How to quickly switch and hide your desktop from your boss

Why in the world would I want to do that?

Well I’m sure that office workers in general do only 2 things at work.

1. They are either working OR

2. They are “not working”

Let me explain my definition of “not working”. Not working means doing things which does not directly contribute to the company’s profitability.  Some examples include:

• Facebooking
• Blogging at work
• Reading blog sites
• Chatting with friends via instant messengers
• Downloading porn, pirated software, mp3, videos, movies

For many office workers, working while doing some of the above have become a norm and considers it to be a sort of work life balance. First thing in the morning, that instant messenger is turned on just to be connected to friends at all times.

Are you worried to be seen doing any of the above during work hours? If you are, then there’s a neat tool for you to hide and switch your desktop at times of trouble -> (eg. your boss suddenly walks in and you get busted).

The solution to the problem - Desktops v1.0 by Sysinternals, a Microsoft acquired company.

Desktops v1.0 allows you to organize the various applications running in your machine up to four virtual desktops. For the case above, you can have the first desktop running all your work related applications such as Microsoft Word, Outlook, Visual Studio if you’re a programmer or MYOB if your an Accountant.  On your other desktop is where the real fun stuff is running. Facebook, instant messaging with friends, surfing Digg.com for the latest stuffs. I’m sure you’ll always be on this second virtual desktop.

Desktop v1.0 also allows you to easily configure hotkeys for switching desktops. For example, while you’re on your fun desktop and you could hear the footsteps of your boss coming in, simply click Alt + 1 and you’re back to your working desktop doing some serious programming. Click Alt + 2 and you continue blogging at work!

Note that you can easily configure your hotkeys to switch between the desktops. If having to click Alt followed by the 1 number takes too much time and effort, then switch it to just the F1 key. Anyway, F1 also stands for HELP! … boss is here!

I personally haven’t been using this neat tool for a long time. Just 2 days to be exact, but so far I’m finding it really useful as it does provide some ease of mind, if you know what I mean.

There are 2 setbacks though.

1. If you run firefox on your first desktop and then try to also run firefox on your second desktop, an error pops up saying “Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system”. To overcome this, I just run Internet Explorer on my work desktop and Firefox on my fun desktop. Maybe this error will not occur after a restart.

2. There is a small blue icon on the bottom right of the screen. Basically two scenarios could happen. One, your boss uses the same tool, so he knows what you’re up to. Second, he comes over to you and sees a cute blue icon. He goes, what’s that icon? There you go busted! It would be great if this tool can be enhanced to hide the icon! That would be the tool perfect!

Anyway, good job to the developers of this tool.Finally there’s peace.

This is a free tool for now. Give it a try. Enjoy!

Download Desktops v1.0

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