desktop customization

Start8 brings back the familiar start button to make your transition to Windows 8 a little bit easier. The first thing you'll notice when firing up your new Windows 8 PC is the lack of a Start button. For design reasons, Microsoft has removed the old Start menu in favor of the new Metro Start screen. Start8 aims to bring it back and help you make your move to the new Windows without compromising productivity.

The installation is light and fast, and setting up takes almost no time at all. Setup will ask whether you prefer the original Windows … Read more

Most programs you run on your computer are pretty smart when it comes to making sure you can see what's going on. If, for whatever reason, a program tries to open off of your desktop, it will usually catch itself and reset its position. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case -- sometimes you end up with an inaccessible window running off in space. Perhaps you sometimes have a second (or third) monitor hooked up to your computer that isn't there at the moment, or some bug occurred when the program was setting its position. If the program … Read more

Skins let you totally change the look of apps like media players and image editors, but you can do the same and much more to Windows with Stardock's WindowBlinds. This program makes it easy to change the look of Windows without having to change everything manually in Appearance and Personalization. With preconfigured skins you can customize, WindowBlinds lets you create and customize Windows in ways the built-in tool could never match. WindowBlinds is free to try for 30 days, with a few options disabled.

WindowBlinds' user interface resembles a Windows feature, but with its own touches. It displays available … Read more

Nexus is Latin for both a group of things bound together and the act of binding them. That makes it the perfect name for Winstep's free Nexus Dock utility. Like other desktop docks, it has time and weather widgets, a screenshot tool, and quick access to Windows features like e-mail and the Start menu. But that's just the beginning of what this versatile app can do. It brings just about anything in your PC together on the desktop for instant access -- programs, utilities, files, folders, properties information, and so on -- and displays them in an interactive, … Read more

Winstep Xtreme is a customizable Windows interface suite that combines enhanced functionality and attractive effects with a wide variety of widgets, utilities, task managers, and power tools, all designed to work together seamlessly. It bundles the NeXuS Ultimate dock system; WorkShelf, a versatile tabbed dock; NextStart, an enhanced system taskbar; Winstep Start Menu Organizer; FontBrowser; and more. Not to mention a wide variety of desktop widgets such as weather monitors, system meters, and time/date displays.

We opened Winstep Xtreme, and first to appear was NextStart, a skinnable, totally customizable taskbar replacement that basically lets you park anything you want … Read more

This sleek and smart calendar is sure to you keep you on top of your appointments. It comes with a professionally designed, unobtrusive user interface that will appeal to all users.

Rainlendar Pro offers a small, skinnable interface that comes with three parts: calendar, events, and a to-do list. Each part of the interface can be positioned to any location on your desktop. The Options menu can be accessed via your Taskbar, and offers slide-bar settings for adjusting the calendar's transparency and position regarding what you're working on at the moment. You can also create hot-key combos for … Read more

If you need many screen captures, this tool makes it easy to grab them, but you may run into a barrier with the trial period. It's 30 days (which is adequate) or three sessions (which is brief), whichever comes first. We had a few other quibbles that left us unwilling to part from the reliable, old, built-in PrintScreen.

Screenshot Master installs a small icon in your system tray. Using this tool is very easy, because you just click the icon to make it work or to access its setup menu. The menu launches a well-designed configuration dialog box that … Read more

Declutter your desktop by removing shortcut icons and organizing them with this app instead. Shortcut Bar reduces the number of clicks to access Start menu apps and its ease of use makes the transition from desktop clutter to simple app management a snap.

Shortcut Bar launches a compact-but-functional tabbed interface that you can set for Always In Front display for ease of access. Setting up tabs according to user-defined app categories is a simple matter. We liked the simplicity of adding a category tab, configuring the utility's settings, and adding a shortcut to a tab simply by dragging and … Read more

Looking at the same desktop background every day gets boring. Sure, you can wade through your digital photos, or hunt down the perfect image online, but that image will just suffer the same fate. Perhaps you've been building a collection of great backgrounds for years, but you're still manually selecting a picture every other day. This is where Auto-wallpapers comes in. Its straight-forward--if slightly cluttered--interface will allow you to easily gather up all your special pictures and automatically switch between them at just about any interval between every 72 hours to every second.

Mostly, the features are all … Read more