Windows Xp Style For Vista - Joke Or What?

[Guest Reimar]

Windows XP style for Vista - joke or what?

You may be stuck with Vista, but with a few tweaks and tricks you can make it look and feel just like its predecessor.

Your new PC came with Vista. Maybe your office deployed Vista. Or, perhaps, you got caught up in the early hype and bought Vista. Whatever the case, now you're stuck with it. Wish you could turn back the clock and restore your beloved Windows XP? Unless your name is Marty McFly, you're outta luck.

But all is not lost: You can give Vista an extreme interface makeover, tweaking it to resemble XP. Just because you're stuck with Vista doesn't mean you have to look at it all day.

Strictly speaking, you still have a few ways to get your hands on XP if these makeover tips don't satisfy your thirst for the older version of Windows. While supplies last, you can find boxes of XP on some retail shelves. And some system manufacturers offer XP downgrades with the purchase of a Vista Business or Ultimate license.

However, if you're not interested in scouring the earth for one of the last remaining boxes of Windows XP, or if you don't feel like jumping through hoops to buy a version of Vista that comes with an XP license, the following tricks will go a long way toward making you feel more at home in Vista.

Turn Off Aero Glass

Sure, Vista's much-ballyhooed Aero Glass environment makes the OS look pretty, but at what cost? To XP die-hards, the translucent windows amount to little more than system-slowing eye candy. To make your machine look and feel more like XP, and to improve its performance in the process, you'll have to break through the Glass.

Start by right-clicking any empty area of the Desktop, and then clicking Personalize in the context menu. Next, click the Window Color and Appearance option. Clear the Enable Transparency check box and click OK. Presto: solid, XP-like windows and a zippier PC.

Roll Back the Theme

Don't like Vista's fancy-schmancy colors, buttons, and fonts? You can easily switch back to a more XP-esque theme. Head to the same Window Color and Appearance option as in the last step, and click the link marked Open classic appearance properties for more color options. In the 'Color scheme' box, choose Windows Standard, and then click OK. Wait a minute while Vista undergoes its XP transformation. When it's done, you'll see a familiar-looking Start menu, taskbar, and so on.

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Note: This is just a summery of an articel which could be found HERE

[Crushdepth]

Cool...and in the Vista power options, I think you can limit the maximum performance of your processor as well. In case you miss your old single core!

[phazey]

Or, if you run Ubuntu, transform it into OSX here.

[A_Traveller]

I think a more relevant point would be the almost simultaneous viewpoints about Vista being expressed by a}Forester Research which goes as far as to describe Vista as the 'New Coke' as well as noting eighteen months after the release of Windows Vista, enterprise adoption is still in the single digits, [at 8.8%] and the majority of that seems to have come from upgrades of legacy Windows versions, not XP or b} Microsoft who have a programme called Mojave where non Vista users are exposed to a new product, which is a Vista set-up, and reports positive responses from this approach. Though now it has leaked guess they'll have to find another way.

Regards

[JSixpack]

Well, I suppose for those stuck with Vista, an XP look is a way of remembering the days when they had a more responsive and friendlier system. There's something to be said for nostalgia.

But it should be admitted that the XP interface does look quite dated. At the end of the day, Vista's is better, though even it can be improved.

Our rational and objective TV members still using XP should be aware that they can update the GUI to look better than the default Vista. Should Vista snobs, proudly wearing The Emperor's New Clothes, then mistake their XP for Vista, a tiresome and ultimately fruitless religious debate can be avoided, too--as an added benefit.

The free way of updating XP complete with icons and animations is to install a bricopack:

http://www.crystalxp.net/bricopack/

(There is also a "Vista Transformation Pack" out there, but I haven't tried that.) Follow the directions carefully. These packs can be installed on XP SP3 (in Safe mode) but SP3 must already be in place. The Vista pack comes with the Aero theme but Aero doesn't look nearly as good as the awesome Luna Element 5, which you can get from here:

http://tornado5.deviantart.com/art/Luna-El...1-Blue-47567543

http://gelosea.deviantart.com/art/Luna-Ele...-Black-57571128

(Lots of other XP themes on deviantart.com. They don't work on Vista except with Windowblinds.)

LE5 can be installed without the bricopack if you first patch a Windows XP .dll using the well-established and completely safe uxtheme.dll patcher from here:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enh...tiPatcher.shtml

Personally I don't much like transparency, but there are various utilities such as PowerMenu or Glass2K for windows transparency.

Otherwise if you want more effects and go way beyond bricopacks with no patching your system, take a look at the incredible products here:

http://www.stardock.com/

(with impressive examples here: http://www.wincustomize.com/)

which work extremely well and don't much slow down XP (Windowblinds has been shown to use less resources than the normal Theme service). Note that turning on visual effects in Vista does slow down Vista--if your hardware can even support them!

Finally you can achieve an fantastic desktop via an alternate shell such as Aston (payware) http://www.astonshell.com/ or bblean (free) http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/ with examples and thousands of themes here: http://www.boxshots.org/. You can then turn off Windows Explorer completely for a big savings on resources (use an alternate and better file manager such as http://www.freecommander.com/).

The alternate shells are very powerful (I don't have time to go into their many great features, like tear-off menus etc.) but need some technical skills, so be a geek or get your friendly local neighborhood geek to install and configure them. I always use bblean and wouldn't be without it. It's even portable!

Edited July 26, 2008 by JSixpack

[nikster]

Jsixpack thanks, the LE themes look pretty nice. I don't want to do anything drastic to my windows install but a nicer theme would be cool.

The main thing I truly dislike about Windows is the horrific command line shell. Are there alternatives that are not cygwin? I don't want a badly working pseudo-unix, I would be happy with the standard windows command line commands, but the command prompt app is just so bad. I would like something like Terminal on OS X where you have tabs, infinite scrollback, non-retarded cut/paste... and perhaps even good looks?! 999 lines is not infinite, not even close

Something like that would even convince me to move my Windows system to Vista, but as I discovered the command shell on Vista is just as bad as before. Even that new object oriented command shell they are so proud of - an optional free download from Microsoft, name escapes me - is using the exact same old horrible windows command prompt application.

PS the business adoption doesn't surprise me at all. The cost / benefit equation is very simple: Cost is very high - Vista itself, new hardware, and a potentially very high cost due to incompatibilities. The last one is a big risk factor and impossible to guess. The benefits are zero. Prettier windows do not make people work more. Vista is more difficult to use than XP for the most part, and where it's similar, it still is different so people have to train. With costs ranging from medium to very high in the worst case, and no benefits - why would businesses "adopt" vista? Certainly not for the "wow".

PPS: It's also not "more secure". Even though from a technical standpoint it is more secure, from a practical standpoint all the new malware infects Vista just as it does XP. It's not more secure where the rubber hits the road. You still need AV software. You still can't trust your employees with email attachments. You still can't have employees surfing to dodgy sites.

Vista will show its merits down the road when 8GB RAM and quad cores are common but not now... and the Eee PC movement is delaying that day when Vista will make sense even more.

Edited July 26, 2008 by nikster

[JSixpack]

The main thing I truly dislike about Windows is the horrific command line shell. Are there alternatives that are not cygwin?

I hear ya. My needs are adequately met by Autoit3 (http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/), which can be almost interactive by running inside the special Autoit3 edition of SCITE. After your script works well, you can run it via the interpreter or compile it. You can create a GUI and interface, via library, with SQLite. Autoit3 has an active forum, tools, and a large library of scripts. But maybe you know all this already.

[sjaak327]

"Vista will show its merits down the road when 8GB RAM and quad cores are common but not now... and the Eee PC movement is delaying that day when Vista will make sense even more. "

Nah, it does it's job more then adequate on a "old" Pentium D with 2GB of ram. By the way with the prices of memory, you would think that 8GB will become the standard pretty quickly, I myself bought such a PC a few months ago, and the additional cost were low. Of course 8GB of memory implies that you will need to run a 64 bit operating system, as running 32 bit with 8GB is useless.

The new command shell is called powershell by the way.

[JetsetBkk]

Windows XP style for Vista....

Any chance of a Windows 98 style? That's what my XP looks like now.