yes I am definitely going to uninstall all other theme managers I have a few on it

No offense, but that system is anything but Vista capable as HP puts it. That's funny. Anyhow, I'm willing to bet the video is shared memeory and with only 512 to work with, meh. BTW, I'd be very surprised if your "new" 160GB drive was faster then 7200 rpm. I'd be very surprised if someone saw fit to install a 10k drive in that. If they did, congrats, it's the fastest component in the system. In the end, the shared memory video may or may not be able to do Per Pixel and the Celeron + 512MB memory is really going to hurt you. You'll be able to skin with WindowBlinds, but don't expect a miricle and for heaven's sake, don't ever install Vista on that. Aero will not run on it so you'll be wasting time. Those systems are maybe Vista "Basic" Capable and even then will run it very slowly. I know it's not what you want to hear about a personal item like that, but it's important that you know where you truly stand with the technology. I would buy WB6 and see where you are with performance after that before you load up the whole suite of Object Desktop.

One of the least expensive things you could do to help improve performance is add memory. How many memory slots do you have? What is the max that you can go up to? Really doesn't matter, increase you memory up to the max. It will help alot.   

Zackraa: I can't speak from direct experience with that system, but I can say that I'm using a system w/ 1.7GHz Celeron, 512MB System ram and an Intel 82845G onboard graphics adapter (which Vista doesn't recognize as anything beyond standard vga adapter). WindowBlinds runs fine on the system. Vista, well, that's a different story   

To really get the full benefit from WindowBlinds, I would highly suggest installing a dedicated video card. These systems with onboard graphics are really unable to fully live up to standards in gaming or skinning. From what I can tell, it appears that your system is not capable of installing a dedicated video card. One method to definitely improve performance would be to install additional RAM. If you're interested in exploring this option, here's a useful site I have used in the past to find the maximum capability of system RAM for a particular computer: http://pny.com/configurator

Rather than speculate, it would probably be best to just check out the trial version. There should be a link to that available here: http://windowblinds.net

Keep in mind that once you do purchase any of Stardock's software, you are free to continue using that forever. The only restriction is placed on how long you are able to continue upgrading. If you purchase applications standalone, it's while they're in that major version that you may continue to upgrade (i.e. WindowBlinds 5 versus WindowBlinds 6). When purchasing a subscription like Object Desktop, you are able to continuously upgrade for a period of one year from your purchase date (unless of course you extend the subscription at any point).

Edit: Thanks for the support everyone, some of what is posted here may be redundant (as I took too long to compose this forum post), but that's ok   

-Mike
[Stardock Support]

Nah, he's just good at pretending...   

Rock on!

What you have said is both destructive and horrible. You should say you are sorry for bringing such evil into our house. He doth not blame it on the rain!?!? Nay! He doth RAWK!

Girl . .you know it's true . . oo . . . oo . . .  oo . . Milksama loves you.