliminate clutter in the best possible way (can't use windows without it when you get used to it). BBLean also has virtual desktops built into it, but that's a shell replacement and might be overkill if you want to keep explorer around.