15-Minute Reviews :: Captain Tray Pro v6.4

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Captain Tray Pro version 6.4 by Almeza Company – An application to allow you to minimize applications to your system tray, hide them or other window tasks.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Captain Tray Pro is a simple and effective tool for tray management under Windows OS.

A lot of users need to work with several applications at once. Some of them are used quite regularly, others only when necessary. The Windows Taskbar can be fully packed – everything seems to be necessary and you have no desire to close anything.

Some applications can be minimized into the system tray (the area where the clock is), but what shall we do with ‘Notepad’, ‘Calculator’, ‘Microsoft Word’, ‘Microsoft Excel’, and our other favorite applications? Captain Tray Pro is right there to help you.

You probably have a file manager installed on your computer, which you use to manage your files. Now you can use Captain Tray Pro to manage your windows.”

Quick Pros

• Ability to move windows to system tray and ‘hideboard’
• Can have applications start in a different area
• Timer an interesting concept but is a bit weak
• Ability to lock access from Captain Tray Prohandy

Quick Cons

• Overly complex for something simple
• No tool tips on small icons in main window
• Some of the help file’s images are out of date
• System shutdown menu and system tray options redundant

Expansion

I think everyone at some point needs to unclutter their task bar some; Whether working on a project or otherwise, the window clutter can get rather overwhelming at points. This application attempts to step up to the plate to add an extra level of application management and helps you to take back your task bar.

After the first launch of this application, you are greeted by a can’t-miss captain’s head icon in your System Tray. You can either choose to left-click the icon to bring up the main window, or right-click to bring up a pop-up menu.

The pop-up menu covers a lot of ‘quick’ access functionality; The developer tried to keep it organized, but with 8 menu options with further submenus, and three other options, it may quickly overwhelm. Some of the menu options I would have likely left to the main ‘Manager’ window, such as access to options, help and State (positioning of Captain Tray Pro’s icon) to keep the pop-up menu’s clutter to a minimum and increase quick usability. The useful functionality here includes management of the Taskbar, System Tray (For icons that this application has placed there) and the ‘Hideboard’ (The Hideboard is simply hiding the application from the Taskbar and System Tray); More specifically, the ability to manipulate all applications in each category at once. This is great for quick access, but for more finite control of what is where and visible, you need to launch the main ‘Manager’ window. I do think that the System functions are not needed in this application; It’s just redundant and does not add much over what the start menu offers.

The main window is a side-by-side split screen where you can manage two of the three areas at a time, managed by tabs. I would have much rather done away with the tabs for the Taskbar, System Tray and Hideboard altogether and had a three column layout to minimize mouseclicks or at least offered the option to do so. This window provides you with a window-by-window access to moving windows to the Taskbat, System Tray and Hideboard with simple drag-and-drop functionality. Right directly below the tabs in the window is a series of buttons as well for quick access to functions such as the timer, minimize, restore and close. My biggest quip with this is that while it is quick to learn, there is no tool tips on the buttons when I tested it, and the help file shows dated icons.

Besides the ability to move applications around to different areas, you can also have applications start in a certain area using the Teleport function. The Teleport function is a good way to set yourself up to get applications going where you want them to go as you open them, saving time from babysitting applications into their proper home, increasing productivity on this application.

An aspect that perked my interest was the ability to set Timers (Alarms) on windows. You set a time for the alarm to go off (Only time however), an action (None; Restore and set focus; Only restore to Taskbar; and Animate System Tray icon) and a sound notification (None; Speaker; and Play WAV file). It is a great concept, and something I’d like to see expanded. If you do close the window before the timer has come, the timer won’t trigger. It would be interesting to see the ability to set more specific timer information (Date/Time), as well as possibly the ability to launch the window even if it has been closed.

One last feature I did find interesting is that you can lock Captain Tray Pro with a password so that others can not mess with it. This may be handy if you’re working on a project and you don’t want to have to set up your workspace again – Instead you hide your workspace and then lock it from access. It could also be useful to hide downloads from others so that they don’t accidentally get canceled or otherwise. It would be interesting to see this expanded to allow for the ability to block soft shutdowns, reboots, logouts or otherwise with a message so that someone else doesn’t inadvertently shut down on you as well.

Final Verdict

While the application is great in concept and shows great potential, its interface feels too bloated and would feel more as a hindrance for productivity to me. If it was simplified in usage and increase in speed to most chores (Noting some of the changes above such as a three-pane window) it may become a good tool. For free, you may want to give it a spin and see if it may suit your needs. The price is listed on Giveaway of the Day as $34.95 for this title; However, when I went to the publisher’s site and went to the Buy Now page it stated it was actually $9.95. I’m not sure if this is the permanent price or just today. As for paying $9.95, if this is the normal price, it may not be a bad price if the application is useful to you but make sure you try it first. There are plenty of open-source and freeware alternatives: TrayIt and 4t Tray Minimizer Free are two I found quickly that look promising.

Update: Giveaway’s price has been updated to reflect the price of $9.95.

Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, November 29, 2007