Microsoft recently launched a website related to their new Zune player which comes out in a week or so. That didn’t interest me so much, but what caught my eye was the link for the Zune XP Theme (that’s a download link). Always up for a new look, I grabbed it.
I’m really rather naive about the whole “make windows pretty” scene. A year or two ago I messed with WindowBlinds a bit, but that’s about as far as I’ve gone. In fact, on a fresh install the first thing I do is turn off the Tonka theme (or whatever that default thing is) and go with good ol’ classic. Uses fewer resources and all that.
I guess this week I’m feeling a bit zany, but I actually like this little bit of prettiness. Ok, correction: I like it after I replaced that wallpaper it comes with (holy cow, I hated that). I like the colors, I even like the orangeish start button.
As for the wallpaper, I’m using the “no-text graphite” from this forum post. I bookmarked that one a while back and have rotated through several of those colors over the past few months.
The final bit of icing is that I’ve changed my RocketDock skin to “CrystalXP.net” which I think looks pretty sharp along with everything else. I briefly mentioned RocketDock back in August and I’ve been using it ever since. As you can see from the screenshot, it works well with my aversion to cluttering up my desktop.
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November 8th, 2006 
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you like the orange because it matches your site and yes… you thought the song was about you too…
Windows blinds for me always caused stability issues. I even bought it but don’t run it because as much as I love the purdy – I can’t stand the instability.
Like this theme, and like the wallpapers you suggested. I’ll give rocketdock a peep when I get home. Not sure what I’d use it for really… what do you use it for that the quicklaunch area doesn’t already do for me?
Speaking of orange, I was using the red (looks orange to me) background from that same forum for a really long time. I should mention I first found those via this article: http://www.taimila.com/orange-look.php
Wanna guess what my xubuntu laptop looks like?
RocketDock is where I put the things I use a LOT. I have it set so that it stays in the background unless the mouse hovers at the top of the screen and then it “pops” forward. Dramatically different than quicklaunch toolbar? Nope. I should just hide my quicklaunch bar, I haven’t used it since I started using RD.
[...] Original post by Solo Technology [...]
Love the theme! I just setup all the stuff on my laptop and it looks great. BTW, RocketDock is a pretty neat toy. Just installed it and gonna have some fun getting it setup.
[...] I first mentioned RocketDock back in August as an aside. This is a really slick (and free!) way to put commonly used programs in front of you. I mentioned it again earlier this week as part of my New Desktop Look post. That post generated a couple comments about it and I thought a short follow-up was in order. [...]
[...] I already practice clean desktop practices akin to what Handy says he does. I used the program he suggested in that post for about two days and realized I didn’t like the HUD look of it. Especially on the laptop. [...]
[...] a while since I last mentioned this, but I cry every time I see someone running XP with one of the default crayola [...]