Filed under: Business, Developer, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Mods
Three productivity boosters for Windows
by Victor Agreda, Jr. May 15th 2006 at 10:35AM
The first two fall under "taskbar enchancements," and the last is a nifty new virtual desktop manager. One of my biggest pet peeves in Windows is the management of the taskbar. First, I should be able to reorder the items in the taskbar. Enter Taskbar Shuffle, which allows you to simply drag-and-drop the items as you see fit. What a concept! Now even if I've got Photoshop lined up first (even though it was last, as it took longest to launch), I've still got IE with a dozen little windows minimized, crawling across the bottom of my screen, with no idea what's going on in each window. So I use Visual Task Tips to show me a preview. It's a light shell enhancement that lets me mouse over an item in the taskbar, and it pops up a teensy preview window. That helps more than you may realize until you start using it. Finally, when the taskbar won't cut it, there's always shifting around to different desktops entirely. Dexpot (sent in by Arun K.) is a great desktop manager in a field full of such beasts. Dexpot will manage up to 20 virtual desktops, and it does it quite well. Between these three tools I've significantly improved my workflow because I no longer have to hold things in my own brain as a sort of temporary RAM. Instead, I just dump everything into the computer in real-time, and let the computer manage the data. I can scan through what I'm working on faster as a result. All of these are free, although Dexpot requires a license if you use it in a business environment.[Taskbar tools found on digg and digg]
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
smurf781 said 11:09AM on 5-15-2006
1. Does Dexpot support multiple screens properly? Couldn't find that vital info on their web site - it's in German.
2. Is there an English version? All the screenshots are in German too.
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Richard said 11:57AM on 5-15-2006
I found a lot of similarly-useful little apps on this blog post:
http://chris.pirillo.com/blog/_archives/2006/5/6/1937847.html
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resource said 12:59PM on 5-15-2006
Why would you have multiple IE tabs open?
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dice1976 said 3:20PM on 5-15-2006
This is such a great post!! Thanks for finding these. Dexpot could be the best software (freeware) ever. I don't know how I lived with out it! Thanks lifehacker
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Matidio said 3:43AM on 5-16-2006
http://tomo.panicode.com/index.php?Software%2FTaskbarEx%2FEnglish
does both: Taskbar Shuffle and Visual Task Tips and it's free.
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Claudiu Spulber said 3:49AM on 5-16-2006
"Why would you have multiple IE tabs open?"
You're ignoring the fact that about 90% of the browser market is still under the IE influence.
Thanks for the utilities, they increase indeed web-productivity.
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tush said 11:38AM on 5-16-2006
"You're ignoring the fact that about 90% of the browser market is still under the IE influence."
Isn't that so sad?
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techknight said 1:36AM on 5-19-2006
How could we miss TaskSwitchXP Pro 2.0!
http://open-source.onestop.net/2006/05/taskswitchxp-pro-20_15.html
And Launchy
http://open-source.onestop.net/2006/04/launchy.html
And more...
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