Keith et al,
I'd like to make the case for a feature that I think would double the value of DisplayFusion. For me it would be a 10x value win, and I know from searching other forums that a lot of people face the same problem and the same frustration with Microsoft's position that the current behavior is by design and intentional, even though it pisses everyone off.
Specifically, what I'm talking about is the fact that if Windows thinks for any reason that any one monitor is not fully functional, it "collapses the desktop" and all the windows get moved and re-sized as necessary to fit them into the remaining monitors. This causes huge problems for a lot of us because when you have 8+ monitors, it's inevitable that there will be occasional "glitches" that cause Windows to think a monitor has been removed. Even if the fault condition only lasts a few miliseconds, Windows irreversibly makes a mess of everything.
In my case, this literally costs me upwards of $250/month! The reason is that I cannot use the "Dim the display after X minutes" function in Power Settings in Control Panel. If I do, my various different model monitors have varied wakeup latency after going into sleep mode. So some of them come back to life a second or so before the others, and that causes Windows to get confused and think half of the monitors were disconnected, and the desktop collapses. Here in Mexico electricity is very expensive, and the difference between a black screensaver and dimming the monitors literally translates to $250/month in electric bills!
The main reason I purchased DisplayFusion was that I thought the save window size/positions and restore from last save functions would provide a solution. I figured I could just let the desktop collapse, then when Windows figured out all the monitors are really there, I could just restore using a hotkey. After two months of experimentation, I've concluded that DF just can't help, for two reasons. The first is probably solvable - in my experience Save Window Sizes/Positions is only persistent in the current boot session, so if you reboot and forget to re-save window positions, you can't restore. I'm sure that could be fixed, but the other problem isn't solvable - some Apps - VMware in particular - get irreversibly screwed up when the desktop collapses. There just is no solution short of shutting down all VMs and restarting VMware, and DF can't help with that.
The new feature I propose is "Lock the Desktop". It works just like "Lock the taskbar". When you turn it on, DF would somehow disable the desktop-collapse "feature" of windows. So when the desktop is locked windows stay in the location they were last placed by the user, even if that monitor no longer exists. When the monitor comes back they show up there.
This would also make it possible to turn off monitors that are not in use in order to save energy. That would be a major plus for me. I have 9 30" monitors, all covered with financial charts. On most days, I don't need three of them and would like to power them off to save energy. But if I did that I would lose all the window placements. This feature would make it possible to turn monitors on and off at will without disrupting the windows desktop dimensions.
I realize that defeating the "feature" in windows that collapses the desktop when a monitor goes offline is probably non-trivial. But I sincerely think you would multiply the value of DF to users if you could figure out how to do it.
Thanks for considering this suggestion! :
