News :: 15MR: AltDesk (Version 1.6)

Hello all and welcome again to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s target today is AltDesk by Gladiators Software . While I am reviewing this application, keep in mind that this version I am reviewing is 1.6 and the current release is 1.7. With Giveaway of the Day’s install, you can not upgrade 1.7 either. ( I know it states in the ToS(Terms of Service) that upgrades aren’t allowed; I had to try since this is already dated software.)

As Giveaway of the Day states (In brief):

“Virtual Desktops Manager: it enables you to work on various tasks simultaneously without opening and closing application windows each time. AltDesk keeps your Desktop clean and saves your time. The program’s look can be changed by applying skins.

Modern computers’ power is enough to let you run numerous applications at the same time. You can surf the Internet, listen to the music and chat with your friends at the same time, but the more tasks you launch, the harder it gets to manage them. That’s when you might start thinking of getting the second monitor. AltDesk gives you a better choice. It creates several Virtual Desktops you can easily switch. Switching from an office application to your favorite Internet browser can be done in a blink of an eye without maximizing and minimizing numerous windows manually or switching them by means of the Taskbar. With AltDesk you can create as many Virtual Desktops as you want and switch them with ease. You don’t even need to remember, where you’ve put a certain application’s window as its icon is displayed by AltDesk. You can also easily swap tasks between Desktops, using Drag and Drop.”

Quick Pros

• Ability to change active windows handy
• Easy to setup and use
• Sticky (Read: persistent-on-all) window setup
• Lots of customization options
• Skins
• Drag and drop support for organizing
• Mouseover previewing

Quick Cons

• Doesn’t support dual monitors well
• Toolbar does not dock flick with any surface with either skin
• No option to incorporate into the taskbar as a toolbar
• No default application setup to go to different boxes on its own
• Hard flicker while changing
• Sometimes ‘pauses’ like it is thinking while changing

Expansion

This application is pretty useful. Even with my dual monitor setup, I still find I fill it too badly and start getting irritated with hunting for the right window. This application does a good job of allowing you to manage your windows into boxes with a simple drag and drop interface and keeping it simple while looking good. It does work surprisingly well, even though it irritates me that I can not dock it fully with a surface with any skin (Stays a few pixels off, more real estate unusable by me.)

The thought came to me; why could this not have been incorporated into the taskbar as a toolbar? I would have rather this than skins. The application won’t let you move it over the taskbar to clear it from the working space; However, the application is set to not move any lower than pixels above the taskbar. So I manually forced it over and found out why you can’t; Even with it being ‘Always on Top’, the taskbar still will go over it. So there went that idea.

The lack of support in the desktop images for dual screen is a bummer; This application also picks a fight with UltraMon as well. With this application wiping out my left desktop and replacing it with the right-most one on both, this application must have been directed at people with only one screen. This is confirmed with the fact that every once in a while a window is restored on the primary screen instead of the secondary screen where it was.

While the ‘Sticky’ application is great to be able to have an application up all the time (WinAmp for example), it would have been nice to be able to set the application to launch applications into a specific box and possibly even switch to that box when you do launch that application. While the mouseover feature is nice to show what each application is, it might have been good to show at least a few letters of the icon’s name or similar; wading through 5 firefox icons on 3 tabs gets more tedious than having all the windows on the taskbar without the assistance of this application. I know, you’re saying tabs are the way to go; However, when you’re working on a website, it’s easier to have side-by-side.

The two glitches I came upon is the hard flicker when changing to another box and the pausing in between changing. The flicker isn’t always there, but every once in a while it’ll flicker the windows as they change; I wonder if it is related to the pausing issue where the changing of windows will pause part way through, the longest time was almost a second. Not too big of a deal right now, but for a productivity freak looking to use this to speed their work will find the pausing issue an irritant.

Final Verdict (Version 1.6)

As I must note, the giveaway today is outdated. 1.7 of this application is out already and 1.8 beta is available as well. My peeve is that 1.7 has been out since September of 2006, I do feel that this was intentional. I tried to move to that version so that I could review the differences as well, however I couldn’t upgrade and I won’t review ‘evaluation’ software. I have been looking around their website and I can’t find a specific changelog to see if some of my concerns have been worked on. Parusing the forums, it seems that people state some of the same features I’d want in reference to 1.7, so I assume that there some of my issues have not been resolved by the new version; How many, I do not know.

Based on my experience with this application, I have mixed emotions on it. It is likely to be uninstalled from my system even though it is what I need. The fact that we’re given an old version to evaluate, try, and to ‘future upgrade’, it appears we’d have to upgrade out the door to be current. While this version is great, this application actually seems to bring down my productivity and irritated me about the docking and the fact that it uses my precious real estate.

On the flipside, I do see its benefits. If you can get over the smaller issues or they aren’t an issue to you at all, I would say get it while its free. $15.00 is really not a bad price at all if you had to buy it later with the hopes that 1.7 is better. The productivity increases, especially if you could get it out of your working space, would be great.

Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, February 21, 2007