Facebook Desktop is a tiny software that sends you Facebook-related notifications.

Once installed, the program can be accessed from the system tray. All you have to do is sign up with your Facebook account.

The user interface is minimalistic - there are only three tabs (your account name, Options and About) and two links (Home and Sign Out).

Basically, Facebook Desktop alerts you if you receive any new messages, pokes, friend requests and wall posts, by showing a pop-up message. Clicking any of these options automatically sends you to your Facebook account via the web browser.

In the Options menu, you can disable the pop-up notification or set the tool to start with Windows and automatically login when available.

Furthermore, you can configure Facebook Desktop to check for any new alerts at a specific time interval (from 15 seconds to 30 minutes), but you can also customize the program's interface according to the tabs display - Scroll Bar or Multiline.

Facebook Desktop works almost perfectly, while using a barely noticeable amount of system resources. However, it was unable to pop-up a message whenever our account received a new friend request (although this update is displayed in the main window) and you cannot change the default web browser that is launched (i.e. Internet Explorer).

The bottom line is that Facebook Desktop does a good job but it definitely needs to come up with new options (for example, it could allow you to view notifications in the interface instead of sending you to the web browser). Nevertheless, this software is a great alternative for when you want to stay up-to-date with your Facebook activity.