A website I check out pretty regularly -- Tacticular Cancer -- has an interesting article on the 3 major 4X strategy games released this past year: GalCiv II vs. Sword of the Stars vs. Space Empires V.

I don't necessarily (and in fact definitely don't) agree with all the observations, but it is worth a look at as it is well reasoned and well written and makes some astute observations along the way.

Check it out.

Hour 29:

By 3pm on Friday, I was definitely starting to feel some fatigue.  Part of that was that my eating schedule had been messed up. I didn't really have a normal breakfast and lunch I walked over to McDonalds and had a burger and coke.

I had a ton of meetings late afternoon on Friday and was able to function at relative full capacity.

Hour 33:

By 7pm I was ready to come home. Having gotten home and had dinner, I found myself abruptly starting to nod off. It came pretty suddenly and before 8pm had rolled around, I had walked upstairs to our bedroom and gone to bed. I was out probably within 10 minutes.

12AM Saturday:

With almost 5 hours of sleep, I woke up and actually felt pretty refreshed. This is when I probably should have gotten up but didn't have the discipline to just get up.  So I went back to sleep.

4AM Saturday:

With 8 hours of sleep, I woke up and felt ready to get up. In fact, I had that feeling of having had too much sleep. So I decided to just get up.  I feel a bit groggy -- not tired but that feeling of having slept too much.  So my hours are officially a bit messed up.

And so here I am now at 5am blogging about it.

Results:

I definitely got a lot done. I had a list that ended up with 43 things on it.  I got around 35 of the things done. 4 of the things on the list became obsolete before I got to them and the only things I didn't get to was contacting a couple people I wanted to contact and doing some pretty tedious busy work things that I've been putting off (and continued to put off).

My ability to concentrate definitely took a hit after hour 20. I didn't get any of the programming done that I had had on the list but my deadline on that got changed dramatically so the pressure to work on coding in the all-nighter was removed. I think I would have been able to do it adequately but I think I was definitely down by 10% by hour 20.

By hour 25, I would say my cognitituve ability was down around 20%. My verbal skills and such were fine. 

What was most affected by the sleep deprivation was my perception control. As the CEO bof a company, I have to keep tight control over my behavior. In my case, I tend to use excess humor and babble.  And I was definitely talking for the sake of talking by hour 25 and beyond. It's like I was talking in order to keep my brain functioning. I was even talking to myself (in the sense of thinking out loud).  The thinking out-loud caused me some embarassment.

Overall, I'd say it was definitely worth doing in order to get the things done I needed to get done. I think with some chemical help I could have stayed up another 24 hours without much problem and gotten even more done. But that kind of strain is only justifiable if there is enough pressing things to do and I was getting to the point of doing tedious stuff that I've just been putting off.

The joke at Stardock is that in the summer we might as well  be in the landscaping business. Things get so easy going.

But the Winter gets different. That's our busy season and this year is especially busy with Windows Vista on the way, the need to get Galactic Civilizations Gold Edition (GalCiv + Dark Avatar) put together for manufacturing for Walmart and elsewhere, and just the company's rapid growth has shown that our company structure hasn't scaled very well.

To that end, I have a list of 42 things I need to get done by Friday. And it became clear by Thursday that that was not going to happen unless I simply didn't stop working until the end of the day Friday. 

I normally am awake for 16 hours each day.  I spend a solid 3 hours of that 16 hours in bed -- awake.  2 of those hours are reading and the other is just laying there thinking I should get up but not able to.

I got to the office today at around 11am (I had worked until 2am the night before).  I've had half a can of coke, that's the only caffeine I've had so far.

It's now 6:09am the next day. 5 more hours and it'll be 24 hours.  I only expect to be up around 36 hours so it's not like I'm doing anything really insane here. There's lots of people who have been up a lot longer during busy times. I once was up for 42 hours straight and last year I was up for 38 hours finishing GalCiv II.

Anyway...

Hour 20:

No significant effects yet due to being tired other than yawning more.  I did just go to the store to pick up some Pepto. My tummy (er, I mean my GUT WORM) has been bugging me for the past few weeks and being up has not helped that. I never can tell what is the best over the counter solution for an upset stomach. I don't get them often so I'm not really up on that.

I did notice that my Lasik-induced halos were more noticeable (a lot more) when I was driving. Not sure if that's because my eyes are dry or due to being tired.

My depth perception is a bit off.  And my analytical abilities are definitely off a tad (i.e. I'm getting a bit sloppy).

No fatigue though (I  mean, I work at a software company, not much physical exertion there).

More to come... gotta get back to coding.

I have a problem. Okay, I have a lot of problems. But one of my problems is that I have a printer fetish. I like printers. Always have. I just like being able to print graphics and text and pictures onto a piece of paper. I acknowledge my problem.  Few individuals have purchased as many printers as I have. I've owned dozens of printers over my 30+ years of life.

If you're like me, you go on-line to try to find out how good different printers are. But usually, the reviews suck. Some places will get them quality ratings of like 8.7.  What the hell does that mean? Would it really be that hard to simply scan a picture in of your print out so we can look at it? That's what PC Magazine and PC World used to do (but don't seem to do it so much anymore).  At least then we could look at it.  Most of the "Reviews" I read on-line read like regurgitated media guides.

If your shopping for a printer on-line, the specs should matter. But they don't. Not really. Because DPI means nothing now. I have printers that claim 2400 dpi but look less impressive than 600dpi printers.  The other issue which is rarely talked about is color accuracy. I find this extraordinarily frustrating that my print outs on various "good" printers tend to not be very accurate. And few reviews bother to even talk about it. It's not a review unless there's some subjective talk in it. And most reviews these days are on injkets. No offense but with injkets costing $200 and available at a store, how much advice do I really need from a reviewer? I can go to the store and see a printout of any reasonably popular injket. Thanks. It's on those higher end printers that we tend to want to hear some advice on.  Okay, that's not really fair since most people are looking for injkets, but what about people who are looking for higher end printers?

And by higher end printers I'm talking about laser printers that do color.  The first question I've always wanted the answer to is how good can laser printing get? I mean, if you pay enough, where is the cut off? Can I basically get a laser printer that can print a photo about as well or better than an injket (except be able to print 10 of them a minute rather than 1 every 3 minutes?).

The answer is yes. But you get into diminishing returns. This little article is to share my experiences at buying printers. From $100 injkets to $20,000 industrial printers. I told you, I have a problem.

Injkets

My current Injket of choice is the Canon i9900. It's outdated now. But the quality it produces is fantastic. It's not a terribly fast printer but it produces incredibly good output. My main beef with Inkjets is that they've slowly morphed into being photo printers. I'd like to see more injkets being made that produce great photo output (doesn't have to be godly good, I have a Canon photo printer for that!) but can reasonably be used for printing email and other documents at home or casually at work without thinking I just spent a buck in ink to do it. But right now it seems I can either get an inkjet with sub-par graphics output but is a practical casual multi-purpose printer or I can get something that will show every zit on my face in a photo print out.

I tend to also like Epson injket printers. But they tend to lag a bit beyond Canon in quality in my experience. Still, the Epson Stylus printers are very nice. Lexmark makes decent printers but they tend to be run of the mill. I won't buy HP printers at all for personal reasons -- their driver support during the Windows 2000 era really ticked me off and so I've avoided them since. I buy lots of other HP stuff and they do make good printers, I'm just still sore about the scanners and printers from the Windows 2000 era that they refused to update the drivers to work on back then.

The Main Event

Okay, injkets aren't really my main interest.  Where I've gone on-line over the years is to find out just how good the high end printers really are. And that's where I've been disappointed. I get that injkets can produce photo quality output if you buy the right paper. Fine. Good. Understood. What about printers that can crank out 10 pages or more per minute?

Well...

Quality is a relative term. So I'm going to go with 3 different printers here.

Phaser 8500

The entry level Phaser 8500 (8400 shown but it's the same output). You can get these for starting at $500. Great printer at the price. Here's a sample of the output:

Xerox 8500 (8400)

Not bad but somewhat muted. It's a solid ink printer and that's one of the gotchas with them in my experience. The colors tend to be a bit washed.

Xerox Phaser 8400DX

Oye. It's a bit fuzzy. I printed out my Christmas letter on one of these and the photos, while pretty decent, were definitely fuzzy. I'm pretty picky on this kind of thing, most casual users would think it's fine. One thing that annoys me about most reviews is that they print out the test page where they're alreayd optimized.

Now, on-line on PrinterShowcase.com they rated the quality as 8.5 (good).  That's probably a reasonable rating.  But it doesn't really tell you much.  I do know that anything under the 8400 would be something I'd consider unacceptable for work use. At that point, it's just a casual printer for printing out "stuff" that just happens to be in color.

What I love about the Phaser 8x00 series is how easy they are to maintain. They're "solid ink" which means they're wax. You can eat the wax (not that you should but it's just kind of cool).  You just plop in the wax blocks and off you go. Virtually no maintenance required. A true install and forget. I can't say enough nice things about the solid ink Phasers other than their quality of print is not something you'd want to use if graphics quality is a major factor in your decision.

Phaser 6300DN

The Phaser 6300DN is a regular injket printer. Like the 8500, it's a great product and great for office environments.

Xerox 6300DN

Impressive results but not noticebly better than the Xerox 8500. Moreover, I have noticed a tendancy to streak on out put. I notice faint banding here and there on it. The test pages show fine but I see it. Look really closely on the zoom in on the colored checker board and you'll see it too. It's also got a red-ish tint to the whole thing.

Xerox Phaser 6300DN

It is definitely sharper than the Xerox 8500. You can read the text and the colors are more accurate (the Phaser 8400's colors tend to be just way too muted for serious image work)

That said, right now the Phaser 6300DN is my favorite daily printer. It's incredibly fast and reliable. The banding issue is something I'm still a bit concerned about. And it's not as sharp as the 2400dpi specs lead you to believe.  On Printer Show case it comes out with an 8.7 on quality. That is something I'd agree with. It's a tad better than the 8400/8500 in quality.

Now according to PrinterShowcase.com, the Ricoh C410 has the best quality output of any of the printers in their class with a 9.5 rating. But I don't have that printer so I can't really say. The 6300 is around $1300 . It's got marginally better quality than the 8500 which is significantly cheaper.

Canon CLC 1180

I do know the best printer I have is significantly better than these in quality and it's the Canon CLC 1180. But you pay a bundle. Anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 depending on options. And you will need maintenance agreement because they are very temperamental and engineered like something out of a Dr. Seus cartoon. They are very VERY large. And it's technically listed as a photocopier but nowadays, it's all so blurred because of the multi-function nature of these things.

So how does it do on printing? Well, bear in mind its specs only claim 600dpi. That's important to remember because the lesson I've learned is the specs mean little. Number of colors matters a lot more and I suspect that is why this one is so much better. It's just got the ability to mix up a lot more colors.

Check out the results:

Canon CLC 1180

Canon CLC 1180

Even from the thumbnails you can tell it's significantly better in quality than the others. And those others are no slouches. But this is probably approaching the top end of what you're going to get with current (2006) printer technology. That isn't to say it's the best out there. The Xerox DocuColor 12 is in the same category as well and some have reported it being better. I can't say. I suspect I wouldn't have been able to get it new from Xerox at the price I got the CLC from Canon. In both cases, they're ancient ancient technology.  They're just slowly getting cheaper. But they're both were old technologies 5 years ago but the quality is obvious.

So as far as I can tell you, this is about as good as they get above. You can see the progression in quality as you go up. Where you stop is up to you.

Further reading.

The company recently decided it needed a high-quality, high-volume printer. And by quality, we mean the kind of quality that you normally have to go to a specialty print house to get. I wanted that quality in house. We send out a lot of reviewer guides, a lot of screenshots, and a lot of other marketing material. But mostly we just wanted to have a top of the line printer in terms of quality (inkjet quality on photos) but could do it on plain paper and at a reasonable speed. Turns out, you can get that printer if you're willing to pay enough.

The result of having huge scope and in-house means big money.  And it came in the form of the Canon CLC 1180.  With the options I have installed on it, it's rated at around $30,000.  Of course, no one actually pays the list price. At that point, you're buying a car and you can negotiate the price. I negotiated the price down to about half that but one would expect to normally pay around $20,000 probably for this configuration.

So what do you get for tens of thousands of dollars in a printer?  Well, the first part is that it's not technically a printer. It's a "copier" that happens to print. It is a pretty good color copier. In fact, it's the best color copier I've ever encountered. It also has a stapler on it. So if you have a 100 8 page reports to make, you can tell it to staple the reports as well as collate them. And it has a scanner with a TWAIN driver so that you can scan images to your computer from it (though bear in mind that involves walking all the way to the thing to switch pieces of paper).

So how is the quality? Well... It's by far the best quality I've ever seen on plain paper. Better than inket or anything else.  But is it $10,000 better? No, not really. But that's the problem, if you want to get above say the Xerox Phaser 6300 level, you're going to pay some bucks. A lot of bucks. You're way at the outter edge at that point and most people just don't need that kind of quality.  But it really does deliver.

In my recent review of the Xerox 6300DN, I pointed out that it beats the Xerox 8400/8500 series in quality.  But the Canon CLC 1180 creams both Xerox's in quality:

Canon CLC 1180

Xerox 6300DN

Even these scans don't do it justice. The Canon looks like a photo -- on plain paper. It's that good. The Xerox looks like a good laser print out.  Our art department loves the Canon because it is perfect at color matching. I mean perfect. There's no futzing with settings when you print, it simply nails the colors right every time.

So let's say you have $20,000 to spend. Should you get this? That's hard to say. One of the first things we've learned is that a printer like this is not like anything we've had before. You have to have maintenance on it. And it's expensive. On top of the rather large price point, maintenance costs $.11 per page (on a color print). That includes toner and everything else other than actual paper. But it's still pricey, especially when it screws up a job -- which it does...often. 

For example, I write a lengthy Christmas letter each year to people we know. It goes out to around 100 people. It includes lots of pictures.  Last year I did it with the Phaser 8400 and it did fine. Just sent the job to the printer, came back the next day and it was done. (well I did it in blocks of 50 to be fair).  Now, with my mega-expensive Canon CLC 1180, it was its time to shine. Its opportunity to demonstrate its premium price.  It was not a happy day. 

This year's letter was 11 pages and I needed about 100 of them.  The first thing I discovered is how archaic and stupid the RIP (basically a PC running Windows NT 4.0 that sits on the printer) is.  My letter has a ton of high resolution photos in it. I printed it from Word. Any modern printer would have no problem handling that. It would rescale the images to the output size on the fly. But not so the Canon CLC 1180. It took my 180 megabyte document into the RIP and expanded it into monster (god knows how many gigabytes it must have expanded these 5mega pixel pictures to) sizes. Suffice to say that a day later, not a single page had been printed.  So instead used Word's option of manually rescaling the images to print size and then exporting it as a PDF.  Then the printer worked fine. So now it was a snap right? Wrong.

I decided to use the stapler option.  So the stapler sorter jammed on the 10th print out. Jammed bad enough that we needed the Canon support people to come out. I will say that Canon support is phenomenal (so is Xerox's too). They were in next morning and fixed that.  So then I got going again and I quickly discover that I can only print 20 of these at a time with the stapler option. After that, the copies have to be removed before it will continue. No fire and forget there. Not that it mattered because it jammed three separate times while printing. It also crashed once.  In all, it took me over 3 days to print my 100 letters off on it compared to a single day last year on the Phaser 8400 (the Phaser 6300DN would have handled it all in a couple hours).  So it was not a triumph for the Canon CLC 1180 in what should be its area of expertise.

Now maybe my particular Canon CLC 1180 has issues. But I don't think so. The Canon support guys have replaced huge chunks of it already (I want to mention again - Canon's support team rocks. Without their incredible service, my opinion of Canon - and Stardock is a Canon shop on virtually everything other than the two Xerox printers we have -- would have dropped considerably).  The problem is that once you get to these kinds of printers, you're dealing with a machine that is as complicated as something out of a Dr. Sues novel. Just watching it run makes me think of some ridiculously over engineered machine in a cartoon. The number of moving parts in this thing is obscene.  The amount of work the thing has to do in order to do duplex when compared to the Xerox's really speaks volumes for the archaic engineering in this thing.

Which brings me to my main gripe with the Canon CLC 1180. It is archaic. It is basically an upgrade to a printer technology that is from the 1990s. The software it comes with is archaic. The usability of the front panel is archaic.  For example, the RIP has lots of space on it. The printer is a copier. So, why can't I, from the copier, tell it to copy something and save it to the RIP and then let me connect to the RIP like I would to a USB memory card?  The tools for it, and there are quite a bit, remind me of stuff written by IBM for OS/2. And I don't mean that in a nice way. My other Canon printers, which tend to cost less than $500 (the injkets) have wonderful software products that come with them. Yet this $20,000+ printer has tools that require me to look up that the device I want is known as "1100".

So if it sounds like I don't like this printer, that is not the impression I mean to leave with you. I think a better way to describe it is that I'm disappointed with the printer. It's not nearly as reliable as it should be, it does not provide nearly enough value for its cost. But it does deliver on the quality and performance and thus meets our specifications. It's just not a very good value for those specifications. I also had no idea of the level of maintenance a machine like this requires. My car requires less maintenance than the printer. And it's not a faulty printer, it's just apparently the nature of these super high end printers. And there are still printers way beyond this but whose quality is only marginally better.

Overall, I'm glad I got the printer. My complaints aside, we needed a printer that could deliver on normal paper very very high quality at a reasonable speed. And it does that. I am not even aware of an alternative to it. Simply put, as far as I know, if you want this kind of quality, this is pretty much your best option. Luckily for most people, this kind of quality isn't necessary or if it is, it's not a common enough situation to justify buying a printer like this. Most people would just go to a Kinkos or printhouse where they have their own Canon CLC that they'll charge you a buck per copy for.

Stardock's love affair with Xerox Phasers goes back a long time to our original Xerox Phaser 850DX.  When it died, we replaced it with the Xerox 8400.  My review of it can be found here. 

My main beef with the 8400 was that the quality had taken a bit of a hit from the 850DX. The 850DX was a 1200dpi printer, the 8400 (and now 8500) is a 600dpi printer. Of course, the price difference is pretty significant. But on printers, I'm not terribly price conscious, I want high quality even if I have to pay a premium.

As our office grew, we decided to go a different route. We picked up the Xerox Phaser 6300DN.  We still have the 8400 and it's working like a champ.  We use it as a general office printer now and in that role, it's print quality is fine. 

The Phaser 6300 is a color laser printer with toner.  The 6300DN prints very VERY fast. It's rated 26 pages per minute and it really definitely is doing that. Xerox also makes the 6350 which prints 36 pages per minute. That's over a page every other second. It's amazingly fast.

But the quality is very good too. At 2400 dpi, it gives very sharp results.  So how good it it in practice? I mean, 2400 dpi, that should be photorealistic right? Well...

It is sharper than the Phaser 8400/8500. But not by the margin you'd expect. Moreover, the color matching capabilities of the Xerox's always seems problematic. Where the Phaser 8400 print outs tend to be muted, the Phaser 6300 images tend to be a bit too warm in some places. I don't like having to monkey around with color settings. 

On a print out of an ad that was already shrunk on the page, I couldn't read the text of the ad that was printed out on the Phaser 8400 but could, barely on the Phaser 6300.

Xerox Phaser 6300DN

Xerox Phaser 8400DX

The Phaser 6300 was also much more accurate on the colors than the Phaser 8400/8500 series.

Xerox 6300DN

Xerox 8400DX

My bottom line is that the Xerox 6300DN is an outstanding office printer. It is better in quality in most respects over the Phaser 8400/8500. But it also does cost more.  The difference in quality, however, is not nearly as good as its specifications imply. At 2400DPI I expect razor sharp pictures.  Why isn't that advertisement's letters crystal clear? I don't know.  In fact, the Canon CLC 1180 that we have, which has a much MUCH lower DPI than the Phaser is far superior in quality. It's not even close (and it's also a $20,000 printer so it better bloody be better).   Don't let my whining dissuade you. The Xerox Phaser 6300DN is a great printer for any office environment. Just don't expect inkjet print quality on graphics and images. It's pretty good and its speed is great but don't let your expectations get the better of you.  If I were to recommend an office printer to anyone, it would be the Xerox Phaser 6300.

WinCustomize 2K7 feedback.

HomePage

Homepage looks good. Other color schemes and such will be nice when they become available. I know subscribers (and me) will like that option.

One bug: Treetog's challenger skin isn't showing up on Top Masters Skins.

Gallery

I didn't like the categories at top at first but they've grown on me. When Instant Messenger and other sections get added, they'll come in handy.

I'll break this down by category:

Newest:

I should be able to select a specific library here. See https://www.wincustomize.com/Newest.aspx?v=1 for reference.

The breadcrumbs don't consistently work. For instance, I go here:

http://test.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?new

It says Home->Gallery->All Galleries->All Categories->Newest Skins.

Okay, a little wordy but fine. So I decide I just want to see the newest wallpapers. I select it from the drop-down and go to wallpapers. That takes me here.

http://test.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?libid=8

Nice. Except I can't choose between updated and new. Why not?

Second, now I want to go back to newest in all galleries. But I can't. There's no option for that. There is no way to get back to the newest skins page from the breadcrumbs which is, after all, the idea behind having bread crumbs.

Most Popular

I click this. But the breadcrumbs says "Top Skins". Shouldn't it say "Most Popular"?

Moreover, the breadcrumbs say Home->Top Skins.  Shouldn't it say Home->Gallery->Top Skins (or correctly Home->Gallery->Most Popular OR Home->Gallery->All Galleries->All Categories->Most Popular)?

And therefore, shouldn't I be able to quickly switch between most popular and Newest?

Recently Featured

It doesn't have the dotted underline that indicates it has  a link (it breaks the style).

The breadcrumb says Home->Gallery->All Galleries->All Categories->Featured Skins

But shouldn't it be ->Recently Featured?

And secondly, why can't I switch between recently featured and most popular and newest?

I really do like the way the site is working though. Compared to WC2K5, it's a paradise.

Recently Updated

This one is very inconsistent with newest. It looks very different and it lists newest by category. I don't mind that but I would like to have that option for Newest too.

The breadcrumb should be like:

Home->Gallery->All Galleries->All Categories->Recently Updated->Per Gallery

Then I should be able to switch between recently updated, newest, recently featured, and most popular. And I should be able to choose between per gallery and all galleries.

Misc.

It would be nice where we list the programs and such to have a link to where to get those programs. So I come to WinCustomize and I hear how cool SysMetrix is.  It woudl be nice if there was a link to download it in the gallery page (and not just the individual gallery). Something subtle (like a tiny icon or something maybe).

Articles

My only complaints about the Articles right now is that I can't list them like an index. You can list the top articles like an index:

http://test.wincustomize.com/top.aspx?type=articles

Yay.

But how about newest ones?

Forums

I just removed a ton of the bookmarks. Holy cow, I had to scroll down a huge sea of forums to find the 10 newest topics.

I'd like to see the Forum Summary vs. Topic List option (http://testforums.wincustomize.com/?g=summary) be kept in a cookie and the label of forum summary (or topic list) be displaye dbased on what's in the cookie.

Individual Gallery

Glad to see the data thumbnail is consistent. Makes things a lot more polished and professional looking.

Notes...

1) I can't change between say last updated and downloads today from the breadcrumbs.

2) KUDOS for whoever merged skin rating and date. Used to be sorted by rating and name which made me cry like a little girl.

3) KUDOS on performance. It's ridiculously fast.

So I click on a skin (Jitter). Looks good.

Requests:

1) Optional Parameter to hide comments (not by default but if I'm promoting a skin or somethign I want to be able to link to just the skin without the comments being displayed).

2) Optional Right-bar parameter that switches the gallery list to the category list (so that if I'm linking to a gallery from say WindowBlinds.net to the WB gallery it would just display the categories, similarly, third parties may want to do the asme thing). This setting would not be saved or anything, just want to make the initial navigation to a specific gallery from off-site easier.

Overall

I really like how it's come along. I wish I could code ASP.NET / SQL so that I could jump into this.

 But the overall effect is absolutely crucial: WC2K7 brings me back to the days of skinz.org and deskmod where the "community" seemed tighter knit. WC2K5 seemed way too big. I felt lost on the site at times. By having a consistent, smartly put together site, I can navigate it and see that it's not overwhelming after all.

Is it day or night? I'm losing track. Things at Stardock are in total crunch mode.  We have a big project for Microsoft that is due very soon as part of the Windows Vista Ultimate Extras that I think a lot of people will be talking about very soon. A good chunk of our art team is working on content and some of our top developers are working on the software.  The good news is that we'll have a super-charged version of one of the extensions as part of Object Desktop (I can't really give specifics yet).

Windows Vista is really going to usher in a new era of customization.  Today we went through what is needed to do a Boot Screen changer for Windows Vista. That won't be too much pain. What will take more effort will be a LogonStudio for Vista. But it's doable and with any luck, we'll have both done before the Winter is over.  This Windows Vista migration is really quite a project for us.  Windows XP is very popular. And no Microsoft OS has been out without an update this long. Ever. Over 5 years now. So we have to keep supporting XP even as we get our software working on Vista.  This has resulted in a much slower set of updates as everyone is working on the Vista stuff. It's definitely been tough to be quiet with regards to the one new Windows Vista project that has been done for awhile.  But the wait is almost over.  The long wait for Vista has, however, had a dramatic effect on the world of skinning that I'll get to in a minute.

Work on WinCustomize 2K7 continues apace. We're looking at a launch in January to coincide with our support for the new Microsoft content that I can't talk about yet in specifics. One of the big projects for next year will be to help make both software and website content that makes it easier for new users and casual users to make interesting things.  We have a new "super widget" type program in development for Windows Vista (mid next year) that is designed to allow pure-artists to make widgets without having to write scripts or XML or whatever. 

There's been a few interesting CursorXP themes made lately.  Meanwhile, work on a CursorVista is in progress.  They'll use the same content so what to call the gallery here on WinCustomize and elsewhere gets kind of interesting. Serves us right calling is something XP. Razor's Edge looks interesting.

Meanwhile, the ObjectBar gallery still only has one theme and that was made by the lead developer. It's not hard to make a theme for it. In fact, it's very easy. And making cool skins for it isn't hard either. It's pretty well documented here.  The gallery's one submission has over 4,000 skins. So this begs the question: Why aren't there more themes? In fact, across the board the question is "Where are the skinners?" 

The trend I've been seeing with skinning in the past few years is that the more users we get, the fewer skinners we get. You'd think they'd both rise together. But that hasn't been the case. And the trend I mention I think is largely coincidental. The problem is that tinkering with the OS isn't interesting anymore. Windows XP has been around so long now that the adventure is long since stale and now it's just a tool. And skinning really involves people who are excited to tinker with the OS.  That applies both to making software and making content.

Back in 1999 in the Skinz.org era, it was a tiny community in which there seemed to be as many skinners and users.  Now, there's millions of users and hardly any skinners.  Consider this: In the last GUI Championships, 16 of the 26 winners were from China.  None game from Europe. NONE. And only 6 came from the United States.  What the hell happened? Interest in using skins certainly hasn't gone down. That's very easy to verify both in traffic and in sales.  But the # of skinners out there has declined dramatically. Why? Because monkeying around with Windows XP isn't interesting anymore. It stopped being interesting a couple years ago. It's been done. We've squeezed all the juice out. As a result, far fewer new skinners have come into the community and it's doubly so for software developers.

Look at the state of customization software.  I remember back in 2001 when Windows XP hackers started patching their uxtheme.dll. There was a post on Neowin.net that went "I wish WindowBlinds would just die, there's no need for it now". It was obviously wrong then but imagine where things would stand now if that had happened. Vista isn't skinnable by any reasonable definition. You have Aero. Sure, some hackers will probably figure out how to change the little PNG images buried in the resources (and only then after they patch three files -- and some of them only after eating crow after screaming about it being a vector based UI -- but I digress). But that's not skinning. That's Windows 3.1 all over again where people used to patch the User.exe file with new bitmaps for the title bar controls.  Where are the new skinning programs coming from?  Just as there are now millions of people wanting to do cool stuff the number of developers seems to have declined.  It's like "Hey, we won! We convinced the world that they want to customize their desktop!" and then they left to go to Linux or who knows what.  The long delay in Windows Vista has brought skinning to its knees even as the # of users making use of skinning has skyrocketed.

So Windows Vista is just about here. Will this revive the skinning community? Will it bring in new skinners who want to make cool new stuff? Will it attract up and coming software developers to create new things? That's what I am hoping for. New OSes cry out to be tinkered with. And tinkering brings the skinners and developers. As a community, we need those people. It can't be all users.

So who is going to make the skins and themes and icons? Will Vista bring a new generation? What are the alternatives? Let's look at the possibilities.

Every now and then you'll see someone complain how Stardock "exploits" its users because it "relies" on other people to make content for its programs. The argument goes that if the skins are free, then it's wrong for Stardock to charge money for its software. I've never looked at it like that because to me, labor is labor. We all have a threshold of labor we'll provide before we want to be paid for that labor. A software program that takes a month to make (like a good skin) will tend to be freeware. A software program that takes years to make, will probably not be freeware (assuming it has the same authors). Hence BootSkin and LogonStudio are free because they didn't involve huge amounts of labor. But WindowBlinds is not.

We have seen the relationship between labor and charging as suites have become more popular. A few years ago, a few skinners banded together and began selling skins (Pixtudio led the way) put together into a coherent suite. Creating a skin can be a lot of work. Creating a full OS skin, an icon package, a wallpaper and a bunch of other stuff is quite a bit of work.  But in the skinning community, if there was hostility by some towards commercial software, it was nothing compared to the hostility of commercial skinning.  For example, in 2001, Customize.org (the very first skin site) banned screenshots or mention of non-free content.  Pixtudio had released a new suite. The suite also included a ton of free skins that were uploaded across the net. But the admins of Skinz.org and Customize.org condemned the concept of selling skins. Me, Skins Factory,  JCRabbit, and others, who had nothing to do with Pixtudio, defended the concept. You can read the thread here.  Here's another thread (back before Style XP started charging $20 to patch your OS -- very ironic).  It is worth noting that the participants on the pro side of the issue are almost all still here.  Me, Skins Factory, JCRabbit, (to name 3) are all still very active.

Simply put, the gulf between those who believe the amount of labor to create a thing is the determining factor between free/non-free vs. the people who believe that the type of thing being created is the determining factor between free/non-free is huge. A less charitable person might say that the gulf between the people who put in labor and the people who want free stuff is huge (since the debates almost always involve developers/skinners on one side and mostly non-skinners/non-developers on the other side hiding their unwillingness to compensate people for immense labor beyind a facade of righteousness -- but I digress <g>).

Of course, there's a second important factor in determining whether something is free or non-free: How fun is the labor to do? Skinning is fun. That's why people do it. It's fun. And people can share their creations with others and interact with people from around the world. No new OS for 5 years has, in my opinion, made it less fun. Combine that with more effort needed to make something that stands out and you get less "stuff" or at best, less interesting stuff. 

So here's the situation on the eve of Windows Vista: There are now millions and millions of people who want skins. Skinning is mainstream. But the number of users creating free skins has declined.  So what's going to happen?  My guess is one of two things: Either Windows Vista will reinvigorate skinning just as Windows XP did when it came out or it won't (or somewhere in between).  If it does, then there will be lots of great free skins.  If it doesn't, it's going to get very commercial very fast.  And if it's somewhere in between, you'll see some commercial skins and lots of free skins.  The demand is there. It will get filled. The question is, by who?

On WinCustomize 2007 skin authors who reach the access level of  "Master" or higher will be able to sell their skins right on the site as part of the gallery. It's almost completely automated -- like uploading a regular skin except the skinner names their price and it goes through more moderation scrutiny. Obviously, to get to be a master you have to release a lot of free high quality content. But as a hobby, it's not a bad prospect to generate what can amount to significant amounts of revenue.  Based on early stats, I think that some skinners could actually make a full time living on it.  But -- here's the kicker -- some people won't be happy about this prospect of there being non-free content.  But that's the catch, either people will volunteer to make cool stuff or the option will be to pay for it.  Personally, a few bucks for a good skin isn't a big deal. But if someone doesn't want to pay for skins, best to pick up SkinStudio and start learning to skin. If artwork is an issue, team up with someone on-line who can make the graphics but doesn't know how to skin.  I have no art skills. But I've made plenty of skins.  BTW, WC subscribers get a big discount on those skins I mentioned.

To make a long story short -- Windows Vista took too long to get out there. As a result, a lot of OS tinkerers have moved onto other things. A tiny fraction of OS tinkerers become skinners. An even tinier fraction become software developers. In turn, the amount of new skins being released these days has declined dramatically even though the number of users has greatly increased.  Windows Vista, I think, will have reignite the love of skinning. Stardock is working on a bunch of new programs we think will help in that area. But I also think that in the absence of free skins, you're going to see an increasing number of premium content from skinners.  Anyone who objects to that I have this advice: Start skinning.

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Check out this teaser trailer for more.