Kerry has finally started releasing some of his files that he had promised to during the campaign.  For all the left-wing attacks on Bush's intelligence it seems rather ironic that Bush did better at Yale than Kerry did (even if barely).  The good news is that Kerry did do well in one subject - French.

This isn't to say Kerry is dumb. But for some bizarre reason, left-wingers tend to believe that they are intellectually superior to conservatives and paint Bush out to be a "moron" despite no evidence to substantiate that.

 

Imagine what the uproar would be if say Dick Cheney said that Democrats pretty much act the same and look the same to him.  There's be cries for his resignation.  After all, Republicans ousted Trent Lott over a lot less.  But the Democrats..well, they have different standards of behavior.  It's okay for them to be overt bigots.  Whether that be former KKK Senator Byrd or Jesse "Hymie Town" Jackson, and now Howard Dean, Democrats have spent so much time accusing others of being bigots and racists and sexists that they just can't see how hateful and nasty and yes..bigoted they've become.

For example:

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, unapologetic in the face of recent criticism that he has been too tough on his political opposition, said in San Francisco this week that Republicans are "a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party."

Howard Dean stated this past Winter that he "hates" Republicans.  And if Dean sees Republicans as being a bunch of white Christians, well, one can make the connection about what exactly he hates. Don't these guys realize that this kind of hate and ugliness drives people away from them?

On WinCustomize.com, subscribers and Object Desktop users can create personal websites that have their submissions, articles, guest book, stats, and for subscribers, photo albums.

This past month some of these personal pages have received tens of thousands of visitors.  If you want to have your own personal page, just click on the Sites tab above and create a personal page.

2005

What's new & cool!

Introduction

Object Desktop 2005 is the yearly mile-stone snapshot of Stardock's premiere desktop enhancement suite.  Installing Object Desktop is a lot like upgrading Microsoft Windows to the next level. It adds features and functionality to the base OS that allow you to do amazing things on your computer.

Over the past year, Stardock has worked hard to improve its award-winning product suite to make it easier, more powerful, and more useful to all users.  Below is a summary of changes made to Object Desktop over the past year..

 

WindowBlinds 4.5 is faster, more flexible, and with SkinStudio can use both WindowBlinds and MSStyle visual styles to change the Windows GUI.  Toolbar icons can now be replaced and progress animations changed. With those features, the last vestiges of the Windows 95 look can be removed.  DesktopX 3 integrates an object framework into Windows in which users can use VBScript, Javascript, or existing objects to build their own desktops and desktop widgets. DesktopX delivers the ultimate in productivity potential to users. It is the closest thing to the "Taligent" and "Cairo" concepts available in any material form on Windows today. RightClick is a new program added to Object Desktop this past year. It lets users replace their desktop right-click menu with one of their own creation. IconX is also a new program added to Object Desktop this past year. It lets users apply amazing effects and visuals to their Windows desktop icons. SkinStudio  has continued being enhanced to support editing both WindowBlinds visual styles and MSStyles.  As Longhorn approaches, SkinStudio's ability to translate MSStyles into other formats will be particularly needed since the MSStyles format found in Windows XP is expected to be discontinued. Theme Manager continues to put it all together into a single package.  It went through a lot of usability improvements this past year.  Once Object Desktop is installed, users can use Theme Manager to apply visual styles (WindowBlinds and MSStyles), wallpapers, icon packages, skins, themes, etc. all together.  Users can also save their desktop to a "suite" to give to others or for later use. Desktop Gadgets. This is a new inclusion into Object Desktop. The desktop gadgets are a series of stand-alone mini programs that provide useful and attractive information but are built right into the Windows desktop. Stardock Central. Stardock Central has continually been enhanced to make it easy to manage your various Stardock products including Object Desktop. [FULL FEATURE LIST]

Moreover, Object Desktop 2005 is poised to take advantage of the cool new features in Microsoft's next-generation "Longhorn".  We have much of Object Desktop already running on the latest beta already.  For those of you who like to change the look and feel of Windows, Object Desktop will put you in the best position to make use Longhorn features such as Avalon and it's hardware accelerated video compositing system.

In essence, when you install Object Desktop 2005, you get full control over your whole desktop.  Object Desktop 2005 recently won PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award too.

Highlights of Object Desktop 2005

Stardock Central

Stardock Central has been designed to make it much easier to interact with all of Stardock's software.

Integration with WinCustomize allows for quick and easy access to new customization content.

WindowBlinds

   

WindowBlinds saw its color changing ability enhanced to support HSL based coloring. Now you can change the color of your skins to match your tastes more easily than ever.

There are now thousands of toolbar icons available that can be used to change the Internet Explorer and Explorer toolbar icons.

WindowBlinds remains the only convenient way to change the progress animations that come with Windows - the ones that are identical to what came with Windows 95!

 

DesktopX

DesktopX 3 arrived this past year. It was designed to make its feature more easy to use than ever. It also came with a ton of new features for making ever more powerful desktops.  With DesktopX, users can build and use widgets or create entirely new desktops.

DesktopX 3 has incredible flexibility that no other program available has when it comes to customizing your Windows desktop.  That's because it's really more than a program, it's more like a object-oriented desktop framework.  Users can add objects to their desktops, put those objects together and make them into mini-applications (widgets) or use those objects to build entire desktops.

Individual objects can do amazing things. And because DesktopX supports animation and alpha-blending on your Windows desktop, they can look great too:

Objects on the desktop

Those same objects can be given functionality and combined together with other objects and exported as "widgets":

Widgets on the desktop

Or users can use DesktopX to build an entire desktop where DesktopX can hide your Windows Start bar (optionally), control the system tray, hide desktop icons, and more:

Building a desktop.

Stardock also makes DesktopX Pro which can be used to export widgets as gadgets. Gadgets are the same as widgets except they don't require DesktopX to run, they're true stand-alone programs.

RightClick

RightClick extends the Windows desktop menu to support a vast number of new features such as a Most frequently used rograms list, quick system tray access, skinning, hot key access (so you can get to it even when your desktop is covered), custom folders, virtually any system command, and more. What makes RightClick really special is how easy it is to use and configure.

IconX

IconX is a new program that allows users to customize the look and feel of their Windows desktop icons and labels. IconX enhances your existing desktop icons. So whatever you have on your desktop is automatically enhanced.  Users configure how they want their desktop icons to look by default, on mouse over, on selection, and on drag.  Shadows, different sizes, special effects, sounds, and much more. It can really jazz up a Windows desktop and for new users make the desktop a lot friendlier looking.

 

Theme Manager

Theme Manager 2005 has been enhanced to have more seamless support for MSStyles (now users can treat all their visual styles as if they were natively part of Windows -- without having to hack their system files like many third party programs attempt to do either in RAM or on the actual files themselves!). From Theme Manager, users can control the behavior of all their skins, themes, icons, wallpapers, etc. from a single simple user interface. It integrates tightly with third party programs as well and if it needs one, it will offer to download and install it for you.

SkinStudio

With SkinStudio 4.5 installed, making changes to your Windows GUI is easier than ever. You can literally go up and do File->New and start with the default Windows XP user interface and begin modifying it from there. Your finished creation can then be applied to your computer. Add new buttons to your title bar or just give it a new look and feel.

SkinStudio 4.5 adds the ability to automatically import .msstyles files and apply them via WindowBlinds without having to patch any of your system files! SkinStudio + WindowBlinds are the only programs that can do this.

 

Coming Attractions...

Stardock has some exciting things in development for Object Desktop 2005 users.  When a user purchases Object Desktop 2005, they get everything already available plus all updates and anything new added to it.  Here are some highlights:

ObjectBar 2 should be ready for release in Summer 2005. It has a brand-new configuration system that's much easier. It also has the ability to embed DesktopX widgets as part of its theme.  It can also export user-creations as EXEs for others to use with their own simplified configuration.

Enhanced File Dialog is also nearly ready. It replaces the existing file dialogs in Windows with ones with a lot more features.  For example, it can add short-cuts to programs in the dialog. Have a server directory or special folder you get stuff from? No problem, add it to the left location favorites area.

Stardock Virtual Desktops 2 is almost done. The new version can be integrated into ObjectBar or the Windows Start bar. Expect to see many third party programs support is as well. Users can configure different wallpapers per desktop and its speed is unrivaled. It is the ultimate way to get more screen space on a single monitor.

IconPackager 3 is about to be released.  The new version supports even more system icons to change as well as makes it easier than ever to create your own icon packages via drag and drop.

 

Conclusions

Object Desktop 2005 represents Stardock's continued quest to deliver a suite of programs that integrate so seamlessly into the operating system that users may not always recognize which features are part of the OS by default and which ones are added by it.

Object Desktop uses relatively little disk space and even less memory. It uses what's already part of Windows in order to not slow down your computer and when possible, uses hardware acceleration from your video card to actually make your PC run faster!

Object Desktop is a trademark of Stardock Corporation.  WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, IconPackager, IconX, RightClick, SkinStudio are trademarks of Stardock Corporation.  All other trademarks are held by their respective holders.

(c) 2005 Stardock Corp.

WindowBlinds 4.59 beta is now available for Object Desktop users.  WindowBlinds is a program that changes the look & feel of the Windows GUI (title bars, Start bar, push buttons, task panel, etc.).  The new beta version is testing out alpha blended glow effects.  MikeB's Tronnix is the first skin to test out this new feature. Skinners can effectively add light sources to buttons and other elements of the GUI.

So Apple is going to move to Intel-based CPUs. That MacOS X has had a shadow-X86 version running for years is one of the worst kept secrets in the industry.  But few, myself included, ever thought that Apple would ever switch to it.  It's quite a risk. Talk about throwing down the gauntlet.

Some pundits had predicted that Apple would have to switch -- economies of scale would force it.  But why now? What were the factors leading to the decision?  In my view, there were two factors that made the time right for Apple to make the jump.

The first factor had to do with the difficulty IBM was having in ramping up the performance of the PowerPC chip at the price-level Apple could afford.  With only 2% of the market, Apple simply couldn't purchase enough of IBM's CPUs to justify the investment in producing faster CPUs at a reasonable per unit cost. 

But I think there was a second factor -- the iPod.  I think Steve Jobs has concluded that the door isn't closed for becoming a major player in the personal computer market.  After all, the iPod was not the first portable media player.  It wasn't first by a long shot.  But it has around 87% of the portable media player market now.

Apple has seen first hand that a well designed, well engineered product can come into a maturing market and take it over.  Hence, what is to stop Apple from taking over much of the PC market?  With Intel-based CPUs, it'll be able to manufacture its machines at a price competitive to other PC makers.  And with it running on Intel, no doubt emulation software will allow Windows programs to run fast and seamlessly on the Mac as people "transition" to a pure MacOS strategy.

The pressure is on Microsoft to deliver the goods with Longhorn.  MacOS X "Leopard" will arrive around the same time as Microsoft's "Longhorn".  And with Microsoft asserting that Longhorn will require most users to make a hardware upgrade to benefit from it, users will be faced with a pretty stark choice. Users would have to choose between a machine that runs Windows software or a machine that runs MacOS and Windows software -- both priced in the same range.  If Longhorn fails to deliver on Microsoft's promises, it could open the door for Apple to pull another iPod.

Though Apple should bear in mind that Microsoft has faced this situation before with OS/2 and we know how that turned out. If history is any guide, Microsoft is keeping a very close eye on this and won't stand idly by.

Check out this preview from Wargamer!

Steve Jobs announced today that over the next year, Apple is going to move its Macintosh line over to have Intel Inside.  According to Jobs, Apple has been leading a "secret life" for the past 5 years -- each version of MacOS X has had an Intel version and many of its popular internally developed programs have had versions compiled for an Intel version.

For users who purchase Intel-based Macintoshs starting mid-next year, they will need to either get upgraded MacOS X software that has been recompiled for MacOS X for Intel or run it through a compatibility layer that will run software via emulation.  It won't be as fast as it would have been natively but with most high end applications expected to be ported over, it will mean that most software for MacOS X should run acceptably no matter what.

I'm not sure where the myth began. But somewhere down the line, a false belief has turned into pseudo-fact amongst some people that customization software uses a lot of memory.  That's never been the case. Not even in the beginning.

At the dawn of Windows customization, software had to run on Windows 95 which only had 128K (that's kilobytes) of GDI resources. Customization software ate up a lot of those GDI resources since they were reserved for the user interface.  But even in 1995, 16K of memory was trivial. It's just that early versions of Windows were so limited in their GDI resources that it was a problem.

But Windows 2000 and Windows XP have never had any such problem.  And yet, we still see some uninformed, but vocal, user claim that <Program X> is "bloated" and uses a "ton" of memory.  Those people come in two forms:  The guy who really has no idea what he's talking about and the guy who thinks 10 megabytes of memory is a "ton" of memory.

The former guy is annoying because he matches his ignorance with his prolific posting.  The latter guy makes you wonder if their source of income is mom's allowance or something.  I can buy a 256 meg stick of memory for my PC for around $20. 

So let's get this out of the way: Desktop customization programs do NOT use much memory.

Here's WindowBlinds wbload.exe process use:

That's 576K.

Here's DesktopX:

That's only a couple megabytes of memory and it's running a useful object in this instance.

I could go on through a variety of programs both made by Stardock and made by third parties. None of them are "memory hogs".  You can certainly load up enough stuff with something like DesktopX to make it use a ton of memory.  Graphics, animation, etc. has to be stored somewhere.  But that's not the desktop customization's fault any more than it's Photoshop's fault if the user loaded a gigabyte sized image.

So next time someone tries to claim that some desktop customization program is "bloated" or something, point them here.

deviantART's Jark has gone through dA's icon libraries to bring out some of the best. Check them out!