I rarely promote commercial products in this blog for a variety of reasons. However, every now and then I come across a software product that I am just too excited about to not mention it.
I recently gave GNU/Linux a spin and tested out Ubuntu and Debian. I was quite impressed with both; they’ve come a long way in terms of user-friendliness. I was looking for stability and ease of use more than eye candy, and for the most part, in spite of a considerable learning curve, Ubuntu certainly delivered.
Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough.
While Windows 7 suffers from the same performance degradation that all Windows releases post-95 have suffered from, its ease of use is hard to beat. While I respected Ubuntu’s decision to “keep it real” by not including native support for things like Lightscribe or Adobe Flash, after a while it just became a huge pain in the rear to try and find little fixes to help me do the most mundane things that Windows does out of the box.
I went back to Windows rather reluctantly, but that is what I felt I had to do. What I missed most about Ubuntu, aside from its snappy performance and amazing security, was the interface. I really liked Gnome – it was refreshingly customizable. Windows felt, in comparison, quite clunky and restricted.
Having used third party software before to enhance the look of Windows XP – back when I still bothered with XP – I knew that products like WindowsBlinds were relatively heavy on the resources and often were slow to have patches available for when Windows updated itself and changed things around. I particularly remember how SP1 rendered my StyleXP installation entirely unusable. Not fun.
Lucky for me, I came across a software product called WinStep, which provides various desktop and taskbar enhancements. It does not use up much resources at all, and it doesn’t latch itself onto the system itself, so it’s easy to turn on and off on the fly. Not once have I had to restart my system due to an issue with it, which is more than I can say for some skinning products.
WinStep doesn’t really skin the desktop as much as it enhances it. What’s so great about this product for me is that it allows me to add certain functionality to my desktop which I’ve always wanted to have:
I don’t like desktop icons. I prefer to start applications from the quick launch bar, or to a lesser extent, from the start menu. Unfortunately, this means that my quick launch area gets pretty crowded, leaving very little space for open applications on the taskbar. The new Windows 7 taskbar does a great job of grouping active tasks, but on the flip side the way it handles quick launch icons is…retarded. Even in “small” mode the icons take up a lot of space.
WinStep allows me to create a dock in the bottom of the screen and move the Windows taskbar to the top (or vice versa if that’s your flavour). Not only can I select a very cool effect for when I mouse-over the icons (and a bounce when I click on one to launch something – similar to OS X’s dock), set the size of the icons, adjust the labels or even remove them, etc…but I can keep my actual Windows taskbar entirely free of quick launch icons! This frees up a tremendous amount of space for active tasks. My launch icons are still in the bottom of the screen where I am used to seeing them, but the systray and the clock are in the top of the screen like they are in Gnome!
Furthermore, combining the dock’s transparency feature with an awesome theme creates a terrific looking dock. WinStep has refreshed my Windows desktop experience, and made Windows a lot more pleasurable to use. I don’t usually make product recommendations, but this one is just too significant for me to pass up on.
Mika Salakka is a Finn living in the United States. He is a nursing assistant, a creative writer, a devoted husband, and an observer of the human condition. His interests range from music and literature to psychology, sociology, medicine, technology, and spirituality.