Thank heavens for third-party developers. Enable Software's Enable Virtual Desktop (ENV) is great if you have a low-resolution video card or don't like to squint to see the text in very high-resolution modes. It's an easy way to expand your screen real estate as it provides a number of options for configuring your virtual workspace to run two or more virtual screens.

ENV maintains a small onscreen window grid showing tiny thumbnails that represent each virtual desktop. The windows open on the active desktop are shown in greater detail, and you can move windows within or between virtual desktops simply by clicking and dragging them around the ENV workspace. You can set specific applications to be present in every workspace, and can manage a range of settings and rules to control how ENV transfers focus between windows.
How you use virtual desktops is up to you. You could have one virtual desktop in which all of your document folders are open; another with applications related to a project you're working on, and another with details related to another project. Another virtual desktop could have all your Web browser windows, and you could keep a game running in yet another window.

However, it's important to understand what tools like ENV cannot do. They don't actually change your desktop; instead they intelligently manage the maximising and minimising of applications according to the rules you set. In other words, when you swap between desktops, all the windows related to the desktop you just left are minimised to an invisible point on the desktop. All applications still appear on the taskbar, but ENV can be set to automatically switch between desktops as you click on various application icons.

ENV does not allow you to set different resolutions for different desktops, nor can it change the currently loaded background applications, support unique system settings, or anything else that fundamentally changes the background operation of Windows. Multiple active desktops are not supported, and it can be tricky changing the wallpaper that appears in different virtual desktops. For these functions, you need a commercial virtual PC emulator such as Connectix Virtual PC. Nonetheless, ENV can be immensely helpful for organising your workspace for better efficiency.

If you regularly move data between applications, you'll definitely want to improve Windows' paltry single clipboard. Office XP has built-in support for 24 clipboards, but it only allows cutting and pasting between Office applications. A better choice is an application such as Gilson Filho's free Multiple Clipboards, which provides ten Windows clipboards.

Multiple Clipboards keeps a status icon in your taskbar, showing the number of the current clipboard in red. You can switch between the clipboards using hotkeys (CTRL-1 through to CTRL-0 by default) and display the contents of any one clipboard by adding the * key. Multiple Clipboards intercepts Windows' standard CTRL-C, CTRL-X and CTRL-V keys to direct the information you're copying to its own buffers, or you can copy directly into a chosen buffer.

If you create a lot of documents or Web pages and have a number of standard images to insert, you can copy them into the upper reaches of your virtual clipboards and retrieve them as required with a single key combination. Multiple Clipboards is a simple but important addition to any Windows system, and you can't beat the price.

Enable Virtual Desktop costs $US19.95. You can download a 30-day trial version from http://www.enablesoftware.com/. Multiple Clipboards is free from http://www.geocities.com/gfpfilho.geo/.