In a recent case of deja vu, Slashdot today points to a Microsoft application for a patent on a Virtual desktop manager. It is quite simply amazing. It is also identical in so far as I can tell to the various X-Windows based systems I was using nearly a decade ago. Some have suggested that the use of a key to access the screens may be novel, if so what does that mean for Expose? I have a hard time buying the argument that using a key to access a desktop would be a non-obvious invention. Key shortcuts are used for practically everything already in computing.