BumpTop BETA Reviewed

[JasonJ]

Hello everyone!
BumpTop aims to "rethink your desktop". See it in action at www.bumptop.com

After months of anticipation I finally was invited to download the BumpTop beta, and since my tablet PC was still in hospital, I installed BumpTop onto my regular WinXP desktop PC.


AndI was instantlydisappointed by BumpTop. It seemed like a totally pointless cosmetic resource hog. On top of that, the online documentation is near non-existant -- there are undocumented features I had to blunder into-- and I could foresee that there would be problems trying to run it on my tablet PC.


The next day I opened BumpTop again -- and BumpTop downloaded an update. This time, BumpTop seemed much more responsive. I had an sudden epiphany...
...and I began to reorganize my desktop icons ...


MY (tablet) DESKTOP BEFORE BUMPTOP:


MY (tablet) DESKTOP AFTER BUMPTOP:





Any questions?

Of course there are questions. Let's move onto the...


BUMPTOP PROS:

Due to clever 3d distortion, you are actually looking at more screen real estate than you actually have (ie: your desktop plus the edges of the 3d walls.)


Ability to customize the wallpaper of each wall and the floor separately.
The most significant for me is the ability to make some icons larger or smaller than others. No operating system or desktop customization has ever provided that function before and its implications are profound.

Here is one of the walls I've used to keep my Apps shortcuts. (This is my desktop PC's screen.) Notice the staggered sizes of the icons:



A client phoned to discuss an advertising layout whose JPG was already sitting on the BumpTop desktop. Instead of having to open it or preview it, I could already see the details that she was talking about. Just like in the real world -- where we don't need to actually launch applications to see the documents lying on our desk.


Simply "tying knots" around multiple documents to create piles: brilliant.


Crowded icons accidentally falling off the 3D walls: priceless.


I found BumpTop to be fairly robust on both systems I installed it to:
SYSTEM A: A run-of-the-mill 3.0 ghz Celeron running win XP and a Wacom pen
and SYSTEM B: a runt-of-the-litter HP tx1000 series tablet with Vista and non-Wacom pen.

Neither system seemed unfairly taxed by BumpTop's graphic demands. I also had no problems switching BumpTop from portrait to landscape onthe tablet PC.





BUMPTOP's Drawbacks:
You can't just fly around the desktop willy-nilly as you would expect with a true 3D simulation. You can only switch between five fixed viewpoints.


Some icons I could not customize, such as "Network".


Under Windows XP, you will not see PDF previews and some other kinds of thumbnails which you will see under Windows Vista.


The action of "fanning out" the contents of a pile works properly only with a Wacom pen... it's quite amazing the way the icons will follow the line you draw no matter how twisted... Fanning out therefore did not function as expected on my cheap-ass HP tablet but did sort of work (I could only fan out straight lines).


Also since "flipping" through the pile does not work without a scrollwheel, it therefore does not work on the tablet PC. The InkSeine toolring *does* work for flipping, but the toolring is not quite precise enough to stop at the item you want..


The BumpTop feedback forum is an arms-length, over-engineered expensive-looking mess of a website called "getsatisfaction.com". . . Following the threads, I never get the impression that Bumptop's designers are reading any of the postings.



My personal Wish-List for BumpTop:


3D recycle bin and printer widget
Adjustable thickness (depth) of icons
User customizable sound effects
User controlled viewpoint widget (trUe 3D)
Doors in the 3D walls that lead to other BumpTop rooms.



Final Assessment:


Anything that increases my desktop real estate and lets me prioritize my shortcuts by size is a game changer.


BumpTop's gorgeous presentation actually seems to overshadow the deep functionality it provides to your desktop.
If you are a photographer or graphic artist who keeps image files on your desktop, you *need* BumpTop. If you have a zillion apps whose shortcuts you need to keep on your desktop, you *need* BumpTop. If you have a UMPC or similarly small screen, you need the extra space BumpTop can provide around the edges.


And while BumpTop seems to work best with a mouse, it is a natural fit to the tablet PC and to physical gestures.
BumpTop represents freedom, glorious freedom from the wasteful tyranny of shallow, prettyglass effectsand reflections!
Long live the new physics!

[JasonJ]

Sorry, kind moderators... maybe I should have posted this to "general software" ?


thanks

[C-141XLer]

Nice review. I found a Youtube video that shows it being used on a TPC with a pen. They used a gesture to flip through a pile with the pen.

Youtube

Edit: I made several attempts to post a link, both in FF and IE. It shows fine in the preview but does not show in the actual post. So add the 3 w's to youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ or search for BumpTop on Youtube.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ

How long did it take for you to get a Beta invite? Many on Youtube were complaining of 5 weeks or more.
Edited by: C-141XLer

My invite took much longer than 5 weeks, I think it might have been months.

I really wanted to love BumpTop but I found the images and icons too fuzzy.I felt I was always straining my eyes to see text in particular.

I thought I would like the piles and was disappointed in myself that I didn't. Perhaps I am too used to evenly spaced grid arrangements in windows!

I had it on my tablet but took it off as I actually liked it less with the pen that with my PC and mouse. It was really the tablet I wanted it for too!

I've put it aside for the moment as I am too busy to distract myself with playing with it but I do intend to give it another shot.


P.S. Fortgot to say - great review JasonJ and really love the idea of adjoining rooms! Edited by: Mr H

[jhoff80]

How much CPU and memory does this take up on each computer? (Check in the task manager.)

I still think no matter how good it works, its too much of a waste, and this comes from someone who likes Vista. I mean, yes, Vista uses the GPU capabilities for the desktop, but this uses even more than that and so I can't see how it wouldn't kill your battery.

[JasonJ]

Hi Folks... thank you for replies!
I think it was like, months to finally get the invite to download BumpTop. I may have signed up twice during that period.



The CPU question is very interesting...

Here's an informal look at BumpTop running on:
WINDOWS XP, 3GHz Celeron with maybe 1G of RAM.
Desktop PC, a no-name white box. Totally onboard video chipset. Nuff said.

BumpTop is consuming 45mb of memory.
When thesystem is totally idle, BumpTopconsistently consumes about 17% - 20% of my CPU.

This is interesting because atthis minute I'm simultaneously:
(a) typing this reply into an Explorer window,
(b)rendering out 720 x 480 pixel video (animating particle effects)
and (c) playing 720x480 pixel 30fps video in Windows Media Player.

While these activities are happening, Bumptop's resource usage drops to between 2% and 0%.

While activities (b) and (c) continue playing on the desktop, I switch over to BumpTop and attempt to fluidly fan out a pile with a Wacom stylus. THERE IS NO NOTICEABLELAG -- but BumpTop's CPU usage jumps to about 35%.

So I conclude on that on the desktop system BumpTop provides all benefit -- no performance hit.

Now, the Tablet is a totally different story, especially if we are talking about battery life. I will investigate more closely in a further installment...

[Modnar]

I do like the idea of it but it get use of it I had to rather use my pen instead of touch as touch made it very hard to be accurate.

The same story applies to my tablet (tx2500) when I'm on battery and in powersaver it makes multitasking a tad bit hard. Thumbnail rendering wasn't so bad as it uses inbuilt api's for it so was kinda smooth but just with icons arranged it started to shew up a bit more.

Also as an aside doing a variable view point would be stepping in 3d engine territory and would put pressure on the gpu or cpu.

[JasonJ]

Hi Again:


Regarding fingertip/pen accuracy...admittedly, BumpTop defaults to very small icons. I wish the default size was customizable, butyou can make any of your short cuts larger to accomodate fat fingers.

The PDF icon belowrepresents BumpTop's default icon size:
Obviously you can make the icons quite large if you like. For methis is thesingle most amazingfeature about BumpTop. It brings the possibility that some folders could change sizes by themselves dependent on their filesize.

The performance hitissuereminds me of when I first installed Windows 3.11 on my IBM PC XTafter running almost every version of DOS from 4 to 6. Windows turned myquick beige box into a lazy dog.

[img]smileys/smiley36.gif[/img]

Fast forward 20 years...

Look at it this way.... BumpTop is ahead of the curve, already anticipating advances in power consumption and processor speed. It might not run on your tablet today, but surely it will run on your next one.

Once you've added physics and depthto the desktop, and if it is actually usable without crippling your machine---- how can you go back to a flat grid UI?

Can you image how thisUI would rock on a projection screen and a wireless pointer?

As I like to say to Mac people who are baffled by my Tablet PC,
"When Apple steals this concept you'll finally understand it."

[JasonJ]

<DIV align=center>To Hell with the Physics, Let's Look at
<DIV align=center>C U S T O M I Z A T I O N

Every single item below (including the red ribbon, the red text, the leaf and the artifical rose) is a separately moveable and sizable object on the BumpTop desk.

Here I've mixed piles, folders, shortcuts, JPGs, and PNGs-- stuff you would normally have on your desktop!
(NOTE: This is running under WinXP, therefore the PDFs and the AVIs do not show previews as you would see under Windows Vista.)

I think the possibilities for customization is off the charts.Edited by: JasonJ

[JasonJ]

This morning BumpTop updated itself to BETA 17. Now it includes PDF previews under Windows XP....
BumpTopseems way more fluid on my XP desktop machine, too-- moving BumpTop items is now creepily realistic. I have scattered some PNGimages on my desktop -- I swear that if I breathe hard on my screen theyflutteraround.

I'm going to Montreal for a few days for a wedding --- and I'm positive that no one there will have seen a Tablet PC! So I'm re-skinning BumpTop for maximum impact.


The picture of the wall is an old photo I took in Montreal.

While I'm there, I might snap some more pictures like this that would be suitable for skinning BumpTop.... images that would re-inforce either the "Room" metaphor or the sort of "ShoeBox" metaphor...