The Jury Is In

Protopage still rules.

I have been exploring other options for my start page: Pageflakes and iGoogle. The basic functionality of Protopage leaves them all in the dust. No other site has the flexibility of resizing windows and infinite placement on the desktop.

Pageflakes and iGoogle lock you into three columns of equal width. That doesn’t work for me at all. In addition, too much desktop real estate is used by the borders on the windows.

Here are things I use a lot.

Links – I have about 50 that I use all the time. I have three groups – UF – Personal – Current Courses.

RSS Feeds – I have two windows of feeds – Tech News – Education News. These windows are big enough that I can read abstracts of article. I have about 30 feeds total.

Notes – I use Protopage to write notes to myself all the time. I keep my notes from phone calls, emails, courses… just about everything. I use a window that looks like Notepad. Anything important goes in. When it’s done I delete it. I can leave myself a note while I’m on the office computer. It’s on my start page when I get home.

I don’t use widgets. I have link to weather for my area code. I can look in the corner of my Windows desktop to see the time.

In my last post I was concerned about the load time of Protopage. I found out that the others are just as slow if I load the same things that I have in Protopage. It’s the RSS feeds that do it. I tried moving them to Google Reader, but it complicated my life too much.

I’m sticking with Protopage. It does everything I need and does it nicely.