For the many out there that are running Windows Vista with 512MB RAM and are left helpless without video card driver support, optimizing your computer’s appearance can mean the difference between a slow and a fast computer. I have just recently switched to Windows Classic and it cut down loading certain windows from 3-8 seconds to 1-3 (Yes my PC is really slow.)
This is another one of those very obvious tweaks you can do with your computer, but nobody notices them. A user on the Neowin forums took advantage of Aero Glass by placing rectangles of different colours on his wallpaper. Since his taskbar was transparent, the colours just went right through, allowing an immediate colour change for your taskbar. The final result looks something like this (click to enlarge):
If you thought Hamad Darwish’s wallpapers were beautiful, wait till you get a hold of this. These just completely blew me away. Recently, Microsoft held a photography competition in Singapore to find unique “PhotoVistas” to be used as wallpapers. The top 5 are showcased for the 5 categories as well as 10 honourable mentions. More of these amazing wallpapers can be found here.
My Computer, Control Panel, and your Documents can be accessed from the Start Menu, but some still prefer to have these icons displayable on their desktop. If you try the Copy Shortcut method from your Start Menu, you will see that it doesn’t work. However, this doesn’t mean that placing icons for those directories is impossible.
All the Beryl / Windows fans are probably giving cold-stares at all the lucky Linux users that can enjoy 3D Desktops. Well, those days are over thanks to the guys over at Chris’Soft. They’ve come out with a new tool called Yod’m 3D. Basically, it allows you to have four different desktops instead of just one. They are situated on a virtual cube which can be revolved to switch between the different desktops. It’s not as amazing as Berryl, but part of the effect is still there.
Sure, you are not actually going to get Dreamscene for your PC but it doesn’t matter if you’re going to get the same effect right? This is exactly what VLC Player can do for you. You might or might not have heard of this program but it is a free video player that eliminates the need to download many different codecs as it already recognizes a large number of them. VLC has a built-in feature that allows you to play videos as your wallpaper.
We’ve managed to vanish icon text and the shortcut icon overlay… but we’re not finished yet. You can also make your program icons and folders invisible. You no longer need to hide your things in mountains of folders when all you can do is make your folder invisible.
And yes, the 4th icon is a folder.
We’ve managed to vanish icon text and the shortcut icon overlay… but we’re not finished yet. You can also make your program icons and folders invisible. You no longer need to hide your things in mountains of folders when all you can do is make your folder invisible.
And yes, the 4th icon is a folder.
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I always liked the idea of textless icons after seeing them on the Dock in Apple’s Mac OSX. For many programs, the text was unnecessary and it really made the icons stand out. Now you can have the same effect in Windows XP and Vista.
There are a couple of ways to remove the shortcut arrow, many which require numerous steps and registry merging. Frameworkx has eliminated all those steps with just one program - FxVisor 1.3.