Tutorial: Using multiple Windows desktops with Dexpot

Using multiple Windows desktops: Steps 1-8

Multiple Windows desktops don't have to mean multiple computers. Dexpot emulates features built in to Linux operating systems and OS X, and splits your machine up into a number of distinct workspaces.

You might do your accounts on one, your art on another, your filing on a third. However you choose to use them, you'll be more efficient than before.

This method keeps all your windows and applications separate and neat, but doesn't restrict you. Just as with real desks, you're free to take work from one and put it on another, or move one out of the room if you find you don't really need that much space.

Using multiple Windows desktops with Dexpot will make your life so much easier, you'll wonder why you didn't give it a try sooner.

1. Run the installer

First, double-click the Dexpot install package to get things started, and click 'Yes' if the User Account Control window appears. Click 'OK' to select English as your language, then the installation wizard will start. Remember to close any other programs you have open to make sure the installation process goes smoothly.

2. Complete the wizard

The wizard makes installation a breeze. Click 'Next', click 'I accept' on the licence agreement page, then click the check box to confirm that you'll be using Dexpot for private purposes. Click 'Next' twice, select 'Do not install Internet Explorer 9' (unless you want to for some masochistic reason) then click 'Install'.

3. Your first run

Once the files have been installed, click 'Finish' and Dexpot will run automatically. It might look like nothing has happened, but on Windows 7 you should be able to see a blue Dexpot icon with a number 1 on it – click it once and you'll see the set of four independent desktops that are installed by default.

4. Activate SevenDex

During our tests, we discovered that restarting made that fancy icon disappear. So restart your PC, run Dexpot, and see if it comes back. If not, check the system tray, right-click the blue 'Dexpot' icon, click 'Settings', select 'Plugins and extras', and then check the box next to 'SevenDex' to switch it back on.

5. Alternative switcher

You don't have to use SevenDex to flit between your litany of desktops – indeed, you can't if you're running Windows XP or Windows Vista. The alternative is nestling in that tray icon we used earlier – right-click it, then click Desktop Manager to bring up a custom overlaid desktop switcher. You'll need to use this in the following steps if you can't access SevenDex.

6. Switching desktops

It's time for a quick test of Dexpot's functionality: click on the taskbar icon, then the second desktop in the set. You'll see the number on the Dexpot icon change to '2' to indicate you're now on Desktop 2. Run any program – your web browser, for example – then click the Dexpot icon and switch back to the first desktop. The browser, and its taskbar icon, has disappeared.

7. Moving programs

Only it hasn't really disappeared. That's sort of the point of multiple desktops. Click the icon, then click desktop 2 andyou'll see that your browser is still open, it's just filed on the second screen. To quickly move it to the first desktop, just hold down [Alt]and [Shift], and press the number key that corresponds to the desktop you want the window to go to.

8. Quick switching

Clicking icons to jump between desktops can be a bit clumsy. The default keyboard shortcut for quick movement is [Alt] and [x], where x is the number of the desktop you wish to switch to. You can hit [Windows]+[W] to bring up a handy visual desktop switcher, or [Windows]+[Q] to hunt down a particular application among all of your active desktops. We find the latter shortcut particularly handy.

Using multiple Windows desktops: Steps 9-16

9. Background information

Time to add some flair to your desktops and personalise each one. First, let's tell Dexpot that we want to look after each background individually. Right-click the icon, click on 'Configure desktops', select the desktop on the left that you want to personalise, then click the Background tab. Click 'Browse', then agree to enabling background configuration by choosing 'Yes'.

10. Choose your wallpaper

Now you need to dig out the background you want to use. You can use something from your Pictures folder, or hunt down the Windows default backgrounds – you'll find them in C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper. Repeat the process for each of your desktops for a unique look. It might help to use textures or images appropriate to different tasks.

11. See everything

It's quite possible to get a bit lost if you're using many desktops at once. The full-screen preview is a useful tool for getting an overall view of what's going on. Press [Windows] and [F3] at the same time to bring up a fancy grid showing you the current contents of all your current desktops. Now you just need to click on one of the desktops to bring it to the front.

12. More desktops

Four desktops not enough? Fine! You can have up to 20 desktops running at any one time, or reduce the number if it suits you. Right-click the Dexpot icon, left-click on 'Settings', then make sure 'General' is selected on the left. The number of desktops can be chosen in the uppermost box. While it's certainly possible to run 20 desktops, it can get a little draining on the hardware, so choose carefully.

13. Using the cube

Stay in the Settings window, click 'Plugins and settings', then tick the box next to DexCube. This implements a cool plug-in that pretties up the way your desktops switch – try moving left and right between your desktops using [Ctrl] and [Alt] and arrow keys to see the fancy 3D effect in action. Yes, Linux users have had this sort of thing for years so it's not new, but it's still rather nice.

14. Taskbar tweaking

If you're using Windows 7, you can make the most of empty space on your taskbar to display a quick at-a-glance preview of your desktops, complete with representations of the open windows. In the same Settings menu as before, just switch on Taskbar Pager – click and drag icons on it to move them between desktops.

15. Find a window

The problem with all these desktops is that organisation can go too far, and things can go missing. Hit [Windows]+[F2] to bring up the Window Catalogue, right-click on the desktop name at the top, then click All desktops to show all your open windows – click the one you want to go immediately to its desktop. OS X users will recognise this as a clever facsimile of Exposé.

16. Make the most of your multiple desktops

So, you've set up multiple desktops, you've made them look good, and you've found numerous ways to manage them, from taskbar switching to keyboard shortcuts. Dexpot has a host more features to explore, but now it's up to you to poke around and find out what more it can do. We'll give you a clue: it can do a lot more.

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Desktops Predicted to Grow 8% this Year

Yesterday’s DigiTimes had an interesting story showing that the desktop market is expected to grow 8% from last year, due in part from the rise in tablet PCs. While this may seem counterintuitive, people buying tablets still need to connect and sync to desktop PCs (as Tim has pointed out in his past post). Also, it doesn’t hurt that GIGABYTE motherboards with On/Off Charge are able to charge tablets through their USB ports, unlike a majority of notebooks out there.

The desktop PC market, benefiting from the rise of tablet PCs, is expected to achieve a growth of 8% on year in terms of shipments in 2011 with motherboard players including Gigabyte Technology, Micro-Star International (MSI), Asustek Computer, and ASRock all set to advance into China's tier-4 to -6 cities

They also mentioned that if Europe remains stable through the rest of the year, motherboard makers should reach growth up to 15% in the 3rd quarter.

The sources estimated that if China's demand during the peak season reaches their expectations, while demand from Europe market remains stable, first-tier motherboard makers' sequential shipment growth will reach 15% in the third quarter. Europe is currently still filled with uncertainty, whether demand from Europe will drop even further as well as the potential of China's tier-4 and -6 cities will both be keys for the motherboard makers' performance in the third quarter.

To Read the full article, please visit HERE

Intel to Release Six-Core Chips for Desktops in a Year

One projects that Intel Corp. release its first microprocessors of six-core for desktop machines in the second quarters of 2010, almost two years after the company began forwardings of the pieces of six-core for the waiters x86 at end high.

The processors of Intel Gulftown - which will be lower-in compatible with infrastructure LGA1366 - will have six physical cores with, thus, able licence by technology of Hyper-Threading to treat to twelve wire at the same time. According to a news-history by the Web site of HKEPC, which quotes manufacturers of mainboard, the processors called of Gulftown made using transformer technology 32nm, will be launched in Q2 2010, one year as of now.

The piece of Gulftown belongs to the family of Westmere of the microprocessors which have some microarchitectural advantages compared to the currently available processors of the core i7 which belong to the family of Nehalem. Gulftown will significantly amplify the execution of the microprocessors while remaining in the same thermal envelope of 130W.

NVIDIA announces Optimus for Desktops @ www.anandtech.com

NVIDIA Synergy to Bring Optimus to Desktops

NVIDIA Synergy to Bring Optimus to Desktops

We first encountered NVIDIA’s Optimus Technology in February of last year. It has done wonders for laptop battery life on midrange systems, where manufacturers no longer need to worry about killing mobility by including a discrete GPU. Over the past fourteen months, we have seen the number of Optimus enabled laptops balloon from a few initial offerings to well over 50—and very likely more than 100. That sort of uptake is indicative of a successful technology and feature, and while we do encounter the occasional glitch it’s not much worse than the usual driver bugs we deal with.

If you were among those who thought, “This sounds like a great technology—when will they bring it to the desktop?” you’re not alone. So far it has only been available in laptops, and even then we haven’t seen any notebook vendors support the technology with anything faster than a GT 555M (i.e. there are so far no notebooks with GTX GPUs that support Optimus; the closest we get is Alienware’s M17x, which uses their own BinaryGFX switching technology).

Previously, the lack of switchable graphics on desktops—particularly something as elegant as NVIDIA’s Optimus—hasn’t been a big deal. That all changed when Intel released Sandy Bridge and introduced their Quick Sync technology. In our Sandy Bridge review we looked at Quick Sync and found it was the fastest way to transcode videos, providing up to double the performance of an i7-2600K CPU and potentially four times the performance of dual-core SNB processors. Unfortunately, there’s a catch: as we mentioned in our SNB review, Quick Sync works only if the IGP is enabled and has at least one display connected.

This limitation is particularly irksome as the only way you can get the IGP is if you use the H67 chipset (and give up the overclocking and enthusiast features offered by P67). The Z68 chipset should provide both overclocking and IGP support in the near future, but you’re still left with the IGP use requirement, making Quick Sync essentially unavailable to users with discrete GPUs—who are very possibly the most likely candidates for actually making use of the feature.

There appears to be some good news on the horizon. It’s hardly a surprise, as we’ve suspected as much since Optimus first reared its head, but VR-Zone reportsthat NVIDIA is finally bringing the technology to desktops. There’s a name change, as it will now go by the name Synergy (though you may also see it referred to as Desktop Optimus at times). Rumors are that Synergy will see the light of day late next month or in early June.

While it’s true that you can already get access to Quick Sync while using a discrete GPU using Lucid’s Virtu, there are a few differences worth noting. First and foremost, Synergy is software based, free, and requires no license agreement. Any recent NVIDIA GPU (400 or 500 series) should work on H67, H61 or Z68 chipset motherboards. (P67 does not support the SNB IGP and thus won’t work.) You’ll need the appropriate drivers and BIOS (and maybe VBIOS), but that should be it. No special hardware needs to be present on the GPU or motherboard and anyone with the appropriate GPU and motherboard chipset should have the option of using Synergy.

This is in contrast to Virtu, which only comes bundled with certain motherboards and incurs a price premium on those boards. However, Virtu still has the advantage of working with both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. Owners of AMD GPUs will have to rely on Virtu or wait for AMD to come out with their own equivalent to Virtu and Synergy.

One final note is that both Virtu and Optimus/Synergy function in a similar fashion at a low level. There are profiles for supported games/applications, and when the driver detects a supported executable it will route the API calls to the discrete GPU. Here’s where NVIDIA has a big leg up on Lucid: they’ve been doing Optimus profiles for over a year, and while Lucid now lists support for 157 titles, NVIDIA has a lot more (and the ability to create custom profiles that generally work). You also don’t have to worry about new GPU drivers breaking support with Virtu, as NVIDIA handles all of that in their own drivers.

We’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for Synergy and will report our findings when it becomes available. In the meantime, gamers interested in Quick Sync as well as people looking to cut down on power use when they’re not using their GPU have something to look forward to. Now bring on the Z68 motherboards, Intel.

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