Aced

The latest installment of Windows managed to bring about a long-awaited feature, namely virtual desktop support. However, this has been around for quite a while now, with an abundance of third-party application allowing you to use different desktops to fill with windows of interest, and one suitable example is Aced.

One advantage in particular is the lack of an installer, which makes the application good to go as soon as download is done. It thus enables you to create multiple desktops on other computers as well, directly from a thumb drive without affecting stability, because registry entries are not modified in the process.

Multiple desktops are created as soon as the application is launched. Sure enough, nothing is visible on the spot, except for the new icon residing in the tray area. It’s the place from which to access the configuration panel for management of behavior and appearance options, as well as the desktops themselves.

Note that the desktop layout itself isn’t changed from one workspace to the other and only active windows are targeted. This means that accessing a different desktop brings up an empty workspace where you can keep other windows active. Unfortunately, there’s no possibility to transfer windows to other desktops.

Switching to a different workspace is usually done from the tray area. There are 9 different slots, each fitted with an intuitive hotkey. Even though this command can’t be changed, there’s the possibility to assign a general one to bring up a desktop selection screen while pressed. Hot corners can be toggled to function in the same manner.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that Aced is a little underprepared to efficiently manage a crowded desktop through multiple instances. Sure enough you can easily carry it around, and access to a different workspace is done at the press of a button. However, things get a little disappointing because of the lack of a window transition option.