Not ready to take the plunge into Vista land but still find yourself wanting the cool new Aero Glass UI that all versions of Vista feature, except Basic edition?  Contained below is some free software that will convert the look and feel of XP into Vista (more or less) for free.  Keep in mind that you will still need sufficient hardware to run the advanced effects, meaning at least 1GB of memory (RAM) and a dedicated graphics card with at least 128MB of memory.

I’m going to start with Vystal Vivid which is compatible with Windows 2000, XP or Vista Basic and will bring the Aero Glass style UI to any of those operating systems.

Vista has Thumbnail previews on any minimized program so you can see what’s going on without actually opening the window so you will need to get Visual Task tips to bring that functionality to Windows XP.  In order to run Visual Task tips you will need to be running the default Windows XP theme or a Vista theme to use it, classic themes are not supported by this program.

That takes care of most of the UI stuff but Vista also has the Flip 3D task switcher so to get that for XP head on over to the Shock Aero site and download their program.  Shock Aero features both a Flip 3D mode and Macintosh Style task switching mode (see site for screenshots).

Lastly and this is totally optional, Transbar is a utlity that will give you a transparent taskbar.  Although the taskbar is transparent in Vista, it is only transparent when open windows are not maximized.

These programs were discovered by David A. Karp and appear in an article in the October 16, 2007 issue of PC Magazine.  Get them while you can because I don’t think Microsoft will stand for this very long but considering it has just extended the life of XP, it might have to allow some give and take here and there.

Then again, there are those who think XP looks fine just like it is, I can name one person I know that feels that way, others aren’t sure or just simply “put up with” Vista.

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Related:

Free Vista Sunday, PCTools anti-virus free edition

One easy way to tweak Windows Vista

Free copies of DivX Pro for Windows and Mac

Free Vista Sunday: remove shortcut arrows from desktop icons

Free Vista Monday, tweak Vista with TweakVI

Entry was posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2007 at 6:02 pm under Microsoft, Tips, Vista.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.