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I use both a Windows 7 and Mac machine at work and have a Mac and Windows 7 machine at home as well. I use them both for application development, but I can't stand Windows 7. Mainly for these reasons:

  • No hot corners
  • No Expose
  • No Spaces

  • No multi-pane view:

    enter image description here

Are there apps to make it like this? I've done Google searches and found some, but every one I find is so clunky and slow. There is nothing as smooth and responsive as the native ones for the Mac. Any suggestions?

I'm not attempting to make Windows 7 look like OS X.

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Multi-pane view is called column view. – Daniel Beck♦ Apr 4 '11 at 18:30
I suggest you try a virtual machine on your Mac with desktop integration, e.g. VMware's unity view, where Windows windows appear on the Mac desktop. – Daniel Beck♦ Apr 4 '11 at 18:32
@Daniel i could do that (and i've done it in the past), however, I'd get in trouble at my current job :) I'm in a corporate environment and they don't want any W7 machines on the network that aren't "theirs". They have special permissions, applications, etc. At home the issue is, I have a desktop Mac and a laptop W7 machine. I want to actually be able to use the W7 machine for development, but without these things it drives me crazy, ESP without hot corners + expose. Thanks for the column view thing, ill check it out. – Oscar Godson Apr 4 '11 at 18:40
Oh -_- you meant on the Mac it's called column view, yes. I got excited and googled and searched W7 for "column view" haha thanks – Oscar Godson Apr 4 '11 at 18:42
It's going to be hard to make Windows 7's UI as inconsistent as Mac OS X. I don't think there's any application to reduce the usability of resizing windows by allowing you to only resize with one corner, nor an application to make the "zoom" button sometimes fit to screen, sometimes make the window smaller or sometimes maximize. – ta.speot.is Apr 5 '11 at 3:22
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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

For desktops(or spaces as you mac users call em), look at mDesktop, its under a Google Project page. Switcher allows Expose for Windows 7.

(Can't say I've tested the rest.) Hot-Corners Claims to do what you ask for hot corners.

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up vote 2 down vote

Expose -> Switcher

Spaces -> dexpot or GoScreen

Hot-Corners -> Again Switcher

Column View -> no idea, i just use powershell to manage my files, and some times Explorer.

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Switcher i've tried and it's so unresponsive and just not smooth (probably because it hasn't been touched in 4 years) :\ i was hoping for an alternative. Dexpot works pretty good. Has weird black and white flash whenever switching desktops tho, not "hot corner" support, but works pretty well. GoScreen seems like the one tho! – Oscar Godson Apr 4 '11 at 20:31
Switcher run smooth. Depends directly on your graphics adapter. For virtual desktop manager i use GoScreen. It has better animation switching behavior comparing to Dexpot. The last has problems remembering z-order and it recreate every window position when switching so it's not an instantaneous switching. That sucks. For fix the problem with Switcher if you are interested only in the functionality, put the animation time in zero. – Ps1CsCpp Apr 4 '11 at 22:26
The best virtual desktop app for Windows is VirtuaWin IMO. – Nathaniel Aug 18 '11 at 5:04
up vote 1 down vote

Expose -> My Expose (How To Geek run down of the software)

Spaces -> Desktops (From the SysInternals suite of tools)

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