I’ve always used custom visual styles or windowblinds to de-ugly Windows XP.. The downside to that is on slower machines, it impacts performance. Especially Windowblinds (aside from the fact it isn’t free)! This kinda sucks for us poor kids who can’t afford the beauty of a Mac, but.. there’s a quick (free) way to change the entire look of XP to spunk it up a wee bit without slowing things down to a crawl. Check it.
Media Center Style (aka Royale):
(note: this is just a googled screenshot. not my computer!)
courtesy of Softpedia.com:
A new theme, potentially destined for Windows XP, has leaked out of Microsoft and onto the web. The theme appears to have come out of a beta version of Media Center 2005, currently in testing.
The theme is not a substantially different incarnation of the existing of Luna, the current default theme for Windows XP. You can see the main changes in the screenshots below; one could describe it as being a ‘glass mod’ of Luna.
As Microsoft knows, it is very hard to please everyone when it comes to themes. However, I think they can be reasonably certain that most people will like this new version of Luna.
Download the Royale Theme now!
Zune XP Theme:
Microsoft Zune Theme is a special Windows XP Theme from Microsoft designed to look like its new Zune portable media player. This is an official skin for Windows XP that has a dark grey style and orange Start menu.
Download the Zune Theme now!
Royale Noir:
(images courtesy of istartedsomething.com)
courtesy of Softpedia.com:
During Royale’s development (the XP Media Center theme), the graphic artists also produced a black version of the skin, sans the overused “glass†effect. The result is an aesthetic black skin named “Royale Noirâ€Â, it even works with Office 2003.
Since the skin was never released (or reached final adjustments) there are a few issues with it: some of the colors don’t meet the overall “feel†(they’re too purple-ish compared to the greys of the bitmaps) and the inactive titlebars are a little too dark.
This download isn’t the original Noir theme, it’s a modified version seeing as how the original version was never completed. The download also includes modified versions of the 2 themes above (Royale & Zune). I personally use the Royale Noir theme, totally sweet and just as fast as the default XP themes.
Download the Royale Noir Theme now!
YO! For any help installing these themes please refer to the download links and any documentation provided within the zip files. I am NOT responsible if something goes wrong with your computer, so when your mom freaks out because she can’t check aunt Sally’s email because you just started clicking like a madman.. don’t even think about blaming me.
Cool beans. This is good to know. Thanks Herpe =)
this is sick! microsoft leaks, lol. and your right, if i wasn’t such a poor little teenager, i’d buy a Keira Knightley looking mac and dump this fat we call windows behind.
eh, i use windows blinds and i don’t notice that much of a speed decrease. of course i avoid those crazy flashy futuristic looking skins too (and i know to avoid anything involving alpha — that just kills my cpu).
i wonder about this windows vista stuff though. a lot of people are ganna have to upgrade their hardware to run all that fading/drop shadows/whatever else b gates thought was cool.
Argh, it’s a pity there aren’t more of these. My PC has Media Center on it, and I’ve already got the Zune one. But the third one looks cool, so I’ll give it a try.
I had a freeware program called ObjectDock installed on my Windows ME PC, which I used to make it look like Windows XP. It was quite convincing, too. Unfortunately something went wrong along the way, and it was a pain to get rid of, as it messed up the windows, and you couldn’t uninstall it until you managed to close the damn thing.
A google of other methods produces some very dubious looking things. One involved replacing 5 files and then adjusting the BIOS to fix the damage done… no way am I going near that stuff.
Thanks Drew!
Thanks Drew! I’m using the Royal Noir one and it’s awesome….
Back in the day that used to be true, but for XP, benchmarks have actually shown the Windowblinds component to render faster than XP’s own. There are, of course, some bugs in Windowblinds that you usally wont catch in a *complete* visual style.
http://www.joyboner.com is the SHiT
it gives useful & informative perks
keep up the good deeds (o:
hells yeah
Thanks for the theme’s
and i love the website. i found it very useful i times.
is there something like this for a mac tiger/panther theme