15-Minute Reviews :: Desktop Icon Toy v2.5

Hello everybody and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Desktop Icon Toy version 2.5 by iDeskSoft – A fun little gadget for massing with your desktop icons.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Desktop Icon Toy is a desktop icon enhancement tool, which allows you to make many funny things for your windows desktop icons. It can animate desktop icons, arrange desktop icons by many complex figures (like Clock, Spiral, Heart and more), hide icon texts, add hover effects for desktop icons, automatically show hide desktop icons, save and restore desktop icon layout and more…”

Quick Pros

• Lots of fun layouts available – Neatly puts aside unused icons in layout
• Icon dancing, word blinking and more pretty cool features
• Doesn’t chew up a lot of memory; Not much CPU either
• Ability to increase icon size handy
• Ability to organize icons in a certain order on layouts

Quick Cons

• Dual-screen support is severely broken
• ‘Save Layout’ should have a confirmation box or similar
• Be nice to have the ability to position the layouts on screen
• More ‘productive’ layouts would be handy
• System Tray icon does not have all menu options on by default

Expansion

This application, while simple, is a lot of fun to mess around with. There’s lots of layouts and ‘effects’ to mess with. From stars and hearts, spirals, and a few more productive such as aligning them top/bottom/left/right as well. Icon dancing, word blinking and more to be a bit more fun. While the text hiding is cool, anyone with a few desktop folders, you could get lost quickly when messing with the layouts. You can also arrange in which order icons appear on the layouts – A benefit to help you maintain productivity while still having a fun layout. With that, the fact that you can increase the icon size as well is a plus too. This application could be of some use for someone who is visually-impaired.

Handier yet, you can save your original icon layout and restore it too. I do wish though is that the ‘Save Layout’ option had a confirmation box. I lost my layout once because I clicked on ‘Save Layout’ on accident, and I can see others doing the same as well.

My biggest issue with this application is it’s dual-screen support. It’s broken, period. On my layout (19” on left, 22” on right,) the icons align themselves on the left screen – That’s not too big of a problem. The issue is that they align themselves so they are straddling the right edge and bleed over to the left; Doesn’t look nice at all. I figured that a quick fix for this would be allow people to indicate position of the center of the layouts. This would be a fine fix; However, there is also the issue of the effects on the icons as well. I couldn’t figure out why the effects on the icons weren’t working on my computer, until I realized that when I hovered my mouse over icons on the left side of my right screen, it would blink icons a specific distance to the left on my screen (Almost full-screen.) So I’d be hovering one on the right, and one on the far left would blink. It was a very specific distance. I could even make icons do their effect on the other side without being on an icon on the right side. I’m assuming it is all linked to the same general issue.

A few last notes; While the layouts are ‘fun’, it would be handy if there were more productive layouts as well. (Not sure what else could be done, but is an idea.) As well, many of the options have to be accessed through the options menu until you turn on a bunch of System Tray options. A bit of a quirk.

Final Verdict

While the application is a lot of fun and would be significantly better if dual-screen support would function properly, its value is mainly as a fun application. While free, it may be enjoyable to pick it up if you have a single-screen setup, or you’re willing to brave the issues on a dual-screen setup. As for paying $19.95, it isn’t worth it at this time for anyone with dual-screen setup, and would be hard to warrant $19.95 for something relatively simple and not frequently used after the initial setup. It may be a lot of fun, but for $19.95, it ranks up there with the simple screensavers that are similarly-priced; May be a good deal to someone who really falls in love with it.

Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, May 31, 2007