windows 7 wednesday tip – desktops.exe

mark russinovich and bryce cogswell published desktops v1.0 just over a year ago.  i recently tested it on a non production windows 7 computer (my trusty netbook) and it worked well with a couple interesting exceptions:

1) the virtual desktops didn’t have the full aero effects (thumbnails were previewed using the windows basic scheme – although aero snap seemed to work ok)

2) alt + tab didn’t seem to be working

3) up to 3 virtual desktops are available

4) the program runs in the notification area but doesn’t have an “exit” function

other than these issues the program allowed me to organize various programs on separate virtual desktops and switch between them using configurable hotkeys.

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right clicking on the desktops icon and clicking options allow some basic functions to be configured

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hopefully a version that supports windows 7 will be released, but if you can’t wait and want to experiment it runs on windows 7 and is a single exe so it’s easy to remove (delete desktops.exe – that’s it!)

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881.aspx