A review of DesktopX, a Stardock application that can be used as a stand-alone product or as a companion to WindowBlinds

Are you tired of the standard Windows desktop? Bored with the vanilla taskbar, the plain-jane (no offense to Jane) text-based clock on the lower right-hand corner? Nonplused over the drab, static icons that litter your screen? You don’t have to be.

Windows was designed with ease-of-use in mind (okay, so maybe they didn’t quite hit the mark with that one). It was also designed to make trouble-shooting easy via telephone tech support. If everyone is looking at the same screen, a lot of miscommunication is avoided right off the bat when you ask for help. Unfortunately, that consistency, while it certainly serves its purpose, also leaves the Windows interface dull and uninteresting.

Many of us spend many hours a day in front of a computer screen. At work, at home, at school, we find ourselves glued to our monitors increasingly, whether for work or for play. As human beings, we want to feel comfortable with our environment. We want to own it, make it ours. Any other environ we spend as much time in, we generally customize to our likes and tastes: our bedrooms, our living rooms, our desks (and for those of us fortunate enough to have our own, our offices). We might even spiff up our car interiors. So why not our computers?

Windows provides us some recourse here. We can set custom wallpaper. We can change the look of a few of the desktop icons. We can replace the dull white cursor with a colorful, or even animated, one. We can shift the colors of our windows, making our desktop environment warmer or cooler, maybe even easier to read. And versions of Windows from 98 on have supported “themes”, which make doing all of this a little easier.

But of all this only goes so far. And none of it actually provides any real improvement to functionality…

As the community of people bored and tired of their drab Windows desktops grew, applications like LightStep and Talisman were released. These applications made the whole desktop interface customizable, but at the price of complexity. These programs often required a thorough knowledge of programming or scripting. And even more daunting was the fact that some of them even replaced the shell, or general control center of Windows (called "Explorer"), with their own custom shell; these custom shells were more efficient, but often lacked many of the features and controls that we average users rely on from our computers. While LightStep and its brethren offer complete customization and have a pretty heavy cult following, their complexity and lack of user-friendliness have kept them out of the mainstream.

Enter DesktopX, a little utility brought to you by the same people who changed the look of Windows with WindowBlinds. DesktopX provides you with the ultimate in customization of your Windows desktop. Not only does it allow you to replace icons, it gives you the freedom to add practically anything to your desktop. Animations, pop-up help screens, custom menus, unique and visually appealing elements that provide links, information, or just simple decoration—all of these are possible in DesktopX with just a few simple clicks of the mouse. All without having to understand a complex programming language, and without having to give up the features and familiarity of the Windows shell.

Want your desktop to look like a computer screen from an episode of Star Trek, and be useful in the process? No problem. Want to replace that tired old Windows Startbar with something a little more colorful and useful? Can do. Want to express yourself with your desktop in ways that you can barely imagine beforehand? Go right ahead. DesktopX gives you all of this and more.

Now to the meat of the matter. Exactly what is DesktopX? It’s an application that loads, either at startup or whenever you choose, and sits in the background. It loads “objects” onto your desktop. These objects can be as simple as text or normal Windows icons, or complex animations that respond in intricate ways to mouse-overs, clicks, and the like. They can be menus that pop up or fade in or slide over when another object is clicked. They can tell you what time it is, or what day it is, or how much space you have on your hard drive(s). And they can all be customized to your heart’s content, without a shred of programming knowledge on your part. In fact, if you can browse the internet and use your email program, you have all the technical expertise you’ll need to make these objects do your bidding.

You can even set up a colorful and engaging DesktopX theme for your children, making it easy and fun to access the things on your PC you want them to have access to (and hiding those things from them that perhaps you don’t want them to play with).

DesktopX is beta software, meaning it is still being tested and improved upon. But it’s functional and relatively stable now. It’s free from the Stardock website (www.stardock.com) during its beta-test stage. It installs like any Windows program, and can be easily uninstalled if it happens to conflict with something on your system. Since it doesn't change or overwrite any part of the actual Operating System, installing and uninstalling it is simple and safe.

The downside? Well, it is beta, which means it’s still not quite “ready for prime-time”. There are a few features that still don’t work exactly as they’re supposed to. And depending on the complexity of the objects that are loaded with DesktopX, it can be a tremendous burden on your system’s resources. These things are sure to be fixed as the development process proceeds forward, and are only minor annoyances at present.

Is DesktopX for everybody? Probably not. If you’re satisfied with your Windows desktop and its limitations in design and functionality, then this program won’t benefit you much. But check out the website if you get a chance; you may find, after seeing what DesktopX is capable of, that you’re not as satisfied with vanilla Windows as you think. If, in fact, you are tired of the same old Windows, give DesktopX a try; you’ll be amazed at what it can do.



Recommended: Yes