The Taskbar can be useful in that it will group together similar opened windows so you can quickly refer to the minimised application, when required. Vista is great for this in that it will show a preview of the minimised application on the Taskbar, when you hold your mouse over each tab. Windows XP doesn't enable this option, so it's much more difficult trying to work out which apps are opened, minimised or iconified to the system tray.

MiniMIZE is a free tool specifically for Windows XP that will enable you to minimise your applications to an icon on your desktop, rather than to the Taskbar. You can then quickly see which applications are open and available by clicking on each minimised image. You can move the windows around in the latest version. Would be ideal if they iconified to your sidebar in Vista, when a Vista version is made avaiable.

04 Dec 2007