Considering Buying WB5 -

but don't know if it will run on my laptop

from WinCustomize Forums
I am considering purchasing windowblinds 5 but don't want to if it will not work decently on my laptop which is around 4 years old. I am pretty sure it has a smaller sized integrated video card which is the cause for my concern. My laptop is a Sony PCG-V505AX and i believe only has 16mb of installed Video Memory. Since this is a laptop with an integrated video card and there is no way of adding more video memory, i am concerned about purchasing windowblinds 5 since it may not work. Does anyone have any experience with running WB5 on older model computers and/or ones with older less memory video cards? If so how does it work/run? Any comments would be appreciated.

Thanks
windowblinds
2,075 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Take the "shareware" version of WindowBlinds 5 for a test. You will have a 60 day trial to detemine if it works suitably on your laptop. WB5 Link
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I thought about that but i thought i read somewhere that you don't get the full features with the trial and cannot truly use the per pixel alpha? If the trial is actually fully functional then you're correct that would be a good option.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The trial has some included per-pixel skins. If your graphics chip supports per-pixel you will be able to use those included blinds.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Great, i did not know that. Thanks and it sounds like this is what i should do. I appreciate your comments.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well i tried it and no luck. WB5 appears to run fine but i am not getting the full glassy effect. I have the dreamland skin applied and here is what really confuses me and pisses me off. The entire taskbar is transparent like it should be, the start menu is transparent like it shoud be, the right-click menus are transparent like they should be, but the windows are not. What the hell? Doesn't seem fair. In my system info it mentioned that my machine does not support per pixel borders and that this is because :

Your computer graphics hardware does not support acceleration of per pixel alpha. WindowBlinds requires this for per pixel alphablended borders as without it performance would be poor. Please see if you can obtain new drivers for your graphics hardware. Recent ATI & NVIDIA boards should support this feature. Onboard graphics tend not to.

You have one monitor in total.

(Sony Notebook LCD) 1 is attached to MOBILITY RADEON

I have updated my drivers, what else can i do?

IT DOESN'T SEEM FAIR THAT HALF OF THE SKIN APPEARS TRANSPARENT, BUT THE WINDOW'S DO NOT. IF PART DOES THEN WHY THE HELL DOESN'T EVERYTHING? MAKES NO SENSE.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top

None of the parts which are appearing semi transparent move which is why using the cpu for them is not too much of a loss.

Windows do move and resize and using the cpu for that is not really viable.  Having said that, I am now wondering if for WB 5.1 if we could enable it but force moves & resizes to use outline mode.  That might drop the cpu usage considerably.

Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
That sounds great and one hell of an idea. I wish like hell that is the way it is now. Personally i don't give a rat's ass about the jagged corners, i just want the transparncy to work as designed. As i said before it's very dissapointing to have only 75% of such a beautiful skin like Dreamland appear properly. I would not care one bit if when i moved or resized a window if the contents of the window were not visible and there was only an outline, so as long as when i was done moving the window everything reappeared properly. It would be super nice to have the option to do this now. Like i said the only portion of the skin that's not working is the tranparency/glassy effect of the windows. It would be nice to be able to get this to work as i don't really want to have to buy a new computer which right now is my only option other than dealing with this issue, since i cannot upgrade my laptops graphic chip.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well, it's good you tried out the trial. Now you know you will need a new computer before you can take full advantage of WB5. No money wasted and now you can start saving.
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I could be completely wrong here. The part of the skins you are seeing as transparent aren't repainted quite as often as a window border. So, these can be rendered using Windows' built in graphical functions. I'm guessing to have decent performance on regular window borders WindowBlinds uses hardware functions found in your video card. This is also why Vista will require a decent 3D video card to run its aero interface.

I create WB5 skins so this is not intended as a flame againswt WB5 just an unbiased opinion, see how much effort I put in  latest work if you don't believe me http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/39521812. Anyway, if you're not getting per pixel borders than I would just stick with plain visual styles and patch your uxtheme. I still resort to plain Visual Styles and would rather not have WindowBlinds loaded when I do. There are MANY excellent normal visual styles that will work with your configurtation. Once you get decent hardware then WB5 is wothy of consideration.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
rrawlins ....rather than possibly being 'completely wrong here' you "could" have deferred to Neil Banfield's comment in #6 ....since he's the coder for Windowblinds and is thus unlikely to be 'wrong' at all ....