Customize your Windows XP to look like OSX Leopard
In my previous article I showed how to customize your Windows XP to look like Vista, if your looking for a different feel, perhaps Mac's new OS X Leopard is for you (without having to buy a Mac). Here is how you can do it for free.The first and easiest part of customization is getting icons and wallpaper themes. I have found a free standalone package here that works with Windows Blinds. Download package here.
If you dont have windows blinds, you can still take the wallpaper and images included in the package and separately download a leopard icon package from here.
So now that you have the wallpaper and the icons, next would be to get the leopard dock as your taskbar replacement.
(click to enlarge)My choice for this is the RK Launcher. A free application that will allow you to have a visually pleasing Leopard bar at bottom of the screen. It has support for themes, PNG's and ICO's and is smooth.
Requirements are: OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista with at least 16 bits (65536 colors) of screen color depth or higher.
However , this 13meg installation tough small, does require some CPU processing. I do find that if you have a dual core PC your fine. CPU utilization increased to 50% on just one of the 2 Cores when I did a mouse over test on top of the shortcut icons on the doc. The mouse over is just like in OS X, you see the icons enlarge as you move over, and I was moving my mouse back and forth over them causing 1 CPU so increase to just over 50%. Once you stop moving the mouse over, CPU droped down to 5% or less which is fine. So if you only have 1 CPU there could be a performance hit here for you.
Task Manager resources used before and after the mouse over test on the dock (click the images to enlarge)
Download this Leopard Like Dock directly from here
Last but not least is Flyakite OSX 3.5 . The latest conversion pack to make your Windows based operating system look and feel like Apple Mac OSX. This software is freeware and is not affiliated or endorsed by Apple or its affiliates. It has no spyware or adware. The installer automates the transformation of your Windows XP+ system files , it does the registry tweaks and installs the 3rd party software required (sounds, skins, cursors etc).
Recommended System requirements are a 32bit Windows OS (XP+), a 1Ghz CPU and 512Megs of Ram. Download this package directly here
Please remember that installing these freeware packages are at your own risk, though I have had no issues with it, I cannot guarantee you wont. Good thing is you can use the uninstaller to undo the changes to its good that way.
Other Tips Users have watched
- Customize Windows XP to look like Vista
- Customize your Windows XP to look like OSX Leopard
- Free Windows Cursor Themes - with CursorFX 2.0
- Enabling Remote Desktop from XP to Vista
- Top 10 Free Downloads to improve and tweak your Windows Vista
- Windows Vista PowerToys - Tweaks from Microsoft TechNet
- Get Ubuntu (Linux) to look like OS X Leopard!
Written by PCWizKid on March 15th, 2008 with no comments.
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