
If you’re looking for a long-tested, stable, reasonably-priced way to dramatically alter and tweak almost every aesthetic aspect of Windows (XP or Vista), there’s really no product better than Object Desktop. It’s probably a good idea not to burden down regular folks with the cost or complexity of those, though we do sort of with TweakVista was included in the regular package. The Ultimate version is $20 more and ads the sort of hardcore customization and content creation utilities that most regular users won’t want to bother with. The standard $50 version gives you a really good value and includes everything most users will need to customize their Windows desktop, icons, windows, sounds, wallpapers, and so on.

The best way to go has long since been the Object Desktop bundle, and the new “regular and Ultimate” split this year seems like a good idea. Stardock’s Windows-altering utilities have for a long time been some of the best in the business, although many of them are a little more expensive than we would like-when bought separately. Hundreds of skins are available for free from.

Many skins let you adjust their colors, and of course you have the option to do things like ignore or use the defined settings in the skin for sounds, title bar clicking actions, taskbar size, sidebar settings, and so on. It’s a much more attractive and intuitive interface for choosing your WindowsBlinds skin and adjusting options. The new configuration program is the most obvious change. Users can control the transparency and blur levels in their skins.Support for fluid animation (30 frames per second) with no noticeable change in performance.The ability for users to modify the fonts and colors of skins within the configuration program and save their changes as sub-styles of the original skin.


A new configuration program to make it much easier to configure the program.Blurred glass support for Windows XP users.Full support for Windows Vista skinning including the Sidebar, new Vista-specific controls, and full video acceleration.
