From technology to politics to video games; these are the random thoughts of a geek with too much time on his hands
WindowBlinds WindowBlinds 5.5 is the first version of the software to officially support Windows Vista, and is, more or less, the only game in town at the moment for users who want to really tweak the look of their Windows Vista system.  This attracted the attention of prominent technology site, ExtremeTech, which ran a rather detailed review of WindowBlinds titled "A Face-lift for Vista?"  The review covers the application usability, functionality, little gotchas, as well as a few of the outstanding skins you can use to transform how your Vista PC looks and feels.  It even covers that often overlooked feature of per-application settings!

Here's a clip from the larger review:

Incompatibilities were rare, however, and, more importantly, performance tests showed that WindowBlinds didn't hinder performance in games, or in encoding, at all. Stopwatch tests showed that applications such as Internet Explorer and Windows Mail loaded just as quickly with WindowBlinds loaded as they did with it unloaded. I'm not publishing result graphs because there's nothing to see; frame rates and 3DMark scores were consistent before and after installing WindowBlinds.

Overall, ExtremeTech gave WindowBlinds 5.5 on Vista an impressive 9/10 score.  Be sure to check out the review at the link below and give them your own feedback and thoughts in the comments.


Comments
on Mar 28, 2007
Congratulation with the nice review   
on Mar 28, 2007
Congratulations.I'm in the right place!    
on Mar 28, 2007
Congratulation  
on Mar 29, 2007
"...performance tests showed that WindowBlinds didn't hinder performance in games, or in encoding, at all. Stopwatch tests showed that applications such as Internet Explorer and Windows Mail loaded just as quickly with WindowBlinds loaded as they did with it unloaded."

So what? You're proud that WindowBlinds is compatible?

Congratulations on being reviewed, and receiving such a high score. Though the quote very precisely say what it should say about all software developed for a specific OS.


Update:
Just read in the review: "Cons: Many of the available skins are amateurish; some incompatibilities with various games and apps."

Haha isn't that the truth? It's hilarious. I'd like to create my own themes, but it turns out that it's another 20$ that would enable it.
on Mar 29, 2007
There is a free version of SkinStudio you can use to make skins.

As for the incompatibilities...from what I've read the OS itself makes those incompatibilities the problem. On top of that, the OS was *just* released. Skinners will need time to learn the new system and adjust their skinning strategy to suit.
on Mar 29, 2007
I just don’t know why anyone would want to gum up their Vista with stardock apps.
But when people just play with computers instead of actually working or creating with them toy software is just the thing
  
on Mar 29, 2007

I just don’t know why anyone would want to gum up their Vista with stardock apps.
But when people just play with computers instead of actually working or creating with them toy software is just the thing

Jafo assumes we're in a wry, ironic tone....else you'd wonder why a person would bother commenting...or even being on this site at all, since it is both a Stardock site AND a skinning site?....

on Apr 19, 2007
Congratulations on the review. I'm kind of late on this. One thing, when is WindowBlinds going to be compatible with 64-bit Vista?