This Cosmos .dream was made to go with the Cosmos MyColors suite, but it’s a fine .dream all by itself.  It’s very subtle, so this is perfect for people who don’t like a lot of movement on the desktop.  For Vista Ultimate users with DeskScapes, or all Vista users with the full beta from Object Desktop.

Link: Download

SkinStudio 6 was released today! SkinStudio is a free application designed to easily create skins for WindowBlinds for both Windows XP and Vista.

“SkinStudio 6 is a complete rewrite of previous versions of the program. Over time, as the number of elements of Windows that could be changed increased, the older versions of SkinStudio became very complex. SkinStudio 6 is re-designed to provide skinners a step-by-step way of creating their own Windows visual styles that, upon completion, can be applied with WindowBlinds.”

Free version is available, along with the Pro version for $19.95.

Link: SkinStudio 6

The DeskScapes 2.0 preview release has arrived! No longer will .dreams be limited to Vista Ultimate only.  If you have Windows Vista you can download the DeskScapes 2.0 preview and check out some of the included animated wallpapers.

Stardock is pleased to announce that the DeskScapes 2.0 preview version is now available. DeskScapes allows users of Windows Vista to have animated wallpapers on their desktop. It runs the Stardock created .DREAM format which can contain videos as animated wallpapers or dynamically generated content. The goal of the preview version is to evaluate the variety of hardware configurations out there running Windows Vista in order to see how well different types of Dreams run. The three included Dreams were especially chosen to check out 3 very different types of capabilities.

Download: DeskScapes 2.0 Preview

A few weeks ago I wrote about the release of CursorFX, which is the replacement for CursorXP. CursorFX allows you to easily and safely change your Windows cursor to one of the thousands already available for download.

The original release was a little bumpy, so today an update was released that fixed a host of issues.

CursorFX is a free download, and there is a Plus version available with additional features. For more information visit cursorfx.com.

Stardock has released Tweakvista 1.1. TweakVista has become one of the most popular tweaking tools for Windows Vista. It lets users safely “tweak” various Vista system settings to let users get Vista running to their desired preference.

TweakVista 1.1 is merely the first step on the journey to let users start tweaking Vista themselves. Here’s what’s new:

• Snapshots. This is a basic feature that lets people mess with things in a lot safer way. It’s more useful in many respects than “Microsoft System Restore” because what it does is pinpoint changes to what’s loading on start up. The snapshot feature lets people pin-point apps that are causing problems and be easily eliminated.
• Process Exploration. Resource Page now has a services tab so that all those “svchost.exe” processes can be easily looked at to see what they’re really doing.
• Service Explorer. It’s not hard to look at services in Vista if you know what you’re doing. TweakVista, however, lets users easily manage what services are running and includes a way for each service to be part of a web forum thread where users can discuss in depth each service and why they do or don’t need it.
• Locked File Query. Ever have a file that you can’t delete or modify because it’s in use by some other program? Now you can find out which program is doing that and terminate it.

Download and more information: www.tweakvista.net

CursorFX is a free program that allows users to customize their mouse cursors in ways far beyond what Windows is capable of doing on its own.  CursorFX is the replacement for CursorXP which only ran on Windows XP systems.  CursorFX runs on both Windows Vista and XP, and updates the Windows mouse cursor engine to support fluid animations, alpha blending, effects, real-time shadowing, user-action mouse states, mouse cursor resizing on the fly, color changing, trails, and much more.

A gallery for CursorFX cursor themes is available on WinCustomize.com to download hundreds of free mouse cursors, trails, effects, and more.  CursorFX is a free program. A plus version is available for $19.95 that adds more features.

Download:  www.cursorfx.com

For almost the past year, animated wallpapers on Vista have been exclusive for Vista Ultimate owners.  Stardock DeskScapes was released soon after which brought some amazing enhancements including dynamic and triggered wallpapers, the new .dream format, and more.

The first beta of DeskScapes 2.0 has arrived for Object Desktop users.  DeskScapes 2.0 will run on any version of Vista that is Aero capable.  Object Desktop subscribers will also get access to four exclusive dynamic .dreams.

You can find out more about subscribing to Object Desktop by visiting the link here:  www.objectdesktop.com/

Stardock released WindowBlinds 6.02 yesterday.  WindowBlinds allows users to completely change the looks and feel of both Windows Vista and XP by applying new visual styles.

WindowBlinds 6.02 is a maintenance release designed fix some reported bugs, improve skin changing speed, and add support for MyColors themes.

Users can purchase an enhanced registered version which adds additional functionality for $19.95 (or get it as part of Object Desktop which adds several additional programs and costs $49.95).

Free trial download and more information available at:  www.windowblinds.net

If you have been looking for an easy way to create and change your cursors in both Windows XP and Vista, then come check out the beta preview of CursorFX by Stardock. CursorFX is a replacement for CursorXP which has been a very popular tool for changing cursors on XP.

For more information, and the free beta preview download, visit http://www.cursorfx.com/.

TweakVista 1.01 was released this week.  TweakVista is an enhancement application that allows users to easily and safely configure and tweak Vista to their personal needs.  This is especially useful for more casual users as making changes can simply be rolled back so users don’t have to worry about disabling their computer.

Some of the features include:

• Security handling
• Memory optimization
• Resource control
• Start-up Management
• and more.

A trial version is available for download, and TweakVista is part of the Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements.

TweakVista (free trial | shareware: $19.95)

For more information visit the TweakVista home page.