Power Strip + ADW for the win!

[bradgsanford]

I finally found a setup that I'm gonna stick with for a while.

I've tried all the launchers out there - and I do mean all - and have been hopeful but disappointed by all of them until ADW and LauncherPro came along. Now I'm not gonna get into the ADW vs LauncherPro debate because they're so similar that I think the argument is silly. ADW is my current choice for one single reason that I will explain in a sec...

When Quick Desk came along I was able to take my LauncherPro down to 2 screens and use Quick Desk for a couple of toggle widgets and a battery monitor. I'm not a big widget guy anyway...usually only news/weather, a calendar, and a couple of toggles. I'm also not the type that feels the need to have forty million apps on my home screens. I found three screens to be overkill and found it amusing when people were begging for upwards of 9.

Now to my current set up. I switched from Quick Desk to Power Strip. I'm in LOVE with Power Strip...it's so much more visually appealing than Quick Desk. It may take an extra click to reach a toggle but so what. Within Power Strip I made ADW my default launcher because of the newly implemented gestures. If not for the gestures then I could set up ADW and LauncherPro side by side and never tell the difference.

Now I got ADW up swipe set to launch Power Strip and down to show/hide status bar. Got Beautiful Home up top - something I never used because I thought it was pointless to have a clock in the status bar and a second clock taking up space on the screen - but with the status bar hidden and easily viewable with the swipe down gesture, I got it up there. A few direct dials at the bottom (after all....this is a phone) and Power Strip set up with the 8 or so apps I use frequently and I'm set.

Everything works like a charm and I got my home screens down to 1 with the minimal look that I prefer and everything easily available with the swipe gestures.

Thanks to the developers of both of these!

[milehi202]

I tried ADW and loved it,but seemed to lag alittle....Perhaps you can suggest what I might do to improve this? I have also tried Launch Pro,but really like ADW better,by the way what is Power Strip?...I have a droid...any advice would be most welcome..
Thankyou

[bradgsanford]

I tried ADW and loved it,but seemed to lag alittle....Perhaps you can suggest what I might do to improve this? I have also tried Launch Pro,but really like ADW better,by the way what is Power Strip?...I have a droid...any advice would be most welcome..
Thankyou

I expect you'd find better advice in the ongoing ADW thread than the advice I could provide. I will say that I experienced lag with LauncherPro as its feature sets grew. In the beginning it was scary fast. It's not bad now and, like I said above, if not for the gestures in ADW I'd be hard pressed to recommend one over the other. I find that the less widgets, screens, live wallpaper, and advanced settings that you utilise the faster both of them will be.

You can search for Power Strip in the market. Their website also has useful info with screenshots (introducing Power Strip)

[JhankG]

I tried ADW and loved it,but seemed to lag alittle....Perhaps you can suggest what I might do to improve this? I have also tried Launch Pro,but really like ADW better,by the way what is Power Strip?...I have a droid...any advice would be most welcome..
Thankyou

PM sent so that we don't clutter this thread.

[darklipslide]

Power Strip (By the Home++ dev) is perhaps a fraction of a second slower than Quick Desk (By the Helixlauncher dev), but is much cleaner in its interface, and has the ability to have the full app launcher accessible from the "multi-task mode". Plus, Quick Desk seems to get killed by Android OS and has to reload the widgets, which is a pain, especially when I had a ton of widgets loaded up.

I'm using Power Strip and Slidescreen right now, and I think it's the perfect combination, since slidescreen gives you so much on a single screen (and taking up very little memory in the process).

[jcardona1]

looking at the screen shots of Power Strip, it seems to be the same thing LauncherPro has. LP has a scrollable 'strip' at the bottom that can hold 15 widgets/apps/shortcuts, etc.

for me, launcherpro is the best launcher to-date. stable and never laggy, which is crucial with a launcher

[franlee]

looking at the screen shots of Power Strip, it seems to be the same thing LauncherPro has. LP has a scrollable 'strip' at the bottom that can hold 15 widgets/apps/shortcuts, etc.

for me, launcherpro is the best launcher to-date. stable and never laggy, which is crucial with a launcher

power strip can be started from any app, which means you can invoke it directly without exiting your current app and fast switch to another app or check your widget. You do NOT need to go back to the home screen, that's the difference.

[CKyle22]

How do you add Widgets to it? The guide was a bit unclear.

[darklipslide]

How do you add Widgets to it? The guide was a bit unclear.

In your power strip, there's a gear icon on the far right. That will allow you to attach more widgets to the power strip. It takes a second or 2 to load up all the widgets