Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

I am not a skins guy; I am ok with the bland silver bars and such, but this is pretty cool.  Showing XP still has some life left, Hyperdesk was just announced from the Skins Factory and aims to skin your Windows XP machine.  The graphics look pretty sweet and they’ve even liscensed some themes from Disney.  Prices range from free to $19.95.

The free one, a Sony Ericsson version is a 70MB download.  The company says one click can turn the skin on an off and uses Microsoft’s own skin engine to get things moving.

I downloaded the free one and found it to be OK.  There doesn’t seem to be any lag time, though the skin colors the task bars above applications as well and seems a bit much to me, but it proves the concept that these folks know what they are doing.  This product is from the design team responsible for Alienwares skins.  From the release:

By utilizing Microsoft’s own skinning engine, Hyperdesk presents the user with a “native” way to theme Windows XP. Because the magic of Hyperdesk occurs entirely in memory, the user’s system files are never touched or replaced. And just as it takes a single click to make the magic happen, so will a single click revert the user’s desktop back to the Windows XP default environment.

A Vista version is said to be coming soon.

Try it out at: [Hyperdesk]