Spaces for Apple Mac Laptops

Let me just say – I LOVE Spaces for Apple Mac Laptops.

This feature is only available for computers running the Leopard Operating System.

And while I have been running Leopard for quite some time – figuring out Spaces has been on my to do list, and never really got done until now.

I should have gotten to it sooner! What a handy little application.

Basically, you get up to 8 “virtual monitors”. It’s a bit of an abstract concept. Imagine yourself in a room with 8 computer monitors hooked up to one computer.

Now imagine that every time you open iCal – it opens on monitor one. Firefox or Safari on Monitor 2. Address Book on Monitor 3, iChat on four, iPhoto on 5, and so on so forth.

Wow – you wouldn’t have tons of application windows piled on top of each other. You would have a clean desk top.

Well, now that fantasy is possible – without having to run out and buying eight different screens. Enter Spaces for Mac.

Basically you just go to System Preferences and enable Spaces. Then you configure Spaces to open any application of your choice in any of the 8 virtual windows.

The default command to call up spaces is fn F8. And you can assign any key combination to switch between the different Spaces. I chose the (Apple) command arrow key to go to the next sequential space and the (Apple) command number (the number of the space you want to go directly to) to go directly to a Space.

In System Preferences you can also add a Spaces icon to your top menu bar. This icon will show the number of the space that you are in and also, if you click on it, gives you an option to go directly to Spaces preferences.

In addition when you use fn F8 to call up your spaces, you can set a preference to have them show up to four columns wide by 2 spaces high.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you do not have an application open – it’s assigned space will be empty until you open the application. When you open the application it will open directly into the assigned space. I also found it helpful to have all the applications closed (not minimized but actually quit) when I assigned the applications to Spaces. When I tried to assign Spaces while the applications were running, it didn’t work right. Once I quit the applications and did the assignments, everything worked perfectly.

Spaces is an excellent feature especially when you are constrained by the relatively small sized monitors on Apple Mac laptops.