Every now and then, we all get really tired of the standard Windows Classic and, for the XP users, Luna themes that come packed-in with Windows. Sure, you can customize the colors of the classic theme, and choose from three stock Luna colors. And if you work on your computer as much as I do, these themes, while designed to withstand the test of time, get old. They get old really fast. And, chances are, if you find a really nifty wallpaper, one of these four stock themes will completely clash with it. And, let's face it, color clashing sucks.

So, how can we work to get Windows to easily accept themes created by ourselves, or others? Well, we have two easy-to-use alternatives:

• You can hack UXTheme (the DLL that controls XP theming) to accept skins/themes made by someone other than Microsoft (and Microsoft has, roughly, a total of about 5 themes for WindowsXP). You can do this through a hack that's popular around the internet, or a program called StyleXP (which, also, simply hacks UXTheme). Sure, this method works, but it's far from elegant; I mean, it's a called a "hack" for a reason. It's bloated, slow-performance if you leave your box on longer than a day or two, and tends to be buggy with non-Luna-based themes.


• The other alternative is a program from Stardock (and, if you've read this blog before, you know I'm a total Stardock-whore) called WindowBlinds. Since this product is the main purpose of this entry, let's get rid of the list form, and just go straight to the meat of the post.

Let me say this right now: WindowBlinds is an amazing program. It's fast, efficient, easy-to-theme, and has a MASSIVE theme library at WinCustomize. The program, created by Stardock, as I pointed out earlier, has been in development for a long period of time, so the developers have a lot of experience behind their back (Stardock itself has a long track record, it's been into GUI customization since the OS/2 age), and the program is completely stable, and has a massive feature-set as of now. And the feature list grows larger with each passing day. Now, you know the basics of this program by now, so let's get to the meat of the review.

First of all, the question you're probably most concerned with: why would I want to pay money for a program that simply skins my operating system? Well, for multiple reasons, of course! The first, and most obvious, is that it greatly increases the "pretty"-factor of your desktop. You can find colors that are more appealing on the eyes and designs that are easier to use. Next, with WindowBlinds, you can achieve results that would *never* be possible with Windows 98, ME, or 2000! With these operating systems, you can generally only use the bare-bones theme, but with WindowBlinds, you can turn it into a magical world of prettiness. Granted, in these operating systems, you don't get access to full WindowBlinds feature-set (some of the features are only available on WinXP), but it's still pretty good.

Those aspects definately cover the basics, but what, exactly, does WindowBlinds offer to WinXP users over the plain 'ol themes (well, we covered the answer to that already) that it offers? Well, first off, while WindowBlinds *does* use more resources than WinXP would on its own, WindowBlinds also, with certain hardware, can perform as fast, and on my machine, *faster* than the WindowsXP themes can (using a technique that WindowBlinds refers to as "HyperPaint"). This is always a good thing.

Now, let's cover the actual feature-set of WindowBlinds. First of all, you can choose what aspects of the GUI that WindowBlinds will skin, whether or not to use the built-in theme sounds, icon packages, etc. Also, unlike WindowsXP themes, WindowBlinds can actually theme the command prompt (something no other skinning software can manage to do)! You can choose to mix-and-match parts of various WindowBlind themes with other parts (say you want the the Longhorn Slate taskbar, but the SouLuna window skins, and the regular file-transfer animations); or if you want certain apps to be skinned or not skinned (you can specify this on a per-application basis, though all applications are skinned by default). You can set the system-wide font for the GUI (which can be different from the window title-bar font), and you can also assign special functions for when you double-click or right-click a window (such as sending the window to a tray, do a roll-up-to-title bar, set the window to always-on-top, etc.).

WindowBlinds is one of those applications that, once you get accustomed to it, you can't live without it. Sure it may seem like a purely cosmetic change to your GUI, but, believe me, WindowBlinds is well worth the cost of admission (or you can just use a semi-dumbed-down shareware version, which you can download here)! If, however, you want to support Stardock, or experience the full sha-bang of WindowBlinds, you can buy it for $19.95, upgrade it for $10.00, or you can get it as part of the Object Desktop subscription for $49.95. Now, I'll get into Object Desktop during a later review, but, let me say this: it's worth every cent.

Now, GO PLAY WITH WINDOWBLINDS!