Facebook Desktop 1.0b

Facebook Desktop is a tiny software that sends you notifications related to your account. Once installed, the program can be accessed from the system tray.

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) and you can also customize the program's interface depending on 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 the default web browser that is launched (i.e. Internet Explorer) cannot be changed.

The bottom line is that Facebook Desktop does a good job but it 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 Facebook activity.