Scott Hanselman

The TopDesk 1.4.1 task switching software I alluded to last week is now out and available for download. 

You can get a free 30 day trial, and it's only $9.95 if you want to buy it. There's also discounts for 2 or 3 licenses. The company is just one guy in his spare time and what he's accomplished is pretty sweet.

If you've already bought it, you just got a massive free upgrade.

I've been chatting with James of Otaku Software on and off over the last year, and I (greatly) pressured him to try out the "Aero" Vista style of Flip3D task switching. He told me he was totally too busy to make it happen, but chatted me days later with a prototype...a true programmer to the last, he couldn't sleep until he'd tried it.

It's not only fantastic eye candy, but it does allow one to switch REALLY fast if you you have a video card worth it's salt.

NOTE: It DOES have a fairly large working set as it's dealing with screenshots and such, so don't immediately write it off just because it looks fat in the Task Manager. There is four options like "use less memory, more CPU" that you'll see during the very nice installer and also available in the options. For me, the memory usage is not as bad as Outlook and I use that all the time! ;) Also, if you're already running an alternative ALT-TAB like TaskSwitchXP and you choose to bind TopDesk to ALT-TAB, there can be only one, so be warned.

Note that the sample video/animation at the right is on Windows XP, NOT Windows Vista. The videos are really impressive. I'm looking forward to Vista.

You can still use TopDesk's "Expose" OSX-style tiling as well. There's a lot of screenshots, videos, and customizabilty here.

Go get it!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By