WinCustomize has announced a contest sponsored by Alienware where you can win a new PC and cash prizes.  All you have to do is create an Alienware themed .dream (animated wallpaper) and submit it to WinCustomize.  The contest runs until December 31st and winners will be announced soon after.

• Grand Prize - Alienware®  Area-51 7500 Desktop PC ($2,994.00 USD)
• 2nd Place - $1,000 Cash
• 3rd Place - $500 Cash

For full contest rules, prizes and information, head over to contests.wincustomize.com/alienware.

TweakVista 1.01 was released this week.  TweakVista is an enhancement application that allows users to easily and safely configure and tweak Vista to their personal needs.  This is especially useful for more casual users as making changes can simply be rolled back so users don’t have to worry about disabling their computer.

Some of the features include:

• Security handling
• Memory optimization
• Resource control
• Start-up Management
• and more.

A trial version is available for download, and TweakVista is part of the Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements.

TweakVista (free trial | shareware: $19.95)

For more information visit the TweakVista home page.

If you are a user of Windows Vista Ultimate, then I’m sure you have heard about the “Ultimate Extra” which brings animated wallpapers to your desktop. DeskScapes was an enhancement released earlier in the years which extended DreamScene to support animated wallpapers that can be triggered by the time of day, and dynamically generated wallpapers, among other features.

Today, Stardock has announced DeskScapes 2.0. DeskScapes 2.0 will run on any version of Windows Vista that can run Aero (Home Premium, Business, Ultimate). DeskScapes also supports the .dream format, where you can find many download of .dreams here.

DeskScapes 2.0 will be released in February 2008 with a free version available, as well as an enhanced version for $19.95. You can find more information about DeskScapes here.

The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and with so many things going on it can be easy to lose track of the days until Christmas.  I created this widget a few years ago and I just updated it for this year with some graphics to make it easier to read on your desktop.

This widget was made with DesktopX and should run on Windows XP and Vista.  Just double-click the file and the Christmas countdown should appear.

You can download the Santa Sleigh Christmas Countdown from here.

I am one who likes to customize my desktop to my liking.  Now this goes for everything from the visual style (skin), cursors, wallpapers, etc.  Now the one thing which has been difficult and tedious to change in the past was the sounds in Windows.  In the past you would have manually change each sound, and Windows has 30+ sounds to change.

Well today the process of changing invidual Windows sounds was made much easier.  SoundPackager 1.0 was released today, and it allows users to easily change the Windows sound scheme with a single “sound package”.  It even includes an editor which allows you to create our own sound packages and package them to share with others.

SoundPackager includes several premium packages, and there are more being created daily.  SoundPackager is available as a stand-alone application, or part of the Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements.

The shareware version can be downloaded here, and you can get more information at the SoundPackager home page at www.soundpackager.com.

 

Tags: soundpackager, stardock, windows, sounds