SysChat - A fashion statement for your Vista desktop

Would you like to give your Windows Vista desktop a little more character and spruce up what it looks like? Here are two free downloadable applications that can turn your desktop into a better looking specimen, even if it doesn’t really need one. First is the Yod’m 3D which is short for Yet anOther Desktop Manager. This is a virtual desktop manager that can form 4 Vista desktops into a cube. You don’t have to install any files. You just have to unpack the zip file and run the executable file. It is lightweight and can support Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well. It applies by default your background to all the four desktops but you are allowed to change any of them. Unfortunately, it won’t work well with the Vista Ultimate Dream Scene animated backgrounds.

To switch screens of the different desktops, you can use either Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right arrow keys, or Ctrl+Shift+Up to get a view of the cube so you can rotate it. If you have other applications open in a different desktop, just make a right click on the Yod’m system tray icon to get a list of the applications that are running on each desktop. Choose the application that you need and it will go straight to it. closing down the application will make all windows merge into a single desktop. You also have to install the latest version of DirectX before you can install Yod’m.

The second application is the DeskScapes. It is in this application that the Dreamscene of Windows Vista Ultimate can work with. This application which was made by Stardock allows any video or 3D animation to be transformed into a DREAM file to be set as the system background. You can download DeskScapes for free, similar to the program DreamMaker, which is a utility that lets you customize your own DREAM file. To be able to use DeskSCapes, you need to have Dream Scene which is unfortunately only available to Windows Vista Ultimate owners.

As with all utilities, they can gather a lot of following especially when it concerns pictures that can maneuvered and manipulated on your desktop. Using a certain website which has a Dream Gallery, you can upload and download as many Dreams as you want. When you are able to download a certain number of Dreams, they will prompt you to register with them for free. There are also “premium content” made by Stardock that can be accessed for a certain fee. But there are still numerous Dreams that you can use which are really good and realistic.

Most systems can handle DeskScapes fine but can also probably take up much of your disk space because of its animation property. One disadvantage of this is that it probably won’t be able to allow you to use as much applications as you would like to. But, for the comments, praises and eye widening experiences that you will get from your friends about what you computer looks like, it will be all worth it. Don’t you think?