WindowBlinds 5 Beta: Next Tuesday
It's coming..
Monday, September 26, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
The first public beta of WindowBlinds 5 is almost here. Stardock released the alpha this week to its internal QA team to put the program through its compatibility testing before sending it out. WindowBlinds 5's most notable new feature is the ability to support "glass" and full alpha blending of the title bar and border (no more jaggy borders). The critical step has been to deliver this functionality without affecting performance for reasonably modern video cards.
In addiion, WindowBlinds 5 no longer has a "wbload.exe" and instead extends the painting of the Windows GUI in a more "native" way. Or put another way, it has "zero foot print" in the same manner that the default bundled Windows themes (msstyles) use.
Users who have Object Desktop will be able to try out the beta next Tuesday (Oct 4). Users of WindowBlinds 4 will be able to upgrade to Object Desktop at a reduced price. Moreover, users who purchased WindowBlinds 4 after September 1 will receive WindowBlinds 5 for free.
WindowBlinds 5 will also be designed to run on Windows Vista natively by the time Windows Vista ships (the beta of WindowBlinds 5 should run on the beta of Windows Vista though the Windows Vista GUI is still in a state of flux obviously).
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Reply #43 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 7:19 AM
Reply #45 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 9:00 AM
Reasonably modern = ATI Radeon 9000 or better (my laptop runs it great) or a reasonably new Geforce card. If you're using some embedded video adapter (like an Intel one) or some off-name one then performance may not be as good.
I will say this: The hardware requirements to run WindowBlinds 5 in glass are a lot lower than the hardware requirements to run Microsoft's Windows Vista Aero in glass mode.
Reply #46 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 9:00 AM
Reply #47 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 9:20 AM
| Reasonably modern = ATI Radeon 9000 or better |
How poorly will it run on a Radeon 8500?
Reply #48 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 9:29 AM
| i won't be stuck with beta - i said i was gonna be renewing i have no problem spending money on something i absolutely use every single day i don't want to be missing out on all the exciting stuff going on here |
oh, yea. you said. it was abit late when I posted that comment. and I had a couple of drinks eariler on then.
heh| Reasonably modern = ATI Radeon 9000 or better (my laptop runs it great) or a reasonably new Geforce card. If you're using some embedded video adapter (like an Intel one) or some off-name one then performance may not be as good. |
So a DirectX8 compatible card with hardware acceleration..?
Reply #49 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 9:39 AM
Reply #50 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 2:13 PM
Reply #51 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 2:34 PM
| Hey, wait a minute. I've been ripped off. When I bought WindowBlinds 4, I was told all upgrades would be free. Also, I don't understand the logic behind awarding people who bought WB4 recently; they just gave you business, whereas I've been a loyal customer for almost 2 years! Give me a break! I quit. |
You bought WB 4. Does that entitle you to WB v 5 ,6,7,8,9 etc?
Thats why everyone stresses so much how buying Object Desktop is so much wiser, cause it SO MUCH MORE.
Reply #52 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 2:36 PM
Since you have been a customer for almost two years you may have only been within the version 4.x version.
Getting two years of upgrades out of your purchase seems to be fair to me.
Reply #54 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 2:41 PM
| Hey, wait a minute. I've been ripped off. When I bought WindowBlinds 4, I was told all upgrades would be free. Also, I don't understand the logic behind awarding people who bought WB4 recently; they just gave you business, whereas I've been a loyal customer for almost 2 years! Give me a break! I quit. |
Someone who purchases WindowBlinds gets all the updates for that version for free. If you bought WindowBlinds 4 two years ago, you received 2 years of free updates to it that included pretty significant functionality. Not bad for a $20 purchase.
Reply #55 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 2:55 PM
| If you bought WindowBlinds 4 two years ago, |
Has it been two years??
My, how time flies when your having fun.......
Reply #57 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 4:01 PM
| Hey, wait a minute. I've been ripped off. When I bought WindowBlinds 4, I was told all upgrades would be free. Also, I don't understand the logic behind awarding people who bought WB4 recently; they just gave you business, whereas I've been a loyal customer for almost 2 years! Give me a break! I quit. |
I've never heard of any company that gives away the next version of their software for free because customers bought the old one.
Reply #58 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 4:04 PM
"What about updates – do I have to pay for them, or are they free?
Updates are usually free. Customers who purchase standalone components like WindowBlinds are generally entitled to all releases in with the same major version number (so if you bought 3.0 you would be able to get 3.2 and 3.5 later, but not 4.0). For those who have bought a Object Desktop Network subscription, updates to all components are free throughout the period of your subscription"
Reply #59 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 4:56 PM
To give people a genenral idea of performance . . . I have integrated graphics here. I am using a beta of WB5, and it works fine, certainly better than I would have expected. It is noticeably not quite as snappy as Blackcomb, but it is still smooth. However, not all integrated graphics systems are equal (this is an ATI Xpress 200, one of the best available right now), and if your system is a not new and you do not have a separate graphics card, or if you do but the design of that card is more than three years old, you may feel a difference. There are limits to how much can be done to improve this - a faster CPU doesn't help all that much, as often it is the video or system memory that slows things down.
At this point WB5 is also noticably snappier than Windows Vista's translucent windows, on the same hardware. Of course, that has a year to go, and the drivers I am using are the first betas from ATI, so perhaps this is not a fair test . . . but then WindowBlinds development isn't going to stop in that year, either.
Reply #60 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 4:56 PM
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Reply #41 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 4:41 AM