WindowBlinds 7.01

Rated 50/50 by photonboy at Jan 15, 2008

I'm giving the program a "5" but: -on XP (Media Center 2005) I tried many, many themes but always ended up preferring my default MCE2005 theme -on Vista I don't believe there's a single theme that really does justice to the Aero interface. I could seriously buy this program if there were even 2 awesome themes, but I've always ended up going back to the default themes in XP or Vista (dual-boot until Vista improve for gaming). The actual program is now very solid in terms of coding and I have to acknowledge that many people love some of the themes. But let's really do some justice to Aero shall we?

Rated 50/50 by tannenwheel at Jan 15, 2008

on my old box (1300 CPU,500 RAM,30 MB graphic) it worked fine unless the system was fully used. watching the elements beeing drawn on screen one by one is a deal breaker. (so I allways went back to plain XP without themes, after some days) but on my new machine (4600 CPU,2000 RAM,700 MB Graphic, 1600x1200 resolution) windowBlinds has found a steady home. I prefer classic OS emulation skins. they are no longer in fashon and you hardly find them on the major skinnig sites. I use a modified version of a win 3.1 clone that I found on http://pcdesktops.emuunlim.com/wb91-95.shtml i think windowsblinds is no fun unless you also have skinstudio to quickly fix shortcommings of your favourite skin. so many skins i tried and liked (even new skins) failed to render e.g operas toolbar buttons i such a way, that the button's current state (on/off) would be visible. that could often be fixed in a minute with skinstudio and mspaint.

Rated 20/50 by Adrian79 at Jan 16, 2008

for some reason sometimes i cant see my (X) on the top right corner of windows..i cant minimize,max,close.. that bar is missing... i uninstalled windowblinds for my vista machine btw, to guy below.. i used to dualboot xp/vista also.. but its been months now that vista now plays all my games perfect! i reformated and got rid of xp pro! cheers to vista and the upcoming final release of sp1

Rated 20/50 by rcglidden at Jan 17, 2008

I have always liked Window Blinds...used it for years, and still do (the version 5.xx) This is the first time I have had any problems with installing WB. It keeps saying I need to turn off antivirus and spyware scanners and reinstall WB. I do that, reinstalls ok and keeps warning me about the same problem ...and never runs. I'll keep trying things, but a 3 for now. :-( UPDATE: Uninstalled WB and uninstalled all known virus/spyware utilities, reinstalled WB.... same issues. The "workaround" they provide doesn't work either. Most likely something to try and prevent hacking and cracks. Now I'll give it a 2 ;-<

Rated 30/50 by DudeBoyz at May 7, 2008

I'm having much better luck with the 5.x versions than the newer 6.x versions in terms of speed and stability.

Rated 40/50 by Zoroaster at May 8, 2008

I'd rate 5 if it weren't for the installer of another age. I like WindowBlinds, performs very nicely even on a modest plat-form. This said, if the spaghetti is, like here, "a la dente", the real touch is in the sauce, I mean the skin. There are some really neat ones.

Rated 50/50 by jspratjr at Jul 23, 2008

No problems on Vista here ...

Rated 40/50 by alexweber15 at Jul 23, 2008

5.5 on WXP doesn't make windows noticeably slower at all if you have 1GB RAM and a decent CPU... now Vista is a bloated piece of crap anyway so no surprise its slow on vista... oh and after a while themes just get old... i like windows classic look just fine no need for all useless the bells and whistles (i did buy this btw...) :)

Rated 20/50 by Aegis69 at Jul 23, 2008

Should be called, "How to make windows a million times uglier and slower than it is". The biggest mistake Microsoft ever made was locking out the themes so we'd have to buy them from authorized third party's. Luckily to fix this problem all you have to do it get the uxtheme patcher; http://www.softpedia.com...heme-MultiPatcher.shtml Then download and install any theme off deviant art you like. http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/

Rated 10/50 by arjesus at Jul 23, 2008

I tried on a Vista (32) and it didnt work properly, only the taskbar and some other stuff changed. too buggy on Vista

Rated 10/50 by gate1975mlm at Jul 23, 2008

Good for Windows XP and butt ugly on Vista!

Rated 50/50 by Ryokurin at Jul 24, 2008

* Improved compression on start menu animations * Animated wait screens during Apply * Enhanced layer support (accompanied by skin author support in SkinStudio 6.2) * Bug Fixes

Rated 40/50 by Zoroaster at Jul 24, 2008

I like WindowBlinds, I use WindowBlinds, but I am unable to find out what's new in this version 6.2 compared to version 6.1. I've searched everywhere on their website, forums included, not one word on "What is new" ...

Rated 50/50 by MikeEx at Sep 18, 2008

Best program to skin windows. @ssb: Windowblinds uses hardware acceleration, so it runs faster than window's built in visual styles engine and does the job using less memory while providing a much richer desktop theme.

Rated 10/50 by ssb at Sep 18, 2008

A great looking way to make Windows even slower! @MikeEx: WindowsBlinds subclasses native control painting and that means excessive processing overhead.

Rated 40/50 by kholdstare at Sep 18, 2008

anyone knows if it works with XP SP3 yet?

Rated 40/50 by trynow at Sep 30, 2008

Can they do best for us. For home users Xp for instance users have XP home at home and Xp Pro at work. And you want to see your OS like vista or other os windows look.I have XP home and I want it look like modernized XP. Cant they do different "start" button stand in the middle of "start" long bar? I enlarged here and I use many shortcuts there. I want a "Start button" in the middle of that bar or leave the start button in the left corner old place why dont they put a "shutdown" "resart" or "standby" button on the rigth corner? We need something different...Why dont they put media player button next to start button that you start also this one?

Rated 50/50 by GhoS at Feb 11, 2009

"trynow" mentions about moving the start button, etc. You can do that with other programs like DesktopX and ObjectBar to name just a couple, but Windowblinds can't do that. WB is meant to skin the windows and taskbar, so therefore it can't really do much about the placement of some things like the start menu. For what it can do its an amazing piece of software and one I just do not do without. The skins available for it overall are of excellent quality. This is a must have program for those who like to change things up every so often.

Rated 50/50 by Gabriela at Feb 11, 2009

gabriela duarte da costa

Rated 40/50 by DudeBoyz at Feb 12, 2009

I have downloaded and tried the new version and it seems to work very well on Windows XP Pro SP2. I purchased version 5 and usually alternate between the original "StealthOS" and "Chaninja" themes and may just end up staying with that version for now, since I'm not using it on Vista or the Windows 7 Beta Build 7000. I'm not sure exactly what version 6.4 brings to the table in Windows XP installation when compared to the Version series and will need to look into this further to try and determine if it is worth upgrading since I'm sticking with XP for now. Still, this is a good program, and I enjoy many of the themes available for it. I like and support the "UXTHEME" patch, which is free, but I do like the way that WindowBlinds works and looks and think it is a worthy investment if you want to have a little fun and spruce up your PC. I am using Dual Core processors, and I'm not sure if it would perform badly on a single processor by comparison, but it does not seem to have any significant overhead on my particular gaming computer. It feels stable with the Nvidia 178.24 drivers and it's cool to be able to mix things up every now and then. I think I'd feel good about recommending the program to others. Vista and Windows 7 have Aero, but I'm just not ready to go to another platform right now, so WindowBlinds helps give me a bit of visual goodness added to my daily computing experience. Good price point, as well. Certainly worth a try.