BumpTop Finally Comes Out of Beta

After years of endless beta versions and announcements, Bumptop finally surfaces as a downloadable retail application.  I’ve been using BumpTop since an early beta and I have to agree with their claims that it’s going to be the future of desktops in operating systems.

What’s so good about BumpTop?  Let me list the ways:

• It offers an extremely creative 3D view of your desktop screen, almost like an extension of your desk.
• It allows you to perform a good variety of actions right from the desktop, including sorting files, flipping through websites, uploading photos to social networks, pushing emails and more.
• Advanced search finally gives a decent alternative to Windows’ despicable search feature.
• You can use custom themes to personalize your desktop, including features such as slide shows and sticky notes

The control interface in BumpTop is what really makes it shine, allowing you to organize and flip through files and functions in a highly visual manner.  If they integrated web browsing right into it (which they probably will), people can literally work directly from the desktop without needing much else.

Even after a couple of years in beta, though, there are still some highly noticeable problems, even with this production build:

• I’ve experienced a couple of crashes using it on Vista, although it might have more to do with the hardware-OS synergy (or lack of it) on my Vista-powered laptop.  No problems whatsoever on my main XP workstation.
• There’s no Undo button.  While having no Undo does make it more lifelike, it’s ridiculous for any software, in this day and age, not to have an Undo option.

The fun and intuitive 3D desktop for Windows computers can now be downloaded either in the form of a free teaser or a $30 Pro version.   A multi-touch capable version is planned to coincide with the release of Windows 7 towards the end of the year.

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