I have a lot of computers.  It seems like I've always had more computers than one person should have.  And each computer is different.  I've got my development machine, I've got my casual office machine, I've got my laptop, and I've got my gaming machine.  I even have a tablet PC.

Each computer has different types of software on it and very different capabilities. And yet, by default, they all look and behave identically.  Windows has always been a one-size fits all solution. Even the Tablet PC version of Windows is pretty much the same as every other version of Windows. 

So what is a user to do? We all use our computers for different things so how can we easily custom tailor it to our needs? The answer: Object Desktop.  Object Desktop has seen its popularity steadily increase over the years as users have found themselves wanting to tweak, modify, enhance, etc. the way Windows works. 

Many people see Object Desktop as a visual, cosmetic product for Windows. I.e. something that makes Windows "look cool".  That's only a very small part of the story.  In a screenshot or in a first impression, it's always that "cool" stuff. But as users get used to using it, they realize there's a lot more under the surface.

For this article, I'm going to stick with pretty basic stuff.  Object Desktop gives you the power to really alter the way Windows works.  But we don't want to go crazy just yet, let's go with some fairly straight forward stuff and go from there.  I'm going to talk about my 3 main, non-specialized computers and how I use them.  For the purposes of the screenshots, I'm doing them all on my development machine (the machine I'm on right now) to cut down on the time it would take to put all this stuff together for you.

All the programs I mention before come with Object Desktop which is only $49.95 and plus you get everything added to it for a year!

The Laptop

I am probably the one guy in the world who runs his laptop at a relatively low resolution.  My ThinkPad T42 laptop does up to 1440x1050 resolution but I tend to run it in 800x600 or 1024x768 when I'm doing email or browsing the net.  And that's fine with Object Desktop which lets me transform the Windows UI into something optimized for low resolutions:

I use RightClick to have a new default right-click menu. I set it up to display my most frequently used programs along with a few other handy things on there such as my "Programs" menu.  I have it set to automatically open when I hit the Windows key.  Sometimes I tell it to hide my Start bar to get a bit of extra space. But I go back and forth on that depending on what I'm doing.

I also turn on IconX. That's because I sometimes will have my icons be only 24x24 on the desktop.  That's smaller than the default icons and IconX can scale my icons much better than Windows can.  The new version of IconX lets me specify labels so I can have nice big labels still for the icons.  These days, icons are pretty useless for individual things it seems like (IMO) and labels are much more useful.

When I'm using my Start bar, I use the new Stardock Virtual Desktops.  It's faster than other virtual desktops I've used and makes it easy to get more screen space when I need to.

I also use the Silica Media Player widget. And I admit, I mainly use it to control iTunes at this point. I have it set to come up when I hit the F12 key so I can quickly zip through songs.

Keyboard LaunchPad is really crucial on my laptop.  The reason is that, especially when traveling on the plane, I don't have much room for a mouse and while I like IBM's Trackpoint technology, it gets a bit old navigating to particular programs.  So what I do is I have my common programs tied to a series of hot-keys.  I am hoping that the next version will let me control iTunes directly from it (not that I don't like my media player widget but I pretty much just want to control things via the keyboard at that point).

Last but not least is WindowBlinds. I use it to run some minimalist skin. It changes my entire Windows GUI to have a nice, simple looking skin. But it is also important because I can set it so that when I right-click on a title bar it minimized the window.

What I've used Object Desktop to do is to get the most out of my limited screen space.  I want to be able to get to things very quickly and I'm not very concerned about what is on the desktop or what is pretty.

The Development Machine

My development machine is typically running at 1600x1200. So my screenshot isn't really reflective of just what I tend to have on it.  My development machine is where I do everything from write code for Galactic Civilizations to creating new skins, objects, scripts, etc. 

First off, I use DesktopX, as an environment here.  The whole "widget" thing has kind of created some confusion on what exactly DesktopX is for.  DesktopX is a desktop environment.  It lets you have real objects on your desktop.  In this case, what I do is import widgets and other content onto my desktop.  Widgets are great but each widget is a mini-program.  Imported content, by contrast, use very little memory because DesktopX itself takes care of running them.  So I tend to import my To-Do list, various RSS feeds, stock-tickers, sticky-notes, etc.

I also have a bunch of custom objects that I can't take screenshots of that display the status of our various databases and stores, and recent bug entries into our bug database. We created these with DesktopX too.

The Silica Calendar widget is one I always run.  So often I just don't remember which day of the week something will be and while I can double click on the clock in the Start bar, it's a lot quicker to hit F12 to bring up the calandar.

Not that my code ever has memory leaks but I also make heavy use of the Silica Memory meter widget. So I can keep track of my overall memory use to see if something is leaking.

I also run RightClick on this desktop.  Except on this machine, I have all my development tools right off the main menu.

I use Keyboard LaunchPad to do only two things really -- first, I have Visual Studio and its corresponding tools all assigned to a single hot key.  So when I hit Ctrl-Shift-D on my system it loads up several programs at once.  And secondly, I have Ctrl-Alt-1 through 6 specified to load up a bunch of web pages I often go to.

I use WindowBlinds primarily for cosmetics on this machine. I just want my GUI that I'm staring at all day to look cool.

Ditto with IconPackager.  IconPackager lets me change all my Windows icons to something that looks cool.

My overall strategy here is that I turn my desktop into a headline news reader with lots of objects on here that gives me all kinds of info. I also keep track of my resources and schedule. But I also care about how it looks, I want it to be nice looking as well.

The Gaming Rig

The gaming rig is my play machine. It's ridiculously powerful for game playing.  I do quite a bit of work on here too as I end up doing a lot of web work and such on this machine. But mostly I'm playing games on it.    It has a really good video sub-system (right now an ATI X800 on it) so I tend to be able to turn on a lot more eye candy than I might otherwise use.  I also tend to change the way it looks a lot since my tastes vary quite a bit.

First off, I use WindowFX very heavily here.  WindowFX lets me add shadows to my windows.  It also has a feature that lets me scale my windows. This is incredibly cool. Basically I can assign it so that when I hold the SHIFT button when I click on the minimize button, it will turn the window into a scaled window (See the screenshot for an example).  I can even interact with the window even when it's scaled which is quite useful if I am doing IM in a scaled window. 

Again, I have WindowBlinds here and I tend to have various kinds of skins running. I don't stick with anything very long.  I will often just pick whatever is the currently featured skin.

Same with IconPackager. I have it change all my icons to something cool.

IconX is where I really have some fun.  First, I set my default icon size to 64x64. So they're very large.  Secondly, I have the mouse over size be 128x128 and I have it animate to that size so that grow on mouse over.  Some icons in particular I change to use a PNG file.  I am hoping that a future version of IconX will let us set individual icons to have their own unique size but I'm not sure how the UI would be done for that.

The Silica Picture Frame is very nice to have.  Remember, this is a home machine, so I will tend to have a lot of company over from time to time.  So I have the Silica Picture Frame widget cycle through the latest family photos.  I can resize it to be any size I want so if I have a lot of guests over, I'll make it full screen.

The Silica Drive Meter.  I use this because this is also the machine I take my home movies and turn them into DVDs.  As you can imagine, the work files for this can get pretty huge so I tend to want to keep real-time track of my disk space as some of the cryptic programs I use for messing with video files don't bother to check to see if there's enough space to do what they're going to do before hand.

I don't use the Stock monitor widget as much as I used to.  I don't have a lot of stocks but last Winter before I sold some stock I was using this quite a bit. I suspect others would find this useful too.

Enhanced File Dialog is still in beta on Object Desktop but I find it incredibly useful.  Basically it extends your existing Windows File Load/Save dialog to let you have additional functionality (resizable, add new places on the left side, have some quick launch buttons in there, etc.).  A lot of the graphics programs I use don't seem to remember where I want to load images from or where I want to save images to and so being able to press a button to get back to where I want to go is a life saver.  When this program is completed, I'll put it onto my other machines but the other production machines don't tend to run beta software which is why I only have it on this machine.

The tip of the iceberg

Everything mentioned above comes with Object Desktop -- today.  And believe it or not, I've barely scratched the surface.  Object Desktop is probably one of the best software deals on the planet.  It comes with everything you need to turbo-charge your Windows desktop to work however you want it to work.  We haven't even gone into talking about ObjectBar or SkinStudio or IconDeveloper or how you create things with DesktopX.  And we haven't touched on how you can use these programs to really change the way Windows looks & feels.  I'll leave that for another time.

Object Desktop

Purchase Object Desktop and you get all of the Object Desktop programs such as WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, IconPackager, SkinStudio, WindowFX, and much more. Plus you get everything Stardock updates or adds to it for an entire year. Object Desktop     [download only] Get all of Object Desktop now and everything created and updated for it for an entire year after! Get it on CD-ROM here. $49.95 Object Desktop Renewal Renew your access for an additional year to new Object Desktop updates and new programs. $34.95 Object Desktop Upgrade Upgrade from one of the components below to Object Desktop. $34.95

 

Some other screenshots:

This week's featured skinner is Pixel Pirate.  Pixel Pirate is 22 years old and lives in Denmark. Many thousands of you may be using his work right now.  He recently released the "Encoded" series of skins which demonstrates not only his skill as an artist but his flexibility as a designer as it includes WindowBlinds, CursorXP, Logons, Boot Screens, and a full blown icon package.

He is the 34th most popular skinner of all time on WinCustomize.com and ranked #2 in creating tool bar icons.  Overall, he has over 600,000 downloads.  He is also one of the more active forum posters (ranked in the top 300 people worldwide in posting in the WinCustomize general forum). And to top it all off, he's a WinCustomize subscriber!

And so this week is dedicated to Pixel Pirate, someone who has given a great  deal to the community. Three cheers for Pixel Pirate!

After quite an absense, the popular shell-theming support site, Litestep.net has returned.  Litestep is a free and open source replacement shell for Microsoft Windows.

From the site:

Welcome to LiteStep.net. Many months, or should we say nearly a year, ago this site was the focal point of the LiteStep community. Then we had a hard disk failure and now it's time to bring LSnet back, again.

Lighttek Software has released Talisman Desktop 2.9. Talisman is a program that replaces the Windows shell (explorer.exe).  Users can then apply Talisman themes that are far more flexible than what is capable on Explorer.

- New Theme Manager.
- Automatic installation of downloaded themes.
- New templates for creating your own themes.
- New Calculator object.
- Support of audio playlists.
- New functions for List and Calendar objects.
- Many other new functions and commands.

DesktopX 3.1 is nearly complete and it has a lot of new goodies and tweaks.  To recap, DesktopX is a desktop environment that integrates true object-oriented abilities directly into the Windows GUI.  Using DesktopX, users can add virtually any kind of object onto their windows desktop or design completely new desktops.  Users can also export their creations as stand alone mini-programs called widgets or as full blown desktops (.desktop files).

What is going to be new about DesktopX 3.1 comes in the form of many little touches to improve its usability.  For example, power users who want to live in the desktop creation environment will be able to flip on and off a tool palette that floats on the desktop.  The default widgets are being enhanced to be nicer and make use of the new DesktopX 3 style preference dialogs (that use the standard Windows dialogs). There are quite a number of other changes but the development team wants to keep that a surprise.  DesktopX 3.1 should be out sometime this month.  The beta for it is available for Object Desktop users.

Guilds, as a general concept, are terrific for Massively Multiplayer games.  And nearly all regular players in WoW are in some sort of guild.

The problem, in my view, with guilds is that they don't have enough tools to organize events, manage resources, and etc. 

As a guild leader, I really don't have much real power. I can kick people out, promote people, and so forth.  But it's not like I have in-game power to resolve disputes over loot or try to provide "stuff" for new members, but there's nothing built in.

This leads to one of my frustrations, ones shared by my officers and that is the problem with people abandoning the guild to form new guilds.  It's incredibly frustrating to equip some new guy only to have him leave a week or two later to create his own guild - often dragging away a few other members.  Our guild's officers have run into this regularly.  They'll spend time helping leveling up members, providing them good equipment and then they'll turn around and leave.

What I'd like to see would be:

1) A taxation system.  Once someone joins the guild, 1% of the money they earn goes to the guild master and 2% is split amongst the officers equally. This allows the officers and guild master to distribute gold and purchase equipment for new members without having to dig into ones own pocket completely to help those users.

2) A exit guild cost.  There should be a cost to leave a guild that is based on what level you are and your rank within the guild.  If you're a level 60 officer in a guild then there should be some sort of stiff price to pay to do so.  It might give some people pause for thought before leaving and taking 30 buddies with them to start some other guild.

3) Punishment system.  There should be some way for guild masters and guild officres to punish users who have caued harm. Nothing particularly annoying and I don't even know what  the punishments should be per se. But there should be some way for the guild master and officers to enforce the guild's rules/charters/covenanet/what have you. Right now, other than kicking them out, there's not much you can do.

 

I'm unhappy to report that we let a bug slip through, the personal page button on  your profiles is now accidentally linking to "My skins" instead of to your personal page.  We should have this fixed after the holiday. Sorry 'bout that.

 

Advocates are people who help bring people to WinCustomize.com.  Whenever you link to your personal page, an post you've written, a skin you've made, or even a skin someone else has made that you've recommended on your personal page, you get an advocate point when someone visits.  For example, on Neowin I made a post talking about Liquid 2. I did the same on some other sites that linked to Liquid 2.  When someone clicks on that link, it gets counted as a referral which in turn counts as an advocate point.

Users who get more advocate points in a given month than I get often get sent various WinCustomize.com goodies in the mail (though in June, I was #1 which is the first time that's happened since we started doing this).  Thank you to everyone who helps bring people to WinCustomize.com and spreads the word on the power of skinning and customizing your desktop experience!

1	Frogboy	38,751
2	Steve Grenier	31,174
3	mormegil	12,610
4	FilkoSE	10,528
5	Jairo Boudewyn	9,754
6	wstaylor	9,445
7	The Skins Factory	9,228
8	JJ Ying	8,069
9	D. Arnaez	6,918
10	Apocalypse_67	5,468

I used to be an OS/2 zealot. You hear about Mac bigots and Linuz zealots, well, let me tell you just how bad of an OS/2 zealot I used to be -- I can recount various key moments in my younger life based on their proximity to the release of IBM's OS/2 2.0 (March 31, 1992).

"When did you and your wife meet?" is a common question.  My brain pages through the records and goes "Ah, it was just after the release of OS/2 and therefore it must have been in Spring of 1992."

Birthdays, anniversaries, whatever, I have trouble remembering.  But OS/2 2.0's release date is burned into my mind.  And for the subsequent 6 years, I devoted nearly every waking hour to making OS/2 succeed.  It wasn't about money. It wasn't about business.  It was a cause. OS/2 was my cause. It was a better way of doing things.  Some people get wrapped up in ideologies. Other people go on religious crusades. I was on an OS crusade.

And we lost. Badly.

Another date I remember well was Fall of 1996.  That was when Microsoft release Windows NT 4.0.  And within a year, the OS/2 market died. Microsoft's effective FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) combined with IBM's unwillingness to strongly back OS/2 made it ripe to be toppled over by Windows NT 4.0 which, while not as good as OS/2 Warp 4, was "good enough" and had good industry support.

By 1998, our once thriving company was laying people off and struggling to survive.  And I wasn't a 20 year old college student anymore.  I was 26, married, with a young son.  I had responsibilities to my family and my employees.  We limped our way into the Windows market, tail between our legs.  Nowadays, we're a pure Microsoft shop.  .NET solutions across the board. Microsoft SQL.  Microsoft Office. Our company makes a great demonstration of Microsoft solutions now.  Which is pretty ironic since we were once OS/2 zealots.  I'm not a Windows zealot today.  I'm not even a Windows advocate really.  It's just business.

The romanticism of OS technology has warn off and there's nothing as relatively cutting edge as OS/2 was back then.  So now I don't really think of the OS choice much beyond market share and what makes good business sense.  Now it's about the software WE make.  I am still dedicated to a cause -- making stuff that enables people to use their computers however they want.  And I want to make software that is cool and useful.  That's where software like Object Desktop and now ThinkDesk comes in.

So today IBM and Microsoft announced that they're closing the books on that uglyness that was OS/2.  Almost 10 years after Windows 95 was released, Microsoft is paying IBM off to not sue them over all the "unpleasantness" that Microsoft was involved in to ensure that 95%+ of you are using Microsoft Windows instead of IBM OS/2.  We'll never know if we would have been better off if OS/2 had won out instead of Windows.  But at least IBM got to recoup some of their costs for trying.

 

If you haven't gotten it already, definitely try out Microsoft's AntiSpyware program.  It's free and can definitely keep your system clean of the malicious junk that can get installed on systems.