Zune XP Theme
I can’t describe how excited I was when I learned of a new theme/skin for Windows XP. In the several years that I’ve been running XP (I haven’t upgraded to Vista yet), Microsoft has released virtually no additional XP themes. Sure there are other programs like StyleXP and WindowBlinds but I’ve not had very good experiences with these programs. Both rely on hacks to change the appearance of the UI. In addition, I’ve found that most of the user-created themes are not very good, have bugs in them, or worse, make it too difficult to do everyday tasks. What I really wanted was an “official”, digitally signed, and professionally created theme with Microsoft’s stamp of approval.
Well, the wait is over. As part of its promotion of the Zune music player and jukebox software, Microsoft released a corresponding “Zune Desktop Theme”. I danced like a little school girl when I also found out that the primary color is black! Yes, like the Dark Knight himself, your version of XP can now be the coolest on the block. I installed it without hesitation.
And now for the bad news… I’m no longer using it. For years I’ve envisioned how cool it would be to have shiny black accents on my windows, but when I finally was able to see it all together I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. I found that my screen lacked the vivid color that I had become accustom to and now seemed a dingy black-and-white. I felt like I was reading the newspaper. Worse yet, the high contrast between the black of the window frames and the white background of Visual Studio hurt my eyes. So I reverted back to the standard blue XP theme. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.
Tell me what you think. If you want to try out the Zune Desktop Theme it’s available from: