Customization, imo, will only grow and expand as PC's become more prevelant in society, I'm of the opinion that the reason it isn't more popular than it is, is lack of exposure and advertising. I do see it becoming more mainstream, not less. Animated wallpapers are a good step to opening up customization to more inquiring minds. It's one thing about Vista I am happy about. People will discover them on Vista, then search for more, up pops WC, ergo, more people are exposed to WB and other areas of customization.   

I was a old user of the shareware DreamRender program but found that I had too many problems with the application conflicting with other programs and that the quality of the "Dreams" varied even more than the quality of WindowBlinds. Even worse, every time I reformatted my harddisk (which I normally do a few times each year) I discovered that I would have to re-register my copy of DreamRender. The idea of an active desktop sounds good, but I'm wondering if it's anything more than additional eye candy for the average user.

I can't wait for the beta of Deskscapes 2 to show up in Stardock Central. Any word on when the beta will be available for Object Desktop users?

I disagree.  XP is going to die in the long run.  Vista and the next OS (Windows7) is the future.  At some point XP, within the next few years, is going to become "feature-poor" and most people will be "forced" to upgrade hardware and software.

In the near term. DesktopX and IconX are your friends.  There are a few DX themes that are "dream-like" (check out the first two here)

Is it really that insane? Wallpaper is a mainstream feature because everyone has access to it. While I hardly believe that everyone will be running XP forever, there just is no reason for the average Joe to upgrade to Vista. Many people may just choose to skip it like ME, it's too early to say one way or the other. Another possiblity is that you may see more of a shift to some linux flavor or mac, it seems a pretty good number of casual users are buying macs these days. If I had to recommend a computer to a non-savy friend or relative it just might be a mac.

At this stage, as things currently are it's hard to imagine Dreams becoming anywhere near as mainstream as static wallpaper anytime in the next 5 years or so. The casual market just doesn't move that fast. I imagine it will take half that time just for Vista to get some level of market saturation. After those 5 years in order for it to succeed a lot of things need to happen. Cross-platform or at least cross OS version support is pretty important. At least at that time Microsoft should have a new OS out that would hopefully mean you would have at least 2 OSs on the market that support Dreams. Still users need to be able to easily create their own content, now you just take a picture with your digital camera and BAM! new wallpaper. Maybe not wallpaper good enough for hard core enthusiast customizers but good enough for most people. This will be a very important factor as it also affects the amount of content available to everyone, which in turn impacts the popularity as well. I think most content creators start off with very simple means like taking a photo and then start to dabble. With a vertical learning curve you will see much lower acceptance, as the learning curve becomes very flat then maybe you will start seeing broader acceptance, more content and then in turn a shift to the mainstream. The question is how soon do you see these things happening?

On the issue of variation of CPU usage between Dreams.  This is a big deal for a lot of people and I understand why.  You don't necessarily want your CPU to be running at 50% utilization or greater, especially if you need those resources quickly for some other task.  If you're a poweruser, you want to be able to call on the majority of your system resources at a moment's notice.

But the resource utilization of a Dream is a function of the content, not the software powering it.  Video dreams vary in utilization based on various factors:

• Resolution
• Framerate
• Compression
• Format
• System hardware

People are still feeling their way around the idea of video as a desktop backdrop.  Right not you're seeing a lot of people experimenting with the visual design elements such as composition, looping, color and image selection etc.  After nearly a full year we're starting to see a lot more consistency in available content.  It's getting better.  In the next 6-12 months, my guess is that content creators will, having nailed down their visual style, move on to making their Dreams not only look good, but run better than ever before.  It's the natural evolution of any new visual tech.  Get it looking cool, then get it running well.

And as Vista slowly becomes the dominant Windows OS (my guess is 2 years and we'll see it around the 80% mark, we're already at roughly 20% here on WinCustomize) we'll see Dreams become a major component in the customization landscape, and there's a lot going on with things like MyColors that will help open this area up to more and more users.  Animated Wallpapers have a very interesting ride ahead of them in the next few years.  It's a completely new market so to speak.  The folks building content for these now will become the masters of the medium in a few years.  Just look at how fondly people look back on the early WindowBlinds skins and the early skinners.  Dreams are a new frontier for artists to make their mark on.

The point being: People aren't going to stick with XP forever. Therefore, your earlier argument fails: "Until Dreams is a cross platform deal, then it's "no deal" in the long run."

 

 

From what I gather, Vista finally has the engine behind it that can play animated wallpaper without an significant hit to performance.

DX can be used to do some animated wallpapers and there are third party apps that can do it in XP but most slowed my PC down too much to be usable.

Brad, any thoughts about my comments about content driving mainstream acceptance?

i would love to have animated wallpapers in the future on my pc, and I truly think that they will be one aspect of future skinning......i even believe that one day a wb will have touch screen features.......(too scary??) and I agree with frogboy, of course xp will die and fade.......its just like windows 95, 98 ect..... the future means we go forward, not looking back, and with technology the way it is.....well, its only going to go forward...  

Twas 12 days before Christmas and still waiting Stardock



That is most for sure. Forward we will go.