3D Invades Your Desktop

good
key review info
application features
  • Change the size of the icons
  • (7 more, see all...)

Sure you've heard of 3D desktops. We even got you a free one called Yod'm. It allowed you to turn your regular 2D desktop into a cube and add different applications to each of the faces. You can easily rotate it and gain easy access to one of the windows, and all these for free.

However, there are more elaborate attempts in that direction and the guys from Bumtop have come up with a prototype desktop that replicates the order/disorder on a regular office desktop. It allows you to arrange the icons in stacks, browse them like the pages of a book, spread them just like a deck of cards and more. But I guess seeing is believing, so HERE it is.

And if you want something close to that, check out Real Desktop. Unlike Yod'm 3D (which has been acquired by Otaku Software that renamed it to DeskSpace and added a $19.99 price tag) Real Desktop can permanently stay on your computer for a $24.48 fee.

Installing the application went normal and there was absolutely no problem there. I do not know why I expected my desktop to instantly turn 3D on me immediately after the installation of the program. With Real Desktop you have to deploy the application in order to achieve the desired desktop effect. That's a positive thing as it allows you to start and terminate the application whenever you feel like it.

As everything is about the interface in this case Real Desktop succeeds in making a pretty good first impression. Every icon is turned into a tile and the desktop is converted into a three dimensional room. Besides the special effects applied to your desktop, everything appears to have the same functionality as in 2D, save the fact that you cannot rename the icons in Real Desktop by selecting them and clicking again. You will have to use the context menu and choose Rename options for this action. Other than this, everything works fine.

All the icons are three-dimensional and you can move them around any place you want by simply selecting them and dragging them all over the screen. A multiple selection is made with a left click of your mouse and including in the selection the icons you want. Ctrl+left click of the mouse works just like a regular selective pick of the items.

I can't say that it is a very functional desktop because after chaos is installed among your icons (and believe you me, once you start to move the tiles for the first time there will be no order on your desktop) it'll get quite tough to find what you are looking for. I spent about five minutes looking for an item just to find out that it was hidden behind Recycle Bin.

Among other pains you can inflict to all the tiles on your desktop, there is lifting them up to a certain height and moving them around without disturbing the piece of all the other elements. I have to tell you that it's a real thrill. You can play by tiling them one by one or, if you have a more violent nature you can make a larger selection to include all of them and bash them into a corner until they stop jumping up and down. Learning to control them is easy as the tooltips at the top right hand of the screen explain all the possibilities.

To spice things up, go to Settings menu activated from tray icon's context menu. The view of the room can be changed to a different perspective (above, down half left/right or down left/right). The general tab of the Settings provides options for configuring the application to start with Windows, add sound to gestures, make the mouse pointer dynamic and set the sensitivity for showing the names of the files (the distance between the icon and mouse in order to show the file name).

Real Desktop does not eliminate for good your 2D wallpaper and after a user set time this can be activated and displayed on the desktop. The action can be configured to take place after a user defined number of seconds in Wallpaper menu. The room will smoothly rotate in order to display the 2D desktop (it is something like entering stand-by state).

The default color for lighting the room is white, but you can customize it any other way. Also, the level of brightness can be modified to suit your needs so that those enjoying a dark environment can have their own way. Additionally, the way the light falls in the room can be adjusted either by selecting one of the three preset directions (ahead left, up right or behind above) or you can do it yourself by setting it on the horizontal/vertical axis.

The high degree of customization offered by the application lets you even change the way the icons appear in the room. There are four different preset styles to choose from (metal, wood, ultraviolet and black glass) or you can add an image of your own to define it. All these combined with a certain level of reflection can make up for a highly personalized look of the icons.

But the highest degree of customization is achieved in Atmosphere tab of the Settings menu. The environment can be changed from Blue Silence, Yellow Sound, Far Ocean or Soft Wood to Brushed Metal, Green Haze, Deep Forrest or Brown Leather. If none of them is to your taste, feel free to change both the walls and the floor surface by adding images of your own.

The looks of the 3D desktop are definitely walking a nice path as there are multiple customization options, both preset and user defined that can turn your desktop into a wonderful experience. However, there are many stability issues and it happened more than once for the desktop to crash out of the blue, without putting too much stress on resources or graphic card.

The Good

High customization level makes it extremely flexible and the user can practically design the way it looks with just a couple of well-drawn JPEG images.

Very easy to install, use and set up. The tips in the top right hand corner of the screen provide good instructions on how you can control the icons on the desktop.

I liked the way the waste basket fills gradually as you toss icons in it. The application does not seem to need too much of the computer resources (during our testing it barely reached 100MB of RAM and CPU usage did not pass 30% when functional).

The Bad

It seems that its tailoring flexibility is direct proportional with its instability. During testing there were multiple freezes of the application and the only way to get it out of the halting state was to terminate the process.

Considering its instability, the price is overrated. Also, it would have been nice to have multiple desktops to handle.

It automatically places Computer, Network, Internet Explorer and Documents shortcuts on the 3D desktop in Windows Vista.

The Truth

It is the closest thing to Bumtop's prototype I have seen. It is not imitating it but still a mesmerizing experience.

But the bottom line is that the application is not as functional as you would want it to be and once you have disorder in your desktop icons it is up to you to rearrange them as the sorting options provided by Windows are not working.

However, for a freshman, the program does a good job. I am sure that future versions will provide more options and more functionality to the application.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 5
features 3
ease of use 4
pricing / value 3


final rating 3
Editor's review
good
 
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