The second monitor still requires me to spend a large percentage of my time manipulating rectangles. Nor is there anything impractical about process migration.

The second monitor still requires me to spend a large percentage of my time manipulating rectangles. Nor is there anything impractical about process migration. I suspend and resume Windows VMs all the time, and Windows wasn't designed for that. Think of what's possible when the programming language and OS API makes it easier to write programs that can re-orient themselves. And even if process-migration doesn't become a feature, there is still the inherent advantage of manipulating "windows" in physical space. It's more intuitive, it's more convenient, and it's direct. When people didn't "get" the iPad and dismissed it as just a big iPod Touch, it's because they didn't grasp the benefit of manipulating the UI directly instead of through a mouse. When you manipulate windows with a desktop manager, you're two steps abstracted: you use the mouse to manipulate the widget that manipulates the windows. THAT is what's impractical.