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Breath Life into XP by adding Usability and Style

By ryan | July 2, 2008

So you like the new Windows Vista; the looks, the easy to use start menu, the fancy icons and sounds, but don’t like the bloat or the resources it consumes? Or, maybe your older computer just can’t handle it? Why don’t you just stick with XP?

There are a many options available that can transform your standard, aging OS into a much much usable and stylish system. Some packaged simply add a new visual style to the system while others do a full overhaul, including a new welcome screen, cursors, sounds, screensaver, visual style, and more.

Stylize

a little flair and some vista touches can go a long way

What I have done recently is install CrystalXP’s Vista Inspirat Bricopack. It is a shell styler that makes changes to XP’s system files in order to change its appearance and make it look like Vista. It does a pretty good job of this without hogging to many resources. I would recommend having a minimum 1GB of RAM for the basic looks, and 2GB of RAM if you want the full effects. Options it includes are:

Full Visual Style ugrade – taskbar, window borders, icons, sounds, wallpaper, logon screen, etc.
Y’s Shadow – adding drop shadow to your windows ( i don’t use this feature. It still seems too buggy for my taste)
Rocketdock – Nice dock with bubble effect like Mac OSX’s application launcher. Fully customizable and nice effects
Uber Icon – nice zoom effect when folder and files are opened.
and more little details…

Desktop Search

add usability to your start menu Add usability directly to your start menu
While I like all of that, one thing I really loved about Vista is the desktop search built into the start menu. No worries! We can get that too! There is a little app called Vistart that transforms your start menu just like vista AND the search seems to actually work faster. Best of all, they are both FREE!