9 Handy Utilities for Optimizing Your Desktop and Display

Screen real estate seems to be getting less expensive by the day. I recently bought a pair of 24-inch LCD monitors for a very affordable price, whereas a few years ago I could only dream of having such a setup. On the other end of the spectrum, more and more people are toting tiny netbooks with 10-inch displays. But no matter the size of your Windows desktop, you can get more out of it with the help of free and low-cost tools.

Linux users have long been familiar with the concept of a virtual desktop--an entire copy of your desktop, complete with its own set of running applications and sometimes a custom wallpaper. You can switch to this virtual desktop whenever you need extra space, or just to focus on a specific task. You’re not limited to just one extra virtual desktop, either; some people use four or more.

Although Windows doesn’t include a built-in virtual desktop feature, you have two very capable free options: VirtuaWin and Dexpot. VirtuaWin is bare-bones and fast, while Dexpot offers tight integration with the Windows 7 taskbar by default, as well as some fancy visual effects. The result isn't as seamless as Compiz Fusion on Linux, but you do get a nice rotating-cube animation when switching between desktops.
If you have ample desktop space already, you may be more interested in managing your windows more effectively. Windows 7 has a few nice built-in keyboard shortcuts (Windows-Left, Windows-Right, Windows-Up) for resizing windows, but you could kick things up a notch (or three) with the free utility WinSplit Revolution. This versatile tool allows you to use your keyboard’s number pad to quickly move and resize windows to preset positions on your screen, creating a tight grid of windows with no wasted space.

If you prefer dragging windows with the mouse, try the tiny utility AltDrag. This freebie borrows another Linux feature, permitting you to drag windows around just by holding down the Alt key while clicking on any part of the window. You can also use AltDrag to resize windows, and it even mimics Windows 7’s Aero Snap feature, making windows snap to one another as you drag them around.

Speaking of snapping, another useful free utility is AquaSnap. If you aren't using Windows 7 yet, you can get a taste of the OS with this tool, which brings a somewhat improved version of Aero Snap to any Windows operating system. When you drag any window to any edge or corner of the screen, it resizes accordingly (drag to the bottom-right corner, for instance, and the window will take up the bottom-right quarter of the screen). Even if you are using Windows 7, AquaSnap may come in handy: It has a feature that lets you shake a window to keep it always on top (rather than to hide all other windows, as Windows 7's Aero Shake does by default). Sometimes, resizing a window to occupy “a quarter of the screen” doesn’t cut it. Some situations (taking screenshots, for example) call for pixel-perfect window dimensions. Whenever I need to resize a window to a particular size, I reach for Sizer, a small, free utility that does just this one thing--but does it very well.

All of the free utilities above are great, but they handle very specific tasks. If you have a multiple-monitor setup and want one all-around tool to make the most of it, look at either DisplayFusion or UltraMon. Both programs are commercial tools (DisplayFusion retails for $25 while UltraMon sells for $40), but they include oodles of options. Perhaps most important, both let you extend the Windows taskbar so that it runs across multiple monitors. Last but not least is a utility for the night owls. If you tend to spend time in front of a computer screen well after the sun has set, the display's eerie blue glow may be affecting the quality of your sleep (or perhaps just the comfort of your eyes). Try the free and simple utility F.lux, which automatically adjusts the color temperature of your screen at night to make colors warmer and less bluish. If you can't resist getting in one last email before bed, F.lux might help you rest better when you finally unplug for the night.

Microsoft Demos Superfast Boot Times in Windows 8

Microsoft has a surprise for users tired of waiting forever while their computers boot up. It will take less than 10 seconds for a Windows 8 PC to go from powered down to the start screen, according to a Microsoft video demonstration. The speedy boot is thanks to a new hybrid system that mixes processes used in cold boots and hibernation mode. Microsoft showed off the new functionality in yet another blog post on its Building Windows 8 blog.

The less than 10 second boot time Microsoft displayed was on a laptop with a Core i7-2620M Sandy Bridge processor, 8GB RAM and a 160GB solid-state drive. Results using other hardware may vary. Microsoft tested 30 PCs comparing Windows 8 fast startup times to Windows 7 cold boots. The most dramatic drop in time was for a PC (specs were undisclosed) that went from a more than 70 second cold boot time in Windows 7 to about 20 seconds on a Windows 8 fast startup.

Thanks to the influence of tablets and smartphones, users are more accustomed than ever to having instant-on access to their devices. This can make it feel as though you've stepped back into the Dark Ages while you wait a minute or two for your PC to boot. Nevertheless, more than half of all PC users (57 percent of desktop users and 45 percent of laptop users) opt to turn their devices off instead of letting them go into sleep or hibernation mode, from which the computer can resume much faster, according to Microsoft data.

Reasons for preferring shutdown vary, Microsoft says, from wanting to save on power to preferring to start a session fresh with no leftover processes from earlier (I suspect that another group of people avoid sleep and hibernate because it never works quite properly on their PCs).

But even though a slight majority prefer to shut down, many Windows PC users do use sleep and hibernate modes instead of cold boots. In Windows 8, Microsoft wanted to create a shutdown process that would appeal to both types of users, by achieving three basic goals: nearly zero power draw when the computer is shut off, a fresh session after boot, and a quick startup time.

To reach these targets, Windows 8's default shutdown mode performs what it refers to as a "session 0" hibernation. Basically, the computer shuts down normally, except that it saves the Windows kernel session to a hibernation file prior to shutting down. In Windows 7, the kernel session gets shut down completely--the kernel is the OS's core component that acts as a link between applications and data processing at the hardware level. Storing the kernel session results in a small hibernation file that the system can read back into memory in much less time than it takes to start everything up from a traditional cold boot, according to Microsoft.

The new faster startup time also takes advantage of multicore systems by using all of the cores in parallel to speed the work of reading the hibernation file. Microsoft says that this multicore process will help your system resume from regular hibernate mode more quickly as well. The Windows maker found that PCs with a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) instead of a traditional BIOS tend to achieve faster boot times under the new system, too.

If you who need a traditional cold shutdown to install new hardware on your PC or if you want one because you like it the old way, Microsoft allows you to revert to the old shutdown method either permanently (through a setting in the user interface--probably in the Control Panel, though Microsoft didn't explain this fully) or as a one-time occurrence from the command prompt.

Windows isn't the only PC operating system to support speedy boots. Google's browser-only Chromebooks have fast boot times, and Apple's MacBook Air line also claims instant-on functionality.

If you can't get enough Windows 8 news, check out PCWorld on Tuesday, September 13 when Microsoft is expected to provide even more details about its forthcoming OS during the company's BUILD conference.