Inspired by a post over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog I decided to check out a virtual desktop application called Desktop Manager. And I’m glad I did.

Now it’s a little hard to explain, as I found out when trying to tell a friend, but I’ll try. You basically get to take your desktop and create more; virtually. I have four (see screenshot). Now, when I click on any one of those desktops, a cool little animation happens and I’m presented with a new desktop. All the applications open in the previous desktop hide and either I’m presented with a clean screen or with whatever windows and applications I had open in this virtual desktop before.

In my screen shot above you can see that I have four virtual desktops.
1) Has Firefox and Thunderbird running.
2) Has Fireworks and Dreamweaver running.
3) Has Shiira running.
4) Has a finder window open and Entourage running.

It’s really slick. At any time I can move to another virtual desktop and all my open windows and clutter will go away also. You can have as many virtual desktops as your computer can handle and it even comes with many cool transitions! The best part though, it’s FREE! Granted it’s labeled Alpha, which is scary, but it gets no bad reviews anywhere I go. If you don’t like the Alpha label you can always get You Control:Desktops for $30 and it’ll do the same thing with one or two more minor features.

It’s really coo and it’s really fun and helps with productivity as it helps keep the window clutter under control. 🙂

Note: The screenshot above is just the Desktop Manager icon that shows in the lower left corner of the screen. It provides quick access to other desktops.