I have yet to try these free apps out but they look neat~
There's a 3D desktop manager~
There's a Aero-style flip 3D (Similar to TopDesk) utility~
There's a searchlight (background dimmer) desktop utility~
many more~
and they come in portable editions
anyone who tries these out~ post your experiences, hey, in the least, they may be a fun way to blow a few minutes of your life on~
some pics:
EDIT: Just tried out the 3D Desktop 'almost' cube effect, it's pretty responsive..
thanks for the link Fire, it's going to take me the best part of the weekend to play with some of these apps. 
yeah! great found!
Shock Dropper is just the app I ever searched for 
And the 3d virtualdesktop is quite superb!
haa, I know what you mean mps69~ So far, I've tried the searchlight app. It would be one of my favorites as the dimming idea rocks and it fades in and out etc. but the current version just doesn't feel as integrated with the desktop as I would like. It makes interacting with icons less effective. I wish it would also fade the desktop back to normal levels when the desktop is given focus (ie: clicked on.) But at this stage no. And when dragging windows across this new dimmed desktop, the windows drawing gets a bit laggy.
Oh, and between some of these 3D and flip apps, for some reason, my visual performance setting of "animate windows when min/max'ing" gets re-set to ON. when I launch the apps. It's rather odd since one would think the apps would benefit from that being OFF.
I also tried out the Aero Flip app - just a bit too laggy for me at this stage and not customizable (but then again, I've gotten spoiled with TopDesk) But this is free~ I would like to know if it handles windowblinds skins with transparency though. Anyone with WB care to share their experience? Specifically, do the window borders get drawn during flip? or do they disappear completely as in teh case of Topdesk? I would really like to know.
Lastly, I tried the 3D desktop manager which seemed the most polished and responsive and stable of the apps Ive tried. It's really neat but at this stage lacks (i believe) the ability to move windows between desktops in an animated fashion. But as far as responsiveness, it's even peppier than
Yod'm 3D (which was recently acquired by Otaku Software/TopDesk)
I found the 3D desktop manager less responsive & immensely slow compared to Yod'm 3D. Which is strange because OpenGL usually renders as quick or quicker then directX even with my crappy graphics. :/
..and odd because I'm using an ATI graphics card and I was under the impression that their driver support for OpenGL was less than par. I might have somthing in that switched around tho~
r u kidding me... i payed how much money for topdesk and now there is a free program that does the same thing??? oh now i feel like i've waisted all my money grr
TopDesk is still better and Yom'd(DeskSpace) is still better.
And CubeDesktop is better than all those together. Just check it at www . cubedesktop . com
This is free, those apps are good.
Shock searchlight, is there anything like that that works on dual monitors? (AKA, for you single monitor people, is there anything that also emulates whatever mac feature that probably is?)
Hello
I just downloaded the shock 3d flip application and I am having problems with operating it.It is at this point lagging and sometimes doesn't work here is a list of my applications including my new app
What OS are you running?
System specs?
If it's lagging, try turning the background and other options off.
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