I agree with Ted. I'd like to buy this, but I won't until I know that it works through a proxy server.

One issue I have with it is that Zone Alarm detectes it as a new program every time it runs. I now have about 15 copies of Natural Desktop in my program control list. Another thing that should problably be changed is on the options screen. If you click and drag any of the links all of the text moves around.

It's lovely, reminds me of Sundial from Aladdin Systems on steroids.
I wish I could resize the animation object though (or toggle with F10), and remove the sig from the walpaper.
Happily my TabletPC has no issues at all when the screen rotates from landscape to portrait (always a concern).

I just noticed that Natural Desktop just swapped in a sunrise wallpaper even though the sun won't rise for about another hour and a half, which prompts the question: Are these events synchronized with actual sunrise/sunset times according to my zip code?

Love the idea [ & I love Digital Blasphemy ] but having some problems.....
as stated before, you gotta have a separate volume control & when I change the animation speed everything shuts down [ I can't toggle the weather thingy or change the speed again ]. Also, whenever my screensaver kicks in, the program freezes & I have to close & re-open it [ which then causes my firewall to ask me if I want this program to have access to the internet ]. Finally [ for now ] the program has considerably slowed my computer .... WinXP , SP2 - my HD is 120 mg & I have 1 1/2 gig of memory [ I upgraded big time cause of all my WC stuff ]....

Love the program! However, some glitches:

1. Norton AV sees it as a malicious script when shutting down WindowsXP pro.

2. When rebooting XP Pro, ZoneAlarm pro requires me to reauthorize web access each time.

3. When rebooting, settings are not saved but default back to initial settings...zip somewhere in Michigan, and a Centigrade temperature scale, even though zip had been set to local setting and temperature to Fahrenheit.

Thanks....

Larry J.

ps. How about a newsgroup to keep developer/user/support interaction going??? LJ

Me again, found out why my system was so slow ... my CPU usage was at 100% DesktopX was using at least 82% .. so I unloaded DesktopX & now I'm running ok but I can't use DX and all the pretty icons etc

Also, as stated before we need to be able to move the control box I had to re-arrange my whole desktop [ which of course, is no longer a problem since I had to unload DX ]

Back one more time.......Does anyone know how to un-install this baby???

I can only find the application, no program, no program file, no way to un-insstall....

I just sent an e-mail off to support ...

I agree, I think Natural Dekstop's popularity and potential to grow into adding more and more features and tweaks warrant its own forum.

I'll look into that tomorrow.

Where do I put the registration code given in the confirmation email when I bought this Natural Desktop?

It's a brilliant piece of work!

Steve

Sorry for those (NightTrain and a few others) with issues.

I spend all weekend working on adding customization options and was away Monday, Tuesday but am back on the case today.

I really like the program! It is so cool, especially for those of us stuck at a computer all day, like me. I have engineers coming over and saying "I hear birds and crickets." Thank you so much!

Thanks for touching base Martin, appreciate it greatly! I never doubted you were on top of it.

All: There doesn't appear to be a need for the registration code.

pattigale: The 26 Meg executable is simply a DX Script (or the like) and doesn't have to be unintalled. If you context-click anywhere on the control object, you just deselect the Autorun option. Context-click again to "Close".

Corky_O: Might be a display driver problem. I am able to click any of the three triangular buttons in the corners and get the animation prompt each time.

Frogboy, _Martin_, et. al.: This is a great little proggie for a first release. It is truly high quality! I agree with most of the suggestions here, including the msg board idea, but here are my particular favs:

1. Settings should be saved between reboots and start/stop of script.
2. Wallpapers should more closely reflect the regional weather and type of surroundings (i.e., there are no tropical rainforrests or bogs in Ohio...at least NTIKO ).
3. Volume Control, Volume Control, Volume Control: Seems as thought the script is using a hook into WMP. Anyway to "hook" into the volume control?

Addl. praise and confirmations:

1. Love the animations in the control object everything seems fairly accurate there.
2.The wallpapers look fine on my 17" widescreen laptop. I don't agree with the comments above where folks say they don't look good.
3. Once I placed the exe in one location, started it, shut it down and then restarted it Norton FW didn't prompt again for allowing Net access. Same with NAV, once I "authorized" the script, all was well.
4. I don't mind the db.com in the lower right...an artist who makes a buck off of one's own work should protect it.

Okay, I've said enough...for now. muwahahaha, *ack!* *cough*, ahem...

I lied, I'm not done, and for some reason I cannot edit my previous post...

4. The sounds are fantastic and very realistic. Well done! However, it seems that there are birds and cicadas in Antarctica! I know this is a work in progress, I'm just curious as to whether or not further sound environments are planned.

Thanks again SD for the terrific products!

Tryzub, the sounds are actualy designed to be summery because that was the original inspiration for it - that in the Winter, those of us losers who missed out on the summer because we worked throough it can at least hear the sounds of summer.

So the sounds themselves, are all spring/summer sounds though they do change through the course of the day.

News group is up.

Makes sense then, Frogboy. I guess I'm just not able to pick out the slight variations in the day's sounds.

Where's the newsgroup? I checked the message board, but there's only the one thread there about the Natural Desktop.

Tryzub,

You may be correct in the diplay limitation of my machine.

I purchased a computer with onboard graphics and no AGP slot (bad move). The drivers are correct (direct from Intel) - Extreme Graphics 2 for XP pro.

Will be building my own machine within a year, so all these programs from stardock will at least be supplied with plenty of graphic resources including the new PCI express bus.

Thanks for the input.