The Active Wallpaper Utility for Windows 95 / 98 / ME - System control, Star Trek style.

Running as a menu- and borderless fullscreen program, Z-DESK consists of a number of screens designed after the computer displays in Star Trek:The Next Generation and Star Trek:Voyager.

It enables you to

start programs and desktop items

set up "Personal" shortcut folders for different users

establish Dial-Up and HyperTerminal connections

access Control Panel applets

launch links from your Favorites folder

list and switch to user tasks

display system information

shutdown or restart your system

all with a single mouse click.

Z-Desk automatically adjusts itself to any screen resolution your system is running on and also to any and all taskbars you may have permanently visible. The example above will look the same, wether you have a 640x480 or a 1600x1200 display. Of course, higher display resolutions will improve the visual results.

At the top of the screen are the selections for the various displays; DTOP for "Desktop" is currently selected.

The center sections offers selections for every item on your desktop - files and shortcuts as well as system items like the Recycle Bin. Selections for the "Run" and "Find" commands are added as well. Adding new items to the desktop is as easy as dragging them from Explorer and dropping them onto a display screen.

Clicking any selection will start the associated choice - switch displays, start programs, open folders. Feedback is given both visually with a brief highlighting of the selected choice and a short sound effect.

Z-Desk can be set to retreat into the screen background as soon as a selection is made. Clicking on any visible portion of it or on its tray icon will bring it to the foreground again. By right-clicking the tray icon, Z-Desk can be made entirely invisible, for quick access to the real desktop whenever you need it.

Similar to the desktop, you can acess communications (COMM) to start and monitor Dial-Up Networking and HyperTerminal connections, the control panel (CPNL) to launch control panel applets directly, browse all links in your Favorites folder (FVRT) or any program in your start program menu tree (PRGM), establish individual personal folders for every user on your system (PSNL), display information about your system status (SYST) or show all running user tasks and switch to any open window instantly (TSKL). You can even shut down or restart your system.

System Requirements:

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Z-Desk runs under MS Windows 95, 98 and ME. It has no special hardware or software requirements, although a display adapter and monitor running high- (16 bit) or true-color modes (24 or 32 bit) is recommended for best visual results.

Although the program does run under Windows NT, 2000 or XP, it is not intended for this operating system and not all functions will be available under these operating systems.

Z-Desk requires one additional system file, the MS Visual Basic 5 Virtual Machine MSVBVM50.DLL, Service Pack 2 or a later version. You can download a zipped archive with this file directly from this website.