vista claus said:
want to make XP look like Vista, yet skip all the BUGS, compatibility
issues and slowness of the most horrd OS made by Microsoft = Vista?
Take a look at this tutorial... it is interesting
http://lee-soft.com/?p=20
Yeah, I installed that transformation pack before I had the real thing.
While I like it and will not remove it, it did slow down my otherwise snappy
running XP, and that was with a 3.0ghz HT Intel, 1gig ram and 128 vid ram.
Further, the more features you enable the more it slows things down. Later,
after installing another 1gig of ram and a 256mb vid card, the speed picked
back up. (Sound familiar?) It is pretty cool, and nice to get away form the
Fisher Price look, so was/is worth the slow down. However, with that
transformation pack installed and configured with all the goodies, Vista,
(Dual boot), out performs XP on the same machine.
On this test machine with much less power, I installed Vista Inspirat,
http://www.crystalxp.net/galerie/en.id.130.htm and while it does a pretty
good job of mimicking Vista, the Vista Transformation Pack does it better as
far as look and feel goes. However, Inspirat doesn't take as much to run as
the other. I installed it on the faster computer, and it ran better than
Vista Transformation Pack. Further, with Inspirat, you don't have to worry
about KB925902 as you did with Transformation Pack 7.0 which is what the
tutorial link above is related to. Now if you go to the actual site,
http://www.windowsxlive.net/?page_id=15 , I see that he has a ver 8.0.1 out
with new features including True Transparency! (No need for Window Blinds!)
So I'll be testing that ver soon! ..AND the KB925902 problem With Vista
Transformation Pack has FINALLY been fixed. YAY! I don't recommend
installing 7.0 as the link above talks about unless you are willing to dink
around with the KB925902 problem.
In the end, as with anything else, when you start fiddling around with
your original OS out-of-the-box configuration, yer gonna slow things down
and maybe have problems. What you have to decide, is if all that fiddling
around is worth the slight to not so slight slow down, AND bugs! Yes bugs, I
have had some bugs with BOTH transformation packs, on both machines I have
tested, and still use them on. So it's up to you what you are willing to put
up with. I choose to put up with it, as ANYTHING is better than the Fisher
Price look, and staring at the same old looking OS for YEARS! Oh, and it's
not as simple as installing a transformation pack and forgetting about it
either. A program install, or windows update can mess things up, and then
you have to do a "reset" of your transformation pack. Still, I choose to
keep them installed and live with it.
Enjoy!
