Winstyles by Stardock
Software Review by Bob JonesDo you always use the same wallpaper, color theme, and icon sizes and colors?
If you change your theme occasionally, trying to keep track of all the places to go to get the different "skins" could be quite a problem. Skins are specifications for the customization of color, size, sound, and look of a particular program and/or the overall desktop. It may include different objects for things such as cursors, system busy icon, and sounds. The format of the overall window may also be changed.WINSTYLES is a program that will provide you with many options to manage those changes to your specifications. It extends Microsoft’s Themes to support third party programs such as WindowBlinds, WinAmp, and DesktopX. The result is, with a single click you can completely change the way Windows looks and feels, a single desktop environment that works similarly. It can retain the different changes on your hard disk as a theme. An XPtheme will provide a number of the different skins for each application requiring about 10M of hard disk, making the change much quicker to load. The suite will use only about 1K that will contain pointers to the various skins for your applications, which after being selected, will then download the appropriate current level skin from the Internet to create a customized theme. WinStyles is available as a free download. It can be registered on its own for $10. It is also part of Stardock’s Object Desktop ($49.95 including Winstyles), which includes full versions of most of the programs people use to customize Windows. Sample screens are available for WinStyles at http://www.winstyles.com/. Stardock’s home page is http://www.stardock.com/. Object Desktop’s home page is http://www.objectdesktop.com/. Look at the screenshots to see just how easy it is to use WinStyles and how it can completely change your desktop’s appearance and function.
Requirements: Windows 98, ME, 2000, or XP; Pentium 233 or better PC with 64 megabytes of memory or better.
Contact: Stardock.net, Inc.; http://www.stardock.net/; 17292 Farmington Rd.; Livonia MI 48152, USA; Phone: (734) 762-0687; Fax: (734) 762-0690
SRP: Stardock WinStyles $10 ($49.95 for Object Desktop including WinStyles)