Windows Blinds or Visual Styles?

[chicubs]

aaah....the timeless arguement. The limitless, pricey, and resource using Windows Blinds, or the limited, cheap, and effecient Visual Styles....personally I use Visual Styles because there is no way I am paying for a software that dresses up windows a little. Give me the sentinel visual style any day against any wb skin....

....Let the debate begin!! :p

[refused]

Windowblinds, because the Indemnity (http://chadamus.deviantart.com) suite is Windowblinds only :(

[chicubs]

indemnity isnt all that.

[refused]

Oh, yes, it is

[chicubs]

bah on you! :p

[fatal error]

I use Windowblinds, so bah on me too :p

[Young Twig]

I use Windowblinds, so bah on me too :p
I use Visual Styles so... no bah on me... :p
The only thing I don't like is style builder is $20... Pisses me off.

[chicubs]

I use Visual Styles so... no bah on me... :p
The only thing I don't like is style builder is $20... Pisses me off.

Style builder is a pain in the @$$ anyway, I messed up a whole visual style because it doesnt read images as rgb but as CMYK(i think) or some other stupid color format. ...never finished it, it was a pretty good minimalistic vs if I do say so myself. :)

[Xymantix]

I have an Object Desktop subscription, but don't use Window Blinds very often. It seems odd for a skinner, but I think I'd rather have my normal programs like the browser and email client look and act normally. On the other hand, I like other programs, like my music player, to be completely skinned and preferably themed with other elements.

[regener8ed]

neither, actually.

[Matt]

i use Visual Styles with Style XP.

[krazyd]

What sort of impact does a visual style have on system resources? Does it take any more than a change of XP colours?

[Young Twig]

What sort of impact does a visual style have on system resources? Does it take any more than a change of XP colours?
None that I notice on my 566mHz computer... ;)

[chicubs]

a visual style is not just a color change

[Young Twig]

a visual style is not just a color change
That's not what he was saying...

The XP colors are just Visual Styles... So, it should go the same speed.

[blackspawn]

Visual Styles + ChaNinja Themes, one word from them "Perfection"!! (can't wait till the chaninja DLL project is finished...)

[Young Twig]

Visual Styles + ChaNinja Themes, one word from them "Perfection"!! (can't wait till the chaninja DLL project is finished...)
ChaNinja is quite a pimp. Do you have Tally Hawk?

[chicubs]

I just tried out the freeware version of wb4 again....WOW did it slow down my pc. 3.0 ghz 512mb, thats just flat out ridiculous, does the registered version use less resources?

[Young Twig]

I just tried out the freeware version of wb4 again....WOW did it slow down my pc. 3.0 ghz 512mb, thats just flat out ridiculous, does the registered version use less resources?
eww... window blinds costs money.

[chicubs]

eww... window blinds costs money.

trial version doesnt. blahblahblah

[Young Twig]

trial version doesnt. blahblahblah
Trial versions suck. I hate using trial versions. They're dumb. Especially if they nag.

[fatal error]

i run wb4 on as old a PIII 800mhz just fine.
granted, some skins drag a bit, but usually I find that the skin has alot of .tga's in it. transparencies tend to do that according to the documentation i've read at stardock.

[blackspawn]

ChaNinja is quite a pimp. Do you have Tally Hawk?
I've used it for a long time but right now I'm using Subzero scheme (from ChaNinja's Theme RC5)

[MySecret]

Well I'm a bit new to all of this, but would like to try one of these programs....Are either 1 free??

[Young Twig]

Well I'm a bit new to all of this, but would like to try one of these programs....Are either 1 free??
Yes. You can get a freeware version of stylexp (uxtheme.dll patch) from their site. I always forget the URL... someone else will know it.

[blackspawn]

You can download Uxtheme Multi-Patch from here: http://windowsx.techconnect.ws/enhance/myvs/uxtheme.html

All you need to do is run the program, and voilá Windows XP themes enabled. Then just go to www.themexp.com (http://www.themexp.com) ; www.deviantart.com (http://www.deviantart.com) or www.neowin.net (http://www.neowin.net) boards and download the styles you want.
For most of the styles you'll need to decompress them and put them in \Windows\Resources\Themes
After that you should be able to select the them from the desktop preferences. If not just click the *.msstyles file and the theme will apply itself.

[Young Twig]

Ah. I believe the official site (which does offer the FREE patch) is www.tgtsoft.org .

Wow. I never knew about neowin.net having VS's there. Just downloaded GUIpod and a few others.

[blackspawn]

Yes the "official" patch was given by tgtsoft but you have to do everything manually so to speak. With Windows X patch you just need to "click ok and next" and reboot :)

Wow. I never knew about neowin.net having VS's there.Yeah it's the best place to get the most recent and updated VS (better IMO than deviantart or themexp)

[chicubs]

Yes the "official" patch was given by tgtsoft but you have to do everything manually so to speak. With Windows X patch you just need to "click ok and next" and reboot :)

Yeah it's the best place to get the most recent and updated VS (better IMO than deviantart or themexp)

yah, but almost all the visual styles at neowin are freakin mac skins.

[Young Twig]

yah, but almost all the visual styles at neowin are freakin mac skins.
Well, I tried to avoid the Smooth Stripes and OSX titles.

[Roj]

aaah....the timeless arguement. The limitless, pricey, and resource using Windows Blinds, or the limited, cheap, and effecient Visual Styles....personally I use Visual Styles because there is no way I am paying for a software that dresses up windows a little. Give me the sentinel visual style any day against any wb skin....

....Let the debate begin!! :pNeither - I'd rather not have my Athlon 2600+ be reduced to a 286 by eye candy.

[Hanzo]

Neither - I'd rather not have my Athlon 2600+ be reduced to a 286 by eye candy.
I am with Roj.

Somebody said something about the "fisher price" XP theme... but I use the silver... which is kinda boring, but I compensate using a nice wallpaper. Most of the times I'm not wrestling with windows, but using IE, Office or Photoshop plus the only eyecandy I use comes with QCD :D

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

Talking about GUI programmes, anyone tried Astonshell yet? It looks absolutely gorgeous and, as they claim, it will even run smoothly on a pentium I processor :D Go to www.astonshell.com to check it out.

[rorythedog]

Talking about GUI programmes, anyone tried Astonshell yet? It looks absolutely gorgeous and, as they claim, it will even run smoothly on a pentium I processor :D Go to www.astonshell.com to check it out.


Hi there. I've just had a look at the site and it looks and sounds good. Have you tried it yet? I'm always a bit wary with those type of programs. I used Windowblinds before but it slowed my machine down noticably. If you've tried it, let us know how it fared. If you haven't, I might take the plunge. Cheers for the info.

[Zayoos]

I've tried this AstonShell and looks sweet. :)
It's easy to configure the look of desktop (lots of options), there is many cool themes available for download, little RAM usage (max 3mb on my system: Athlon 650MHz, 128MB RAM, Riva TNT2 Pro).
Only one "minus": it dosn't change shape of window title bar on my Win2K (attachment).

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

It's pretty good, especially the technodream theme. Unfortunately, when i placed the taskbar on the left, it would get all ugly. I tried lots of themes but always with the same ugliness. It also didn't not allow me to show all the quickstart icons in the quickstart tray. In addition, the icons on the "old" windows desktop would not show up anymore in Astonshell. I didn't feel like messing around with the settings, trying to overcome these annoyances, so i got rid of it. I kept the wallpaper of technodream though ;)

[rsplitter]

I got the full version of WindowBlinds and it doesn't slow my PC down at all (P4 - 2 CPU's both @ 2.8 Ghz - 512Mb RAM) It works a charm. Just one tiny annoyance, the display properties sometimes takes a while to load up. Otherwise, brilliant :cool:

[rsplitter]

Anyone tried Talisman 2? Look quite impressive.

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

Yes, i just did and im very pleased with it! :biggrin: The default theme shows all my quickstart buttons and there are media player controls on the lower right, which oddly but happily command QCD to carry out the appropriate action :D. If i still had storage space i'd post a screenshot... I recommend this desktop shell programme to anyone :cyclops:

[rsplitter]

It's a shame it aint free...But what can you expect? A bunch a guys make cool programs putting effort into it, and don't want to have done it for nothing.

[rorythedog]

Thought I should update this since I've been running WB for about a fortnight now with no problems. Just previous to installing WB I had doubled my RAM to 1G so this might have had something to do with it, I don't know.

[rsplitter]

I got 512Mb RAM :cyclops: and no problems.

[rorythedog]

I got 512Mb RAM :cyclops: and no problems.
I had 512 but I had plenty of problems. Of course that was when I was a relative novice at these things. Maybe I'm not stressing out my system to the same degree.

What skin are you using? I use DinksDXBlueProXP. Nice and unfussy.

[rsplitter]

I've used (and still got) loads of 'em. Right now I'm using Resolute by Z71. Can be found at www.guiolympics.com Its good. Lots more (2500 more) at www.wincustomize.com

[duckie]

It does seem smaller skins are faster. Could be just my imagination, but its all good...as long as it feels faster...

[rsplitter]

It does seem smaller skins are faster. Could be just my imagination, but its all good...as long as it feels faster... It's true, smaller skins are faster (less time to load :silly: )

[rorythedog]

Just tried resolute but it's too intense for me. Buggy too. The best I've seen so far is probably Blackcomb, but it does have a few rough edges. MetalX2 is beautifully done but it's an aquired taste.