Published on August 11th, 2011 | by Bob

>Customize your desktop with a few handy utilities

Your PC is custom-built, but your desktop and wallpaper are probably pretty darn generic, now aren’t they?

I’d like to share with you a few 3rd party applications which greatly expand upon some of the features in Windows 7, and adds features for Windows XP users which do not exist.

Rainmeter

Rainmeter is a fully customizable framework for community created skins, themes, and widgets. I’ve been aware of Rainmeter for quite a while, most in part thanks to Lifehacker and their frequent articles on the subject. Recently they posted a comprehensive guide to creating your own custom HUD with Rainmeter. As with previous guides I’ve posted, if it ain’t broke, I won’t “fix it” or confuse you by offering other advice. Do yourself a favor and at least give the article a look.

Rainmeter is both as simple and as complicated as you want it to be. Upon install, you may find yourself pleased with the default theme, select a few of the built in widgets, and be happy with that. What I will tell you, though, is that there are multitudes of high-quality (and free) themes available for Rainmeter that can help you make it your own.

Personally, I’ve admired Windows Phone 7’s Metro UI tiles from afar, as a devout Android user. They’re simple, clear, and can provide a wealth of information. It just so happens, that one particularly talented Rainmeter developer has created a Windows Phone 7 based skin for Rainmeter, called Omnimo UI. Some of you may hate it, but here’s the point – to each their own.

Display Fusion Pro

Next, I elected to use Display Fusion Pro mainly to overcome a problem with Windows 7, which spanned my 3360×1050 images improperly across my two monitors, as my right 22″ is set as the main display. Display Fusion was able to properly span the two monitors, and included a couple nice perks, such as a secondary task bar (seen at left in the photos above). The How-To Geek offers a comprehensive article on Display Fusion’s feature suite, which should give you an idea as to whether you’d find it to be a beneficial program or not.

Switcher

Finally, I use an application called Switcher to change how I can interact with my window environment. Again, Lifehacker has a nice writeup (and demonstration video) for Switcher. Similar to Expose view on OSX, it allows me to view all of my open windows (basically in thumbnails). Your mileage may vary in usefulness, but I tend to multi-task to somewhat of an extreme, and Switcher helps my PC keep up. Pro-tip – make sure you set the shortcut for the view to something completely unrelated to gaming. Personally, I learned the hard way after setting it to CTRL-(Top right hot corner) without even thinking about it after install and getting booted out of Battlefield Bad Company 2.