When I get my computer back from the shop I was thinking about buying Windows Blinds to spruce up XP.  Unfortunately I remember reading (and I may have dreampt this) on e-frontier's website that Poser conflicts with Window's Blinds.  When I went back to look for that information again it's gone.  Is anyone using Window's Blinds and Poser and does anyone know if there is a conflict.

I'll be interested to know as well.. if it works fine then I'll see if it works with Aston...

I have no experience with it but I do know that anything - and I mean ANYTHING - that plays around with the appearance of Windows or loads themes, screensavers, sounds, in fact, anything other than the bare minimum, will have an adverse effect on the performance of your PC and therefore on Poser or any other heavy duty app you care to run.  

Personal preference, I know, but I tend to switch off anything that's not absolutely necessary to the system on my Poser box.  Even on the other one - this one - I keep things as lean as possible.  Even the default XP front end gets scrapped in favour of Windows Classic with no backdrops or what not.

wrong on one point.. I use Aston Desktop and that speeds up Windows rather than slows it down. and thats with themes and plugins (disk access icons etc)

Quote - wrong on one point.. I use Aston Desktop and that speeds up Windows rather than slows it down. and thats with themes and plugins (disk access icons etc)

Oh well, I can't be right all the time :D

I suppose any program that creates transparent windows will have to use at least some system resources, even the video card.  There is another program called XPstyle that allows you to use gem-like windows and buttons.  XP style claims to have no drain on resources as it uses Windows own visual properties.

I use some components of Window Blinds and some of the widgets from Yahoo for the desktop but I tell you there is performance issues.  If I load up DAZ Studio and don't have it Maximum to where the edges are covering the entire desktop and then load up a character I can SEE the widgets in the work area as the irratating outlines.  When using WB's fully it messed up something in the Studio folders somehow to where the rendering engine was not able to render correctly and I was just getting error messages.  Regardless of what I did, reinstalled, blah blah blah, it wasn't untill I gave in and did a fresh install of Windows that the issue cleared up.... I've not fully installed WB's since as I don't want to go through that again!!!  Poser gave me a little grief with the widgets showing up but no rendering issues but I don't use Poser all that much so it was worth getting the Studio issue resolved. 

I have just the WB's engine installed so I can use Object Dock and the Desktop bar if I so desire.  The Yahoo widgets will on occasion give me outlines in the Studio work area so I took most of all of them off of the desktop.  You have the weigh the odds of if this is possibly going to hinder or interfere with my hobby - work - etc.... then is it worth it or not.  For me it's not worth the extra fancy this or that!!

Out of them all Aston has the least amount of problems with Poser (up to 6, haven't tried with 7). Window Blinds hates Poser, but it's easy enough to tell WB not to skin Poser. WB also does odd things to UVMapper and UVLayout. I think it might be because they both use OpenGL.

Sam, I'm like you now. Everything gets switched off. Looks ugly but performance is more important to me.

Aston works fine with 7 :)
infact, so far, I've not found anything that does not like Aston.. and I've thrown a lot at it..

as to performance.. I've personally found Aston to out perform any pure windows desktop.. it's just faster

I'll have to check out Aston.  I'm of a mind right now to leave well enough alone and wait till the day where everything finally plays well with Vista.  I've just spent a month on resolving Windows Related issues to mess around with it.

I want to post this warning also.  Beware of P3DO Explorer and P3DO Explorer Pro, after uninstalling it on both my laptop and desktop it took out all my uninstall aplets for all the other programs on the computer.  If you have it, don't dare uninstall it unless you have some sort of drive restore software your confident in.  I intend to email Yarp and tell him about it, the only way I could fix it was to reinstall Windows on both PCs--leading me to install Vista which had even more issues.  Now I just got my computer back from having XP Reinstalled.

Khai, has Aston updated yet?? It was not as feature rich as I would have liked and I know that an update was on the horizon but not  sure if it's happened or not.  I think it's been about 6 or months since I've used it. 

Thanks much!!!

it's upto 1.9.5 now.. they've stablized a few things and added some features.. I'm currently trying it out on my secondary workstation before I put it on my main station... tho that should be 2morrow by the looks of it..

for 1.9.5 we have

*+ Recyсle bin plug-in is re-written anew

• Icons can now be deleted from the desktop to the recycle bin
• New AltDesk control plug-in is added into the distributives
• "Run as..." option is added to the context menus

• Fixed bug with shell swapping
• Fixed bug with the themes application.
• Fixed bug with installation in Windows Vista
• Fixed bug with the context menu items under Windows Vista
• Fixed bug in Search plug-in
• Fixed bug in DiskEx plug-in
• Fixed bug with the icons displaying in the tray.*

I have 1.0.0.1 Guess I better head on over and take a looksee!! LOL

Oh, NOW I remember why I didn't care for Aston.... no right click menu for the desktop.  It's a very useful and fast tool for my needs.  Is this still the case Khai??

aaah you mean having all the 'create new wotsit' etc? no thats still not there.. looks like thats gonna be Aston 2..

OK, I just read the forums a bit there and yea, I think I'll hold off till Aston 2.0 is released. 

Thanks Khai!! :-)