Object Desktop 2010 Review

If you want to customize your Windows 7 PC, you will need just one tool – Object Desktop.

Object Desktop is a suite of programs that allows you to change anything on your desktop: icons, cursors, themes, logon screens, boot screens and more. After ignoring this tool for a while, I came to the conclusion that I was stupid not to give it a try, because this is really the best suite for customizing your PC.

It feels like Christmas when you install and toy around with all those great applications, unleashing the real power of your desktop.

Object Desktop Suite Content

Click on a link below to learn more about each tool:

DeskScapes Animated Desktop Wallpaper
Windows Fences Organize your desktop by creating fences
IconPackager Apply new desktop icons
Skin Studio Create Custom Windows 7 Themes
Theme Manager Manage ObjectDesktop Suite
Tweak Windows 7 Optimize Windows 7
Windows Blinds Apply new themes for Windows 7
Sound Packager Apply new sound schemes

Buy it All-in-One:

Object Desktop

But that’s not everything! Object Desktop 2010 comes with loads of other great utilities: IconDeveloper (develop your own icons), LogonStudio Vista, DesktopX, Bootskin Vista, Right-click (ultimate tweaking tool for your desktop-context-menu) and Windows FX.

DeskScapes: Animated 3D Wallpapers

DeskScapes is all about animated Wallpapers for your desktop. It literally brings life to your desktop. But DeskScapes not only allows you to pick from a whole library of animated wallpapers, but you can also apply effects to your wallpapers.

Apply special filters
You can apply special filters to all of your animated wallpapers, e.g. “Burn Effect”, “Edges”, “Greyscale”, “Mirror”, “Nightvision”, “Pop Art”, “Alien World”, “Blue sky filter”, “Flip Horizontal”, “Invert”, “Motion Blur”, “Overbright”, “Porthole”, “Psychedelic”, “Rainbow”, “Reduced Colors”, “Sepia”, “Smear”, “Snow”, “Soften”, “Sunset Filter”, “Textured”, “Tile”, “Underbright”.

It’s really an awesome toy!

Icon Packager: Customize Desktop Icons

The IconPackager allows you to change about any icon on your desktop. You might be aware of the fact that you can change the desktop icons “Computer”, “Network”, “Recycle Bin” and “User” by yourself, but IconPackager allows you to change basically anything and comes with many pre-defined sets of desktop icons:

Set of Desktop Icons

You could for example modify any icon of the control panel (printers, action center, device manager, ..)  if you feel like it or the control panel icon:

(Halo3 Control Panel Icon)

Of course, IconPackager also allows you to change icons of drives, folders, Start menu, Games Explorer and any other icon.

WindowBlinds: New Themes for Windows 7

WindowBlinds 7 that comes with support for Windows 7 includes hundreads of themes for your PC.
One theme that I personally like very much is the dark Sublime theme:

Applying New Windows 7 Theme

New Start Menu + Orb

What’s really great about WindowBlinds is that you can apply any theme with just 1-click. All WindowBlinds themes are high-quality themes that will change basically anything on your desktop to give your PC a completely new feel and look. The themes usually change many elements of your desktop, for example your start orb, your taskbar, your shell style, your start menu, all of the minize/maximize/close buttons and even the scroll bars!

Windows Fences Pro

Windows Fences Pro that comes with ObjectDesktop 2010 is a revolutionary tool to organize your desktop. It allows you to put your desktop icons into “fences”, organizing them in groups:

Fences

The Pro edition of Windows 7 Fences even allows you to add rules for auto-assignments, so that any new icon that has been added to the desktop will automatically be assigned to a specific fence. You can also create your own skins and themes for fences (In the free edition of Windows Fences, you can only change the color)

Windows Fences Pro:

• Add auto-assignment rules
• Create custom themes and skin for your fences

Theme Manager

The theme manager of ObjectDesktop 2010 allows you to manage all of your cool new toys. Despite the name, it also allows you to manage your icons, your sounds, your wallpapers, your cursors, your logon screens and DeskScapes.
So, basically it’s the ultimate managing tool where you can access all the others tools of ObjectDesktop without having to start each one seperately.

Theme Manager

Tweak 7 – Optimize/Tweak Windows 7

A tweaking tool for Windows 7. It’s similar to other tweaking tool and allows you to manage processes, security, performance, usability and resources of your PC.

One feature of Tweak7 stands out from the crowd: A power-cost-carbon-calculator!

Power-Cost-Calculator

Unfortunately, the list of CPU’s is not complete, but it’s still an awesome tool that can give you a rough estimate what you will have to pay. My setup would cost around $750 per year and my carbon foot-print would be 3,746 lbs/year if my PC was running 24/7 (it’s not).

Another feature that is worth mentioning is an special event log. If a process takes longer to load on startup than it normally does, you can see a record in the event manager:

Special Event Log

Sound Packager – Rock on!

Sounds plays a vital role and can make your PC a lot more entertaining. With Stardock’s Sound Packager you can apply new sound schemes to Windows 7 with a single-click! They offer more than 12 pages of new sounds for Windows 7, how awesome is that?

Sound Packager

The community is hard at work and created sound schemes inspired by Half-Life 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2.

SkinStudio – Create Custom Windows 7 Themes

Ok, you’ve got enough of the boring themes and you finally want to create your very own themes for Windows 7? No problem!
The SkinStudio of ObjectDesktop 2010 is a great tool to create new themes that are truly unique!

You can easily change the picture of your Start button or modify the shell.

Skinstudio 7 makes it all possible:

(editing the start orb becomes an easy task with Skinstdio 7)

Conclusion

The Object Desktop 2010 suite includes the best tools from Stardock to customize, organize, tweak and optimize your desktop. I love Object Desktop because it allows me to change my old, plain and boring desktop into a fancy, animated, organized 3D desktop that looks and feels totally different than the real Windows 7 desktop.

If you would buy each tool seperately, you’d be spending a lot of money, but ObjectDesktop 2010 is available for only $49.95, which is a steal considering what you get for your money (Object Desktop includes more than 15 tools)!

A great advantage of ObjectDesktop is that you can easily create and share your very own skins, icons and cursors and come up with something entirely new. The great community that is using Object Desktop is actively creating new content that you can download for free! The many user-contributions give you virtually endless opportunities to customize your desktop.

Buy Object Desktop

You can buy it for $49.95 at Stardock’s online store:

Object Desktop