XP To Mac

Where to begin, A while ago a messed around with Windowsblinds and to change the way my PC looked. I was happy with the results but one day XP died and I had to do a full reinstall and I never bothered to install it all again.

That was till last night when I came across this article on Engadet, on how to make XP look like a MAC. I thought I would give it ago, Here's what I learned so you don't make the same mistakes.

1st Off lets start with the required software,

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StyleXP or WindowBlinds (skins the Graphical User Interface of your operating system)

ObjectBar (the white Finder bar on the top of Mac's; has File, Edit, View, etc. on it.)

ObjectDock, YzDock (discontinued), or MobyDock (The dock on the bottom of a Mac that contains icons and shortcuts to programs)

Trillian (chat program that can be skinned to resemble iChat)

YzToolbar (skins the toolbar icons in your Windows windows)

YzShadow (puts a lovely drop shadow under your windows á la Mac OS X)

Rainlendar (popular skinable desktop calendar)

Rainmeter (skinnable desktop system statistics)

Samurize (like Konfabulator for the Mac; can display just about anything, such as clocks, uptime, and the weather)

iTunes for Windows (self-explanatory)

Icons (The pretty little pictures on your desktop that point you somewhere. There are millions out there, but try the link provided for over a 1,000 lifted from Mac OS X 10.3 aka Panther)

Ok So it says you can use Style Xp or WindowBlinds, You can not use window blinds, I tired and ended up with this,




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Now as you can see it look's like a Mac but an old MAC, The Engadget how to recommends the use of the Panther theme by crni’s, Infact it recommends quite a few things by him but does not give one link to his web site.

The Panther theme however does not work with WindowBlinds, So don't bother. This is the point where you uninstall WindowBlinds and install StyleXp, which even comes with the panther theme as the default setting (If you chose the male install) and will install it for you as soon as you install the program.

(Wish I had known that before I spent 4 hours trying to get it to work with WindowBlinds. Not that there is anything wrong with WindowBlinds I had used it quit happily the 1st time I changed my GUI, It just will not work for what we want on this occasion.)



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You can see the difference StyleXP made, Altought I should point out that I already had ObjectDock installed, which I will talk about next.

ObjectDock is easy to install and work, just some simple words of warning to stop you from making some mistakes I did.

1st of To get ObjectDock to give me a transparent back ground I used a Mac theme I found on their site (I wont link to it as it did me more harm than good), bear in mind at this point in my install I had already moved all my Icons off my Desktop and on to the ObjectDock.

When I installed the theme it changed the look for me but also deleted all the icons I had put on it, here is the tricky part. The only (When I say only I mean lazy easy way) to configure objectdock is to click the config option, which the theme removed. You add Icons to ObjectDock by dragging them on and off, this ability was also removed.

You can make the dock background 100% transparent using the options, I suggest you do this rather than try and use a theme unless you know it works. Also once you have all you icons on the dock, I suggest you lock it, other wise every time you click on an icon you will end up dragging it of the doc which will delete it. As the Dock works on one click not two but you will find you self making the background opaque every time you want to make some changes this can be a pain..

Also the ObjectDock does not start up automatically, you can turn this on however in the options.

All in all ObjectDock is not bad I would still recommend it, Just beware of what you are doing, as always when installing other people's home made add on's or theme's.

YzToolbar (skins the toolbar icons in your Windows windows)

YzShadow (puts a lovely drop shadow under your windows á la Mac OS X)

Ok both of these programs are easy to install, just download them unzip, them. Then create a directory in your C: drive for them something like C:\Program Files\Yz\YzToolBar and C:\Program Files\Yz\YzShadow. Nether of the two of these auto start, as far as I can tell So you will have to make a shortcut for them and then place it in the Startup folder.

Again the Engadget Article provides no link for Y'ZToolBar, So here is site where you can get both the Y'ZToolbar and Y'ZShadow.

AS far as these three go....

• Rainlendar (popular skinable desktop calendar)
• Rainmeter (skinnable desktop system statistics)
• Samurize (like Konfabulator for the Mac; can display just about anything, such as clocks, uptime, and the weather)

I did not bother with them so cannot comment on them. As the point for me was to clean up my Desktop not fill it with crap.

• iTunes for Windows (self-explanatory)
• Icons (The pretty little pictures on your desktop that point you somewhere. There are millions out there, but try the link provided for over a 1,000 lifted from Mac OS X 10.3 aka Panther)

As far as Itunes goes, I don't like it all my MP3's are sorted in folders with Winamp play lists just the way I like it. If there was some way these could be imported into Itunes I would consider using it. I only have it installed because I was forced to, to get the latest QuickTime plugin.

There is however an option for Winamp users who want to go the whole hog, this Winamp plug in makes Winamp look like an Ipod.



Now as far as the icons go they are perfect "Apple design", my only complaints about these are who ever named them gave them the most long winded names they could.

System.Library.Components.Ink.component.Contents.SharedSupport.InkServer.app.Contents.Resources.cmd_locked

The whole thing,



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Annotated Flickr

In the end I think it worked out well. One thing I have noticed is that one you lock the windows task bar inplace the Blue line disappears from under it.