Large desktop workstations often have more than enough screen real-estate: One or two 24-inch monitors afford plenty of room for a mission-critical application, plus several chat or email windows alongside. But if you're a laptop user squeaking by with a single 15-inch monitor (or perhaps something even smaller), a virtual desktop might be the next best thing to an extra monitor. Dexpot (25 Euros, which is $33 on 2/21/12; free for personal use) is a great way to get yourself one. Or five. Dexpot's taskbar plugin lets you control virtual desktops without having to use a special window. If I had to describe Dexpot in one word, I'd pick "customizable." I can't think of a single aspect of Dexpot you can't customize: the animation (or lack thereof) used to switch between virtual desktops, the number of desktops, hotkeys and hot corners for switching desktops using keyboard and mouse, whether or not a virtual desktop spans all your monitors are just one, and the list goes on. When an application decides to go all-out on customization, the result is usually bloat. Dexpot tries to let you eat your cake and have it, too, by compartmentalizing features into plug-ins you can enable or disable as you prefer. Disable the animations plug-in, and sure enough, the animations go awayâ€"and so do the options for controlling them. So not only can you customize the options to your liking, you can customize whether or not the options are even there to begin with. Using virtual desktops produ
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