Comments on: Desktop Wallpaper Boosts Productivity

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:22:52 +0000

To be honest, I’m now using Fences, which automates all of this icon organization and grouping lark much more effectively albeit with a little RAM/CPU overhead.

By: Hank

Hank — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:54:12 +0000

I pasted the screenshot of the desktop onto a blank Photoshop image, but set the opacity low.

This way I could make the colored boxes fit nicely with my desktop, and take into account the grid settings (I like using “Align to Grid” on my desktop.)

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:53:18 +0000

I am now using Fences

http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

which adds controls and much more to organising my desktop but allows me to create a similar layout to the one I’d grown to love based on the wallpaper approach described above.

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:10:56 +0000

When I tried Fences earlier in the year, the installation told me it would expire in August, so I gave it a quick try and uninstalled.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:17:44 +0000

It’s free for personal use, I use it everyday great program.

http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:13:17 +0000

It costs money though, and mine’s a free solution that doesn’t use up system resources either…

By: Aaron

Aaron — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:57:42 +0000

You should check out Stardock Fences. It’s a free program that organizes your desktop and allows you to customize, categorize your icons in groups etc.

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:06:40 +0000

Grace…everyone does indeed have their own preferences, this approach is very effective though for keeping everything organised and it would not be beyond anyone with even basic graphics editing skills to overlay a more cheerful picture, or even create backgrounds for each of my sectors…without losing the benefits. But, that said, how long do you spend staring at your desktop except when you’re trying to locate a specific icon? I rarely see my wallpaper as I have applications running that fill the screen.

By: Grace

Grace — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:51:34 +0000

I think everyone has their own prefferences for organizing the desktop… thanks for the ideas though, but I need something a bit more cheerful to look at everyday.

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:33:47 +0000

I know where you’re coming from Louise, even though I use this organisational tip, I still end up with clutter everywhere. But, your husband’s point about having too many programs isn’t about the desktop, it’s about what you have running in memory while you’re working with another program. If you’ve got lots of tray applets running while trying to edit an image in Photoshop or Movie Editor you could end up running out of resources.