Let's talk about Microsoft Vista. No? Ok.

I'm gonna talk about it anyway. :D I own a legit version of the 32-bit Microsoft Vista Home Premium on my Acer laptop, but I hardly ever use it. On the exact same day I brought the laptop home, I installed Windows XP as my primary OS right away. Why? Well, even with 2 GB of RAM, the Vista installation starts/runs/switches off much slower. Plus I've read that quite a lot of programs do not run properly on it, and I wanted to save myself that problem.

One thing I liked about Microsoft Vista is how pretty the GUI is. :D Even though I ranted about how glossy stuff suck in real life, as design elements, gloss rocks. I love the look of the Vista, but that's not enough to get me to keep using it.

So I am using the Vista theme on my Windows XP installation, instead. :D It's not that simple to do, but not all the difficult either. If you want, you can try to do it too. I followed Tech-Recipe's tutorial on how to make XP look like Vista and I googled for the much-acclaimed "VistaXP by ~Kol!" theme (and found it, by the way). Works great! I didn't follow everything, though. I didn't bother with the wallpaper bit, the Alt-Tab PowerToy, the sidebar (I tried, it sucks) or the "Vista-ish applications". I just wanted the Aero glass theme look and I got it. :D

Keep in mind that these styles do not introduce transparencies to your Windows XP theme like the real Vista.

I got myself some of Vista's icons as well and I like the final look. Here are some screenshots of my Windows XP with the Vista style applied. Pictured are with the Segoe UI font that Vista uses, but I actually don't like the font, so I stayed with Tahoma. :D

Erm, I know I said in my previous entry that I'm not a car enthusiast, so why the hell do I have a picture of a Maserati GranTurismo as my wallpaper, right? Well, this is actually the first car design that I just can't get enough of! From some angles, the car look like crap though, but I like this side view. :D And erm... 3 guesses where I got this wallpaper from. :P

Yes, I have drives C, D, E, F, G and H. Hahaha.

So yea, a Vista look on your Windows XP installation, if you like. I know some people who prefer the Mac look, but since I've never got myself into that Mac thing (yes yes, I know Vista OS GUI is ripped off from OSX) I won't know better (or worse, depending on your stand on the OS issue).

I had the original blue Luna theme on my XP first... Then I got tired of it, so I changed it to the Silver theme. Once I got tired of that, I downloaded the Royale Media Center theme... And I had just recently got tired of that, thus switching to this new VistaXP look. There are some things that I would love to edit with this theme, but after a whack at the theme using StyleBuilder and promptly messing it up... I think I will just leave it as it is, until a point in time where I'm feeling more adventurous to try editing it again. :P

What OS and OS GUI are you using? :D

Oh and the new tutorial should be up within the next couple of days. Look out for it yah? :D