I was reading on a fellow bloggers site the other day and he had a good article posted… “Organizing Your Desktop” It has 
been sometime since I went looking into 3rd party applications that would allow you to take further advantage of windows features. The last time I looked I was a bit turned off. Most seemed to be filled with bugs and the websites were turnoffs with the amount of ads.
Some of those companies are still around with websites that are just as ad-filled as ever and then there are some who have shown great improvement. So before I go on, I won’t take full credit for the content on this post. Kairu the Otaku deserves credit for the post idea. I just wanted to take a moment an expand on it with links to some of what I found in my most recent research.
Typically my PC desktop is an icon nightmare. If its installed there is probably and icon. Interesting article, drop the URL shortcut on the desktop. Quick text file note to self, its there. You get the idea, it was a cluttered nightmare. Sorry, I’m far to embarrassed to post a picture of that nightmare. Lets just say there were 62 shortcuts, files and folders containing more present.
I started by first looking for something that would help me cleanup my desktop. Sure, I could trash all the icons and recreate the ones I wanted to keep, but as a computer tech type, I’m automatically lazy. Why do something manually when a script will do. With that in mind, I started using “Fences” by the same company that makes Stardock. It will connect your icons into groups and even allow you to hide those named groups from view. I was beside myself when I saw an actual desktop when it finished. The free version suits my needs for now. Worth giving it a try.
With all of the icons gone, I needed some way of launching applications, without going back to the way it was. Sure, I could use the grouped icons but I am on a roll. Lets go for slick in appearance and neat as well. For that I turned to Rocketdock. Much like Objectdock, but I believe you get more features without a cost. This allowed me to place most of what I use in one convenient place.
Next, I decided to tackle the wallpaper itself. I got lazy here and opted to create my own. Since I am also a WoW fan, I went with my mains race crest, Night Elf. Threw in some transitional color that would compliment the crest and there you have it. Last, I needed to do something with the gaping hole on my screen that was not ocupied by anything. For this I turned to one other application, Rainmeter. It has a number of capabilities that I hope to draw on, such as monitoring CPU and RAM, etc. It is also very customizable for fitting needs. For now I took the clock that comes with the default package.
Now that Kairu has stirred this up, I guess I will have to further fine tune my desktop. I’ve still not moved over to Windows 7 so I imagine there is even more fun there. I may end up getting Object Desktop for all the features it boast and its price tag. We’ll see, Win 7 may be fine for me. So, want to see the end result? Here it is, as of today. I have dual monitors so this is just half. The other looks identical minus the dock and clock.
Desktop Screenshot
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