IT Professionals

A Vista 3D Experience On An XP Windows Box

Posted by on Oct 17, 2007 | 4 Comments

We’ve talked about it before, how Vista Ultimate 3D effects have been a big draw for Windows XP users looking for something a little different from their OS. On the Ubuntu front, I actually stopped using Beryl and later found myself just as unimpressed with Compiz-Fusion as it become more of a distraction than a productivity enhancement.

As luck would have it, I have discovered that XP users can now enjoy some of the visual experience that Vista Ultimate and Linux users have the option of trying out. What’s interesting is that both DeskSpace and TopDesk present the same usability challenges that drove me away from 3D effects in Ubuntu just a few months back.

To really help get my head around this, I downloaded trials of both applications above and I have to admit, install cleanly and do exactly what is advertised. I tested them both out on an older Windows XP box with only 512MB of RAM and a 1.6Ghz CPU. So it is a safe bet that performance is pretty good.

But I have to ask – can we seriously justify fun 3D effects as productivity enhancement? Or instead, should we merely be calling them toys as they most likely are? You be the judge.

[tags]Windows, XP, Vista, 3D, Desktop, Software[/tags]

  • http://row5is.spaces.live.com Rob Keiser

    Your last comment about justifying 3D effects reminds me of a time when color monitors were questioned as to their usefulness. I had several clients in the early 90′s that didn’t want to buy expensive (12″) color monitors because their old monochrome monitors worked just fine. It wasn’t until we could show them by bringing in a color monitor and letting them use it that they found the concept was worthwhile. Part of the problem was that in the beginning color monitors were mostly used for gaming and poorly written screens. It was a gimmick like the marquee tag in HTML. Judicious use of colors made it useful.

    I don’t know if 3D effects will help or not but I believe we are still in that gee-whiz phase. It might never get better but I’m not quite willing to give up on the idea yet.

  • http://www.otakusoftware.com James Stewart

    “What’s interesting is that both DeskSpace and TopDesk present the same usability challenges that drove me away from 3D effects in Ubuntu just a few months back.”

    I’d be interested in hearing more about the usability challenges you feel TopDesk and DeskSpace present. For example, are you also implying that Mac OS X Expose (which TopDesk emulates) has usability problems?

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    James: Basically, in Linux, it was becoming a visual distraction. Often times, I would end up hitting keys that I had not intended to. And when dealing with writers block, spend the better part of an hour feeding the ADD by playing with the spinning cube and tweaking my Beryl settings. In the end, it was simply not a good match for me.

    Rob: You have a point, but I believe it will need more time before this sort of thing really grabs hold as something that is practical and benefiting the user’s experience in the long term. If it can save me time, great. But that has not happened yet.

  • Kawa

    I am an old school computer user and I find myself just about where Matt describes. I love computers. I also love beautiful effects and 3d visual stuff with the condition that they are not distracting me from my work.

    The flip task manager, for instance, shows me the top task and I need to flip and flip not knowing when I am going to find the task I want. Grid view is beautiful but it needs me to move my head left, right, up and down just to see all the tasks. TaskswitchXP is not so fancy but it shows me all the running tasks at a glance with screenshots on screen center. So I am using TaskswitchXP.

    Multiple desktop cube is wonderful but I don’t feel I need more than one -big- desktop. When I develop I may have ten programs open but all are about programming, why split them on many screens? Iconic tray keeps all not-so-needed-right-now programs out of my way.

    On linux I feel almost the same as windows. I am saying almost because Beryl (or Compiz-Fusion) are not slowing down my pc at all. So I leave them on sometimes just for the fun of it. They are not really helping in anything but they are not slowing down my pc either and are beautiful to see.