Reviews of WindowFX

1. 
   freegoo

   Reviewing 3.0 (Jun 10, 2006)

   This is probably my favorite application from the Object Desktop. It actually has some useful features that you can use every day vs the eye candy of WindowBlinds and the system bloat of DesktopX. I really like the transparant Windows when dragging them, or setting up certain programs to always be transparent. Also the preview of application windows when you mouse over task bar programs is real nice (stolen from Vista? Who cares!)
   
   All in all it works well on my system with very few quirks, which is more than I can say for most of Stardocks stuff. It does have some drawbacks. Occasionally a program will pop up a dialog box that doesn't get displayed due to some conflict with WindowFX. This can be fixed by disabling WinFX features per application. System performance may lag a bit on OLDER PC's, but really I ran it fine with my older Radeon 9700 card and AMD 2500, so if your system isn't up to snuff - maybe it's time to upgrade?
   
   Reason for me knocking off 2 stars. 1 star is for the lack of support for transparant window dragging when using Windowblinds 5 transparant title bar skins. I expected this in WindowFX's beta stages, but there is no excuse for it in final version. Worse, there is no dialog to let you know this is unsupported so I ended up wasting lots of time trying to figure out why it wasn't working. They have the lame animations working for those skins, so I don't see what the hold up is for transparant dragging.
   
   The second star is demoted for compatibility issues. While far less of a problem than other Stardock programs I've installed and workarounds by disabling WinFX per application are available I'd like to see these issues dissapear.
2. 
   davec1031

   Reviewing 3.0 (Jun 9, 2006)

   While being a good program for making your windows OS desktop look pretty and do some really cool thing, it is skinable, and thier is a TON of items online to skin it with! It can make your windows look like U want it.. not how MS would think you like it.
   
   Ok, now the downside..
   
   IT IS a memory hog. It does tend to lag down a lower end system. Newer systems alltho, might have a better go at it. With thier faster processors, and more ram.
   
   As far as the system requirements:
   (in my opinion)
   1ghz CPU at a minimum
   512 mb ddr ram a must
   64 mb video card (higher if you want transparent windows)
   
   Now for the recomended system specs:
   
   2ghz or higher processor
   1 gig of ddr ram
   128 - 256 mb video card.
   
   The problem is when you have to render more items on the screen, the more pixel and gradient fills, the more you add to the original look to the OS, the more it laggs down windows. If you get it and turn it fully on, and use the most grafic setting and skin you can find. You will see what I mean, if your on a lower end system..
   
   All in all, not a bad program to make your PC your own style.
   
   The only problems I can see is a slight memory leak, and too much system resources being used to render the changes. If they could tone it down on the system resources, it might be more appealing to the everyday poweruser.
3. 
   tangentlin

   Reviewing 2.12 (Oct 2, 2003)

   Cool concept stolen from Longhorn. If you have Always-on-top window running (e.g. Windows Task Manager), you might find part of that window swaying when you drag and sway the window around. This is because the software is doing a simple screen capture! If you sway the window big time, you will find some mysterious cropping in the animation. On my P4-2Ghz machine with 512MB of RAM, it maxes out the kernel. Nice concept, but I will just keep it for 30 days and wait for Longhorn.
4. 
   Jeffsoft

   Reviewing 2.12 (Oct 2, 2003)

   oh~ my dear
5. 
   ajm149

   Reviewing 1.01 (Aug 2, 2000)

   I had this program for a while and as a vetran of this program I have to say, I LOVE IT. It is the greatest program to install on a system if you are changing from Mac to Windows. I especially love the skins you can get. The only problem I had when I un-installed it was the install.log didn't exist so I had to manually uninstall it. I still have to give it 5 stars because it is a unique and original program.

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