Why Object Desktop is such a great deal!
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 by John Hamp | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
Then I went and checked out the new Winzip. It's $29.95. It has a lot of features I won't use but then there's ObjectZIP also part of Object Desktop.
A lot of people will rave about Style XP. But they forget that it costs $19.95 and only for 1 year. After 1 year, it may stop working. If a new versoin of XP comes out; see: a service pack; and your year is up no more style xp. WindowBlinds has a lot more features and if you really like .msstyles types of visual styles the new SkinStudio will convert them to WindowBlinds skins.
Then I found Clipmate. A program that will save items you put into your clipboard. Sounds like a less functional version of Keyboard LaunchPad. Clipmate costs $24.95.
Object Desktop seems like a pretty good deal to me!
Reply #2 Wednesday, July 30, 2003 3:10 PM
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Reply #3 Wednesday, July 30, 2003 8:19 PM
Reply #4 Thursday, July 31, 2003 3:50 AM
StyleXP does cost money, but you can patch uxtheme.dll and then change visual styles from the display properties dialog. if you don´t want to patch it yourself, then you can get a patcher from here: http://www.lokai.net/ (btw: that´s not the site of some hacker dude but of Brandon Sneed aka nivenh aka lokai, former WindowBlinds developer)
Reply #5 Thursday, July 31, 2003 9:05 AM
moshi: Sure but you also run the risk of having a problematic system when you apply a service pack (and certainly having to redo it everytime you update a service pack).
Bht that's not the point anyway, because someone makes something that's free that does something doesn't change the fact that StyleXP costs $20.
Reply #6 Thursday, July 31, 2003 9:23 AM
Reply #7 Thursday, July 31, 2003 12:52 PM
moshi: Actually Brandon Sneed is not and never has been a WindowBlinds developer.
He did develop the app in OD before WindowBlinds (then called WindowFX), but to the best of my knowledge he has never written a line of code for WindowBlinds.
When WindowBlinds replaced WindowFX in ObjectDesktop he was assigned the task of making the skin editor.
Reply #8 Thursday, July 31, 2003 4:43 PM
Forgboy: sure. and TGTSoft sucks in general. 20 bucks for changing two lines with a hex editor is hilarious.
a program that changes wallpapers for $25 is just as bad.
additionally most of Winzip´s free equivalents even support more formats than Winzip.
so actually all those programs are not what i would call a "good deal".
Object Desktop for $50 (not sure if that´s the current price) surely is ok. personally i can´t get away from my *.RC files though. (just let one of your fishes swim with layercut and lsdynamic). really neat. does it have a function in DesktopX btw? color changing on system alerts could be nice.
Reply #9 Thursday, July 31, 2003 6:32 PM
Heck, DesktopX on its own could be sold for $299. Just lose the consumer focus and focus on corporate desktops for securing customized desktops but if you look closely at DX, it supports the full blown NT secure desktop API.
Not to mention the ability to assemble distributed COM objects is probably worth a great deal as well.
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Reply #1 Wednesday, July 30, 2003 8:23 AM