What’s on your Desktop?
Posted by Dan Rigsby on December 14th, 2008
My friend Jeff Blankenburg asked the question, “What’s In your quick launch bar?”. I have been planning on making a post similar to this for a while. Recently, I have reinstalled windows on all 4 of my primary machines (work PC, laptop, and 2 home PCs), and I have been trying to keep the settings the same across each of them so that I feel “at home”. Part of this is using Live Mesh to synchronize my folders, but it also includes keeping the desktop and installed programs very similar. I thought I would share with everyone how I configure my desktop.
Desktop
My desktop background is always solid black. I don’t like having a picture in the background distracting me, I like the simplicity, and black is very Remote Desktop friendly.
I tend to place items that I am currently working on on the desktop, but I remove them when I am done. For instance, if I download software or grab an image, I place it on the desktop first. However,there are 4 icons that always remain. These are:
- User Files: I store everything in here and keep most of it in sync with Live Mesh
- Computer
- Recycle Bin
- Visual Studio 2008
I could easily add more icons, however I prefer to just hit the “Windows Key” and type in the name of the program I want to open. I guess I just prefer simplicity and neatness above all.
Sidebar
As with my desktop, I don’t like a lot of clutter in my sidebar. I want to keep it down to useful and non-redundant gadgets. So, I am not going to have a calendar or clock in the sidebar, since those show up in my taskbar. And I am not going to have something like a calculator in there which I rarely use. The gadgets I currently have are:
- Multi Meter
- Weather Bug: Everyone loves to talk about the weather.
- Stock Ticker: I don’t know why I bother to constantly keep myself depressed, but I do follow the stock market.
- Remote Desktop: I need to remote desktop into machine frequently. With this gadget I just type in the machines name. I don’t have to open a program first.
On my laptop I also have the Wireless Network Meter gadget installed, but I rarely have it displayed.
Quick Launch
I keep a maximum of 10 items in my quick launch bar. This isn’t so much to save space, but because of the “Windows Key” + [Number] shortcuts. Having these remain the same from machine to machine means that I always know what my shortcut keys are to some of my most used programs. For instance, I know that “Windows Key” + 2 is always my Visual Studio Command Prompt, etc The 10 items I use are:
- Show desktop
- Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt: I need a command prompt all the time, and the Visual Studio one automatically sets up all of the shortcuts needed for development.
- Internet Explorer 8: This is my primary browser.
- EditPlus: My alternative to notepad.
- Visual Studio: My favorite piece of software.
- Live Writer: I use this to author all of my blog posts.
- Zune: My primary media player.
- Paint.Net: I still edit a lot of images. While I use Live Photo Gallery for viewing image and SnagIt for capturing images, I prefer Paint.Net for raw image editing.
- VPN Client: I need this to connect to my work network.
- SQL Server Management Studio: I deal a lot with databases. I like to have a separate version of Management Studio open for each database I connect to. This helps prevent me accidently making changes to the wrong database.
Startup Programs
- Sync Center
- Oovoo: I love this program for performing high quality video with my friends and family.
- Power Options: On a laptop, I find myself changing options a lot. Power Options also offers a context menu shortcut to “Windows Mobility Center” which has the ever important “Presentation Mode” that I use at every speaking engagement.
- Live Messenger: This is my primary IM client. I also like how it alerts me when I get a new hotmail message since that is my primary email account.
- Live Mesh: This is how I keep files on all of my machines in sync!
- Networking
- Windows Sidebar Control
- SnagIt: I need to capture screenshots all the time: sometimes for blogging, sometimes for work.
- Volume Control
These programs very just a bit depending on if it is on my laptop or not. I don’t keep up Power Options or Sync Center on a desktop machine.
I also routinely start up Windows Live Mail as it has quickly become my default email/contacts/calendar program. I have fallen in love with Live Photo Gallery too for working with my family pictures.
So what does your desktop or quick launch bar look like? Anything worth sharing?
December 15th, 2008 at 9:11 am
[...] What’s on Your Desktop? (Dan Rigsby) [...]
December 15th, 2008 at 9:11 am
[...] What’s on Your Desktop? (Dan Rigsby) [...]
December 15th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
One thing that I notice is that so many people use Live Mesh and so very few people use Live Sync (formerly Live FolderShare). I personally use Live Sync and not Mesh for the following reasons:
1) Synchronized Folders exists in a nearly identical fashion (the #1 reason to use either)
2) It seems to be lighter weight (i.e. faster/more stable, in theory)
3) It is my understanding that the storage space for all shared files is more-or-less a peer-to-peer type of system where Live Mesh stores some on some unknown cloud server. This may be important or at least preferable to some. (To be fair, this could also be a drawback for some too because, what if all of your PCs are down that are sharing the content – then there is nowhere to pull the files from. But I keep about 6ish PCs in various locations sync’d so this isn’t much of a concern for me.)
4) Many other features that are nearly identical to Live Mesh.
So I’m curious – what has compelled you to use Live Mesh over Live Sync? My understanding are that there are three major features that I could very realistically see people wanting in Mesh that aren’t there in Sync:
1) Synchronized Desktop (not sure of the true feature name)
2) Cloud storage that isn’t dependent on my personal machines
3) History/Chat/Messaging/various other little metadata-type features
-Shane
December 16th, 2008 at 8:57 am
I am not as familiar with LIve Sync, but can you share folders with others? I share some folders with family or team members.
December 27th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Dan,
Yes you can share folders with friends, family or your team members. I’ve used Live Sync (FolderShare) for about a year now and absolutely love it. My personal machine is a mac and Live Sync works on both mac’s and pc’s. The other thing I love about live sync, is that I can actually access files that from any of my active machines from anywhere via a web interface.
Also check out startup manager, it’s a Coding4Fun app that I found over the summer. It lets you control what applications startup and what order they start, also allows you at add a delay so your most important applications start up first and then the ones you don’t need right away. I have mine set to start snagit as the last item and only when the the cpu is idle since I really don’t need this app as soon as I start my machine. If you have quite a few items in your startup folder like I do, then this tool is a must have.
http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2008/03/17/8290797.aspx
~Chirag