Screenshot of Toon-XP:
https://www.stardock.com/products/themes/toon-xp/odnt-toon2.jpg

VIDEO demo of Toon-XP:
https://www.stardock.com/videos/toon-xp.wmv

If you combined the talents of Paul Boyer & Pixtudio together to create the ultimate suite, what would it look like?

Probably something like the new Toon-XP Premium suite! This new suite includes a new visual style created by Pixtudio that has multiple sub-designs and can be colored to any color you'd like, but also supports the new WindowBlinds 4 features such as skinnable Explorer task panes, logon/logoff screens, and much more.

The desktop theme is created by Paul Boyer and supplies a wharf on the right and a cool resource monitoring piece at the top.

The right click desktop menu is replaced with one that is faster and has a link to your most frequently used programs.

And of course, it also includes a ton of excellent icons by Paul Boyer (maker of the Orion icon suites). Each icon supports alpha blending and has resolutions from 16x16 all the way up to 128x128 which makes them ideal for programs like ObjectDock.

And you can pick and choose which pieces you want to use. Only want to use the skin? No problem. Worried that you don't have the software you need installed? No problem, the suite includes a mini-program called ThemeManager which includes the pieces to each program you need to apply the theme. So even if you don't have a given part installed, Toon-XP will automatically take care of it for you upon installation.

To get Toon-XP go to: https://www.stardock.com/products/themes/toon-xp

The official announcement is tomorrow but for your enjoyment...

https://www.stardock.com/products/themes/toon-xp/

T-man's changes to the database handling should have a pretty significant impact at the speed of the message boards. Do the message boards seem faster?

For the past day and a half the WinCustomize libraries were down for maintainence. The SQL servers have just been so maxed out by the increase in traffic that the site wasn't able to respond adequately.

We used the time to optimize the SQL accesses. This morning, T-man was able to re-implement the way user data is accessed in a way that is far less intensive and as a result we can turn on the libraries again.

In the long term, we will still need to purchase an additional server but the rewrite up the SQL accessing should (hopefully) show a significant improvement in speed. We aplogize for the inconvenience.

Next week users of Object Desktop (www.objectdesktop.com) will be getting the first ALPHA of WindowBlinds 4.

The full preview guide of WindowBlinds 4 is here:
http://www.windowblinds.net/wb4

Major new features of WindowBlinds 4 are:

* Much faster than WindowBlinds 3 or Windows XP's own built in visual styles
* Higher level of compatibility with wacky applications that do non-standard things.
* Skins more elements of Windows including the Explorer task panel (shellstyles) WITHOUT requiring any hacking of shellstyle DLL.
* Can skin new elements like log off screens and other parts that one might not imagine.
* Plus it skins a host of other things users have long asked for.

WindowBlinds 4 will be the most significant engine upgrade to WindowBlinds since the original 1.0. Faster, smaller, more features.

The epic of running a skin site is always about the race between three resources: 1) Bandwidth 2) CPU resouces for handling scripts 3) CPU resources for handling the database Occasionally you'll see the notice of an upgrade to one of these three things. At the beginning of last year, WinCustomize was hosted on around 15 megabits (equivalent of ten T1 lines). Today, it requires 35 megabits of bandwidth. But we're okay on bandwidth, we've done the upgrading there. Thanks to subscribers and Stardock customers. But then we ran out of CPU resources for scripts. That was last Fall. We got a new mega server and things improved allowing even more people onto the site. And that brings us to now. so now the machines that handle the SQL database stuff are stuffed. We're working on a solution to this. But as many have noticed, the site has become incredibly slow due to the literally millions of people trying to access the site. While we could close the libraries for everyone (which is what most sites end up doing in this situation) we have decided that we can keep the libraries open for Stardock customers (make sure you cross-reference your accounts), WinCustomize subscribers, and user swith above citizen access (i.e. skin authors and other contributors). These peopel are, after all, the ones who pay for the hardware upgrades needed to keep the site going on a day to day basis. We expect this situation to be temporary (i.e. a couple of days). If you click on one of the sections on the left and get the library closed message, you can eitehr cross reference your account if you're already a customer or subscriber or you can become a subscriber. Alternatively, you can also gain access by buying Object Desktop and then cross referencing your account then. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The SQL server is pretty maxed out which makes it very hard to do monthly maintainence. So we've closed the skins library to all non-apprentice / non-WC subscriber users to reduce the load.

We expect things to return to normal in a cople of days.

So what would you guys think of a short bi-weekly TV show that focuses just on doing cool stuff on the computer? Kind of a video skinning magazine?

What sorts of stuff would you like to see covered?

DesktopX 2 is now in Alpha form on Stardock's Object Desktop. It is a major step forward for desktop enhancement users over version 1.

DesktopX is a program that lets you completely alter the actual Windows environment. Or put another way, there really really are other ways to envision using your computer than having a bar on the bottom of your screen with some little pictures scattered on your desktop. DesktopX lets users create virtually any type of interface they want.

What version 2 brings to the table is making it much more accessible for casual users to get into it. DesktopX is very powerful and while version 1 isn't very difficult to use, it does require users to kind of "jump in" to things. DesktopX 2 has some cool features in it that will allow users to gradually move users into desktop customization. Check it out!