Features
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License:
Free to try; $19.95 to buy
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Editor's Rating:
Not rated
- Average User Rating:
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Downloads:
42,547
- Requirements:
Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, DirectX 7.1 drivers, 3D graphics card
- Limitations:
14-day trial
- Date Added:
September 12, 2003
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Previous Versions:
Publisher's description of Spaces - 3D Desktop for Windows
From Spatial Research:A Next-Generation 3D Desktop for the PC. Spaces integrates seamlessly into your desktop and unleashes the untapped power of your graphics processor. Spaces allows you to manage multiple windows and applications efficiently by allowing applications to recede into the desktop. Spaces is fully customizable and includes multiple types of workspaces and effects. You will not believe what your computer can do.
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User reviews
- Average user rating: 4.5 stars out of 14 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 14 user reviewsSee all 14 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Spaces - 3D Desktop for Windows 1.1
"My Virtural desktop truly beautiful"
Pros: if you guys want to go fever, this is what i done so basically my XP is no more its a truly 3D visual system, i disabled the explore i disabled the task-bar, i made my space run first , i also downloaded another 3D application which folds windows like in vista named Madotate very good tiny tool, and i got another application called object-dock which is a Mac style program lunch-er, so you can imagine how my 3d Desktop looks now :P i feel like I'm in another world lol My Screen is like in that hackers movie, the scene where you see that big mainframe Gibson lol :)
Cons: the 14 days limit :( should have been open source free GNU GPL etc
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Version: Spaces - 3D Desktop for Windows 1.1
Pros: This is a great little tool. Very Windows Vista like. Great effects and much better than a bare desktop.
Cons: More a gimmick than a tool really. I dont know if id pay the $19.95 for it though. Problem is, its totally non-mozilla compatable. It leaves firefox and thunderbird(the best email client) in the foreground when trying to jump between aplications. The only way to put them to the background is to minimize. Not a good thing since minimizing requires mouse usage as opposed to "alt-tab"'ing
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Version: Spaces - 3D Desktop for Windows 1.1
"A nice conceptual product, but not worth $20"
Pros: This is the ONLY product that I have seen so far that will actually let you play a few videos simultaneously in your 3D space. The are not just inconified snapshots of the video, they all independently play.
Hovering a mouse pointer over a window gives you information about the process that is running in the 3D space. That tells me that this program doesn't just create a little thumbnail of a process, but it actually updates information about that process.
Navigation around the interface is simple. You can zoom closer to center and away from center. You can click any panel you have on the screen and it will change your point of view to focus on it. Going back to center is 2 quick clicks.
This program appears to have a lot of potential if this company chooses to continue to develop it.
Cons: This software lacks documentation, has no forum, no knowledgebase, and just has an email address at the site to email if you encounter a problem or have a question. So, it is supported, but it probably just isnt as popular as other software of this type. That's fine, but it means that it might take longer to get your answers sometimes.
Let me be fair and say that this software does have a help menu that covers the basics, but it definitely is incomplete documentation. You will not find any information as to how to move the panels that your background apps will be sitting on, or adjust their points of view, etc.
Spaces has a memory leak when you run a video as your background. I left my computer running for about 5 hours while I was away and spaces.exe consumed over 700 megs of RAM and was still eating more memory as the background video continued to play. I stopped the background video from playing and the memory leak stopped, but it didnt release the memory until it was restarted.
There is no support in the interface itself to launch a new application. You will need to launch your apps from the windows desktop itself or start a new program from something like task manager. You can't put shortcuts on the spaces desktop to launch a program.
An average user will not be able to customize anything beyond the basic layout in this 3D workspace. The configuration files that the program actually reads to render your 3D space are XML files that you would have to figure out. There are quite a few parameters in the XML files with no description for the things you can change to adjust the layout. Basically, what they give you onscreen to change (background image, colors, background shape and point of view adjustment) is all you get.
You need to have a panel to place a process on, and you have to manually hack the XML files to figure out how to add a panel for more usable space in your 3D desktop. Why they didn't bother to program an interface to let you add panels and position them is a mystery to me.
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Version: Spaces - 3D Desktop for Windows 1.1
"all these 3ds are far too underdeveloped"
Summary: ive tried aston, 3dna, 3d-top, talisman and now this one, and none of them seem done yet...it seems a shame that the 3d desktop idea's only starting out now, i figured we'd all be on it by 2000... so far the best ive seen is 3dna, but it still is f... read more >>
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Version: Spaces - 3D Desktop for Windows 1.1
"Highly recommended! Wish it were free"
Summary: Really useful and nice visualisation when working with a ton of windows.
Some room for improvement: 1. Shortcuts / launchers / a command line should have a place on the desktop. One can't launch any new application from within it (the ... read more >> - See all 14 user reviews Write review
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