One thing I miss from KDE (a Linux desktop environment,) now that I've got a Mac Mini is that in its bit at the bottom of the screen, KDE displays a thumbnail of each actual screen, and the Dock's icon for Mac's Spaces does not.

So in Spaces, if you don't recall which screen has a particular window, you have to hunt for it.

On Unix and Linux virtual desktops have been standards parts of most Windows managers at least 15 years. No need to download any extra software. Just fiddle with the options to get how many you desktops you want, and you are set.

I am glad to see the focus of this column getting a little less Mac-centric, but it would nice to see things get even broader.

As for stickies, I don't use them But I am sure that there are Linux programs

To get a huge ass 30" Mac monitor? At $1800 per you can easily get 2 and keep everything up at the same time.

Wow, I thought Stickies had been left behind three or four OS iterations ago...

I just went to the "spaces" page and could not make hide nor hair out of it. Is it available for download? How do you download it? What are the system requirements?

Interesting you note that you didn't know Stickies were still available. Am I mistaken, or weren't they a default startup application some years back, so even if you didn't want to use them you at least knew they were there. Which is why some don't realize they've got them in the Applications folder, waiting to serve. I have mine set to startup at login, as I'd be lost without them. - Joe Hutsko

Right you are about virtual desktops being around for a long time. I recall Windows XP had them as standard equipment at one point - or maybe as a free PowerTools add-on. Either way, your mention that Linux has offered the feature since forever highlights the point that when built in to the OS, users are that much more likely to take advantage of multi-desktops. Thanks for taking the time to comment, sincerely appreciate it when readers get a conversation going and share knowledge and useful tips. - Joe Hutsko

...click the tab Releases and it will take your here:

http://www.codeplex.com/vdm/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=15275

-Joe Hutsko

Inasmuch as the previous article promoted turning your computer into a retarded instrument called a "typewriter," might I suggest you search in your office supply store for items called Post-It Notes. They are real stickies that you can put around your computer monitor, and after writing on them (with a wonderfully retro instrument called a "pen") you can ball them up and throw them away, cleaning your desktop without the use of a single mouse click.

Yes, I used Stickies on a previous Mac I owned. I got rid of it. It was more pain than it was worth. If you have that many leftovers from multiple projects, if you can't concentrate on what you're doing, you're a crappy worker and you need retraining and probably psychiatric care.

Just sayin.

Press F8 to see thumbnails of all your Spaces and their windows. If the window you're looking for is hidden on its desktop, you won't see it--but it is a quick way to see all the desktops.

"New" or not, it's a good thing that Macs have appropriated the Spaces format. Did you know that one of the unknown facilitators of speed in an office setting is extra screen space? That's because we, as humans, still think of our work in terms of "space." We want to view many windows at one time, which is why so many office workers prefer to have two monitors. It seems idiosyncratic, but it really does help. Spaces (or whatever Linux function you use) allows you to do that.

Yes, I'm plugging Linux like the rest of the commenters, but Linux also has a better alternative to stickies, called Tomboy notes (http://www.gnome.org/projects/tomboy/features.html)

Tomboy notes are like stickies, except:

• the notes save themselves, so you don't have to worry about losing data
• you can close the notes and open them later from a quick menu. You can also search for notes, and organize multiple notes into "notebooks" (much like tagging).
• Notes can link to eachother much like a wiki.

The biggest advantage is being able to close the notes, so having more notes doesn't increase screen clutter (unlike having 13 rolled-up notes). Currently I have over 500 notes, and while I don't use all of them all the time, it's nice to be able to go back to "girlfriend's birthday 2005" and see what I got her back then. I also have a note dedicated to ongoing tech support calls, or to individual projects at work.

If I'm using a computer other than my own, the program I miss more than any other is tomboy. It's changed the way I remember things.

I'm a fairly geeky person, having written accounting programs in both C and C++, and knowing my way around Linux a bit, but I never realized how handy a virtual desktop manager could be until I tried the free one for Windows that you recommended. I love free stuff, and this one's great. I swear it improves my underpowered Windows machine's performance when I've got three virtual desktops going, compared to the way this pig would run with three windows on a single desktop going (I haven't made my way to four yet, I'm old and my bones are fragile).

I haven't yet figured out the great virtue of the stickies thing, but the virtual desktop was well worth the read.

Thanks again.

Once you hit F8 to reveal all your Spaces, you can then hit F9 to trigger Exposé, which will reveal all the windows open in each Space. You can also move one of those revealed windows to another space by clicking and dragging.

I really like Stickies and Spaces. Stickies are great for very small bits of information that would be harder to save as documents because for the title to be helpful, it would be as long as the document. I took longer to start using Spaces, but I've really grown to like it. I have Safari and Mail open in my first space, my media set to open in the second, and games in another.