I’d like to have desktops with different sets of shortcuts depending on what I’m doing – is there a way to do this with WinXPHome?
I know I could make another user account and set its desktop up differently, but logging out of one account and into a different one is way slow. Ideally I’d just like to have the alternate desktop a single click away, like with my Linux virtual desktops at work.
If you have an Nvidia graphics card, you can set up nView in the Nvidia drivers section to give you multiple desktops, all accesible with custom configurable hotkeys.
I think making two different Windows user names is your best and easiest option. You can switch quickly by pressing the windows button and and L. On my machine (which isn’t particularly fast) the screen loads extremley quickly. Try it and see.
MultiDesktop Manager. Win 2k/XP freeware.
Thank you for your suggestions, but… well, in order:
RandomLetters, I have a cheap-o Dell. It’s my understanding it doesn’t even have a separate graphics card, let alone a name brand one.
Aeropl, thanks for the hint about windows-L, and yes, that does work much much faster! So, I set up another account and started arranging the desktop to suit one of my splinter personalities (the Creative Writer, to be exact.) And immediately ran into all sorts of strangenesses. I would ask for a change, give Windows the okay/apply…and nothing happened. Pick a different background, so I’d know at once which personality I as in? Okay, here’s the options. You like that one? Fine…but once out of the selection routine, the wallpaper remained unchanged. And it wouldn’t let me delete the default icons (like “MyComputer” and “MyDocuments”) even though we went through the ‘are you sure?’ and I’d say yes. It would simply close that dialog box and no change happened.
It did let me create new shortcuts, and arrange them on the desktop…but if I window-L’ed over to the main desktop and then back, some of the shortcuts would be gone and the rest all rearranged into rows on the left side. Even when I did a formal log out and save my settings…on return, I’d find things changed back to the way windows wants them.
Annoying.
Q.E.D., that program sounded exactly like what I wanted. After dling and running, I asked for a new desktop, and it created it – as an exact clone of my default one. Okay. I then proceded to customize it, deleting the icons that didn’t apply to writing, moving the rest around, creating some new folders and putting shortcuts to various documents in them. Life seemed good.
Getting back to my default desktop took only two clicks…where I found my default desktop had been changed to match the new one! Or, almost exacly: the shortcuts I’d deleted in the new desktop where gone from this one. A folder which I had moved from one side of the screen to the other was also gone. OTOH, the default now had (arranged in the earliest empty slots on the left) all the new folders I’d made for the new desktop. Oh – and I’d changed the wallpaper of the new desktop, which did take effect. And the default desktop kept the old wallpaper…until I’d switched back and forth a few times, whereupon suddenly the default wallpaper was changed to match the new.
Okay, maybe I’m missing the point, but I don’t see how having ‘multiple desktops’ gains you anything if the program insists on keeping them clones of each other. You might as well stick with just running all your programs in the same desktop.
<<sigh>> This is so effortless in Linux.
I do thank you guys for your suggestions. I just think I’m trying to do something Windows flat out isn’t capable of doing reliably, and I might as well give up.
Oh, well. We have three computers in this household, two desktops and a laptop. Maybe I’ll just set up my desktop on each a different way, and move from room to room when I switch tasks. 
I use DesktopPlus. It’s $30 and does what you need.
Virtual Desktop Manager from the Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP.
I can’t vouch for it, but it’s another free one to try out.
Thanks for the additional leads, Bill H. & qshapadooy – I’ll check them out this weekend when I have more time and patience to deal with the frustrations that always seem to follow on dealing with windows changes.