As much as it pains me to admit it, I’ve been out of college for awhile now - 10 years in April, to be precise. Still, I have fond memories of Ren Faire, campus life, apartment living, and a community of close friends. The less fond memories include apartment living (two sides to every coin!), tuition, and those sleepless nights of crunchtime because I forgot about (or procrastinated on, let’s be real here) a paper that was due the next day.
I did some crazy fun stuff in college… I swear I ACTUALLY did schoolwork sometimes, too!
I was a writing major at Grand Valley State University here in Michigan and sometimes I was working on as many as three or four pieces at once. Each concept required different resources and references, and I was using a single monitor on an old Dell desktop. Although it’s been awhile since I’ve been a student, I think I can remember back far enough to know how much easier life would have been if I’d been able to utilize Groupy.
Obviously not everyone works the same way, but I personally need music of some kind while I’m writing. Usually, I try to suit the sound to whatever it is I’m working on, so sometimes that means specific lists on iTunes, but when I’m feeling flexible I use a streaming service like YouTube, Pandora, or Spotify.
I’m not sure why I have a pic of my desk from college. It’s a mess – must have been finals week…
It would have been nice to be able to utilize Groupy to keep, for example, the Spotify app in a group so I could tab to it easily without having to minimize or maximize the window to switch a song or check a playlist.
I also would often save and use reference images to spark ideas or practice writing descriptions, so I definitely wish I’d have been able to keep multiple file explorer windows together for things like that.
I imagine that students in other majors would make even more use out of the program than I would have -- my needs at the time were pretty basic (and, admittedly, still are). I have always utilized multiple chat programs (IRC and AIM back in the day, Skype and Discord now) and keeping those all contained together would have (possibly - let’s not dream too big here) made me a lot more organized.
Groupy would have helped me manage my spreadsheets full of character biographies, backgrounds, and connections. I really just love how neat and organized I can keep my desktop with the tabs; no digging through windows and min/maxing the wrong one 10 times before I find what I need.
My desktop currently – Discord, Skype, web browser, file explorer, and LiveWriter, all neat and contained.
Groupy may not have been around in my college days, but I utilize it both at work and at home daily now. My needs are simple and the software is definitely capable of benefitting the people who juggle programs and tasks a lot more than I do. Share your experiences with Groupy or show me your screenshots in action – I’d really like to know how other people use it, too.
Not sure about Groupy yet? Try it FREE and bring the power of tabs to your desktop!