14 DAY TRIAL // How many times have you wanted to acquire a multimedia keyboard? I'm asking this because we often find ourselves in situations when we need to control the system with minimum effort and time, even if it means just opening or closing a certain application, increasing or decreasing the volume level.
My System Tray Icon software comes with 30-use trial limitation and the price to pay for registration is only 2$. From the start, I must say that the test is based upon a simple side by side comparison between the features a multimedia keyboard can offer and those this program provides. Multimedia keyboards in general offer shortcuts for basic control like volume control, computer management (shutdown, sleep, log off) and a few Internet shortcuts (homepage or favorites).
The application My System Tray Icon was designed to help the user gain control over volume, computer management and Internet proxy. The basic idea that stands behind My System Tray Icon is to control the computer by using a system tray menu or hot keys. The latter can be defined from the Settings window.
In the Settings window, the user can define hot keys for Volume control (Mute, Un-Mute, Step Up Volume or Step Down Volume), Internet Explorer (Toggle Use Proxy, Close All IE Windows), Computer Management (Log Off, Shut Down, Shut Down Brute or Restart), Power Monitor Off and Open File/Program.
The first test that I made was to define the hot keys for Volume control. The application supports key combinations only with CTRL, Alt or Shift and other keys. WIN key + other combinations are not supported. For Mute Volume, I used CTRL + M, which is not a standard hot key combination like CTRL + C, let?s say. After minimizing to system tray, the hot keys work just fine, but when I opened the Settings window under Mute Volume, the assigned key was only M and not CTRL+M. The same thing happened with all the other keys.
So, if you want to define as hot key control a combination of two keys, you cannot. Be sure not to set a simple letter (for Shutdown Brute, let?s say) and start typing a text, because you will have a surprise. In the Settings window, My System Tray Icon also has a small button called "Create Desktop Shortcut". After you define a hot key, the application can create a shortcut to desktop to control that action - I think it?s a great feature.
The application also lets the user select a file or program to be launched from the system tray menu or by using a hot key. The shortcuts for Internet Explorer are Toggle Use Proxy and Close All IE Windows. The first one will allow the user to enable or disable the use of Internet proxy server.
Another aspect which should be mentioned is that, for the moment, the developer provides the version of the software that only works on Vista.
The user interface of My System Tray Icon is defined only by the system tray menu and Settings window. The system tray menu can be accessed only with a right-click over the system tray icon. There is no hot key to be used, or other method (like when you put the mouse cursor over the tray icon). Taking into consideration that sometimes the system tray area is quite crowded, another additional method to access the menu would be very helpful.
The Good
One thing that I was pleased to find was the "Create Desktop Shortcut" option, which can help eliminate the hot key incompatibility issue and the use of system tray menu.
The Bad You will not be able to use a key combination to control a certain action, which makes defining the hot keys almost impossible. The current download version of the software works only on Vista, so it is limited to a small group of users.
The Truth
The application can be improved a lot by adding a few other features to the tray menu like a shutdown scheduler for computer management, a few other Internet shortcuts (Home and, why not, some Favorites), more than one "Open File/Program slot". The key combination issue must be fixed and the possibility to define a hot key with more than one letter should be added.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
