Windowblinds is a HOG!

StyleXP is rubbish, it's just a variation on the XP theme.
WB will run fine on most systems with variations between skins, some of more complex skins certainly take a bit more grunt than the basic ones.
I've run the first versions of WB on a P1/200 with 32M of RAM .... under Win95.
No sweat.
"Benchmarks" mean nothing, the real test of any proggie is how it operates day to day.
You want a resource hog?
Try running Photoshop 7 and AutoFX DreamSuite together ..... now that's a test!

WB is far more speedy than the original XP GUI. Windows open and close about 50% faster on my pc. I would suggest you look at your pc setup if you're having problems. Forget StyleXP, it's just a hack and not a very good one.

SpeedTek,

To reply quite frankly, you are wrong, for the most part. This has been debated many times and it has been shown over and over again that WB is quite fast if not faster than Luna or its variations with StyleXP. Because WB is so much more robust in it's features it can be a hog, when specific skins are used. I hate to pick on a single artist, but I like his stuff so much I hope he won't mind! These are some heavy skins you will most likely see a performannce hit on:

https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?searchtext=mercury&sort=updatedate&order=Descending&library=1&optWinXPSupport=on

Now if you try the Win2K Extended vs. the rest of those you should see a remarkable difference in performance.

If you are really interested in seeing how fast or slow or doing performance queries here are a few links:

https://www.stardock.com/products/xpbench/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/skinbench/

Come back with some facts to support your argument...

As a side note I did try and dig up something on this Cosbi thing. If it is the same program from Van's Hardware it seems it is no longer available for questionable reasons....

Do a Google search if you need more info!

If not let us know where it is hosted and I would be happy to give it a try.

Bill...and others.... just because a program is "faster" doesn't mean it isn't a resource hog. I'm not saying WB is or isn't a resource hog, but your argument that WB is "quite fast" or "speedy" is meaningless against a debate about resources.

Yes, COSBI was originally developed by Van Smith. No, he no longer has it available for download on his site. Mainly he was being harrassed by Intel fanboys so much and receiving threats that he pulled out completely. Problem was, the COSBI benchmark suite reveals the P4 for what it is and Intel was not happy about it, but that's a tale for a different message board. I have a copy of it at home and I'll post it on my website this evening in the downloads section if anyone is interested. The address is http:/members.shaw.ca/need4speed
As far as facts to support my argument go, by uninstalling windowblinds (it didn't seem to matter which skin I was running) I watched 3 separate CPU intensive benchmark scores improve by 500%. I had observed a very noticable drop in speed while the benchmarks were running which had given me the first indication that there was a problem. And you don't even want to know what it did to super PI. GOOD benchmark suites are an indication of how well and fast your system is running overall. If a program is impacting heavily on these scores, you know that your system is being slowed down overall. Giving me links to benchmarks supplied by the same people who develop windowblinds is ridiculous, you think that they don't know what thier programs' shortcomings are? How difficult is it to not show this in a single benchmark, I know for a fact that there were some benchmarks in the COSBI suite that were unaffected by the program. This does not negate the fact that there were some that were (and not just by a little bit). If you want to close your eyes to this, that's your choice. I guess you could say you were wearing "windowblinders"

Most people who are using WB are quite happy with it, they know enough to switch from certain themes if these are hungry and as for 'benchmarks' .... who gives a Rodent's Rectum?
It is what works on ones own box and nothing to do with some Geeky rivet-counter's assumed perception of what constitutes a 'resource hog' ......
As for some paranoia about an 'Intel' conspiracy .

Speaking of Resource hogs, is anybody having problems with Netscape? It makes my computer run so slow. I know Netscape has allot of stuff on it. Then again my computer is rather slow (Celron Chip - Heward/Packard. Just wondering if that happened to any one else.


Oh and as far as windowblinds is conserned, If you have another computer, try to instal it on there and see if it hogs stuff. I have found that different computer are set up differently. The Celron I mentioned previously runs ObjectBar animations far faster than my New Win2000 Laptop did.

When I shut my windows I can hear the hedgehog sniff

joetheblow .... yep I have the same problem (HP), I stopped the "Backweb" junk from coming up on start and has helped alot....

Hey, Merry Christmas to you all

Sounds like the benchmark people are doing something that affects WindowBlinds. At least given your particular choices of benchmarks.

Strangely, WinBench shows WB to be faster than msstyles. Maybe that's why companeis want to preload WindowBlinds.

Show me a benchmark that is currently available and widely used that shows WindowBlinds to be slower. That way the rest of us can try it out.

Maybe the benchmarker is like Norton Utilities....a crash-protector that crashes Windows better than Windows can do on its own....

Jafo, Norton got rid of that "crash-protector" years ago...
It was a worthless piece of garbage.

It seems like Norton Utilities gets worse with each new release.....

I can't come up with a single reason to have anything with the name Symantic or Norton on my computer. Pure garbage.

What do you guys use then?

Benchmark, schmenchmark......... people that have been using WindowBlinds for years, are still using WindowBlinds...
That's the proof of the pudding.....

COSBI link is now posted on my site in the downloads section. http://members.shaw.ca/need4speed/ If you don't believe me, try it yourself. run it once with WB loaded and then unload and give it another go. An 80% drop in CPU math ops is not just rivet counting. That is a noticeable difference and will affect other programs overall. If you're happy using it, go ahead and keep using it, personally I saw adverse effects and will discontinue said use. Like I said before, there were aspects of the benchmarks that were unaffected by WB, but I prefer to have my system running the fastest possible if you choose to load yours down with eye candy: more power to ya. Kind of reminds me of those guys that slap a bunch of stickers and fancy wheels on their Civic, you know that clothes hanger wing makes the car much faster.
Don't take it personally guys (and gals) it's just one guys opinion, nothing more.

Rubbish. WB has no drain on the processing power of the cpu at all. I use Seti as my benchmark (and so do the major manufacturers) and turn out work units in an average of 2h50m - up with the big Unix boxes. Using WB has no effect at all, if it did I would turn it off while processing work units - speed is all with Seti.

Over use of 'Bench Marking' aka Anal Retention.

When you need to use a benchmarking software in order to tell if Windowblinds slows down your machine or not, then it's probably because it doesn't slow it down that much, huh?
In truth, Windowblinds will indeed be slower on a lot of the skins because a lot of the skins use a lot more animations, cool graphics that would be impossible to make with MS Styles. But even the default Luna theme is kinda of a hog.
I must admit that once in a while, I always return to using the Windows Classic theme, ie: no theme at all, neither WB nor MSStyle. You can't get any faster than that. I also use no wallpaper (large wallpapers eat up a lot of RAM too) and try not to go over 1024 resolution.

I have been using windowblinds for years now and can safely say that any of the version(s) 3.* have been extremely stable and have not slowed my computer down noticeably. I can't say that for many other programs I use. If there is any performance hit that is "not noticeable" then it really isn't a performance hit in my opinion.

I respect your opinion SpeedTek. If making your system as fast as possible every second of the day makes you happy go for it.

I really like WindowBlinds and almost all of the Stardock software. It's good stuff and it keeps getting better. That includes faster and more comprehensive. I considered running the Cosbi program to see what it says, but decided against it. Irregardless of whether it actually works or not, I have used WB daily for over two years now and I'm pretty sure I have a fair idea of how much resources it is consuming. The answer for me at least is very little, but how little depends on the skin or theme.

The thing that interests me is that 99% of the time I have no need to even worry about it. Even if WB was 4 times more resource intensive it wouldn't come close to the hit I take loading Outlook or Internet Explorer or Paint Shop. Why did I spend all this money on a fast CPU and RAM if it goes unused almost all the time!

The sticker comment is just untrue. A sticker is more like the color schemes the MS so nicely provided with each version of Windows! Has anyone ever used Plum (High Color)? But it does come closer to describing StyleXP, come on how many variations of Luna can one take. WB has so many additional features that enhance prodcutivity that it doesn't even compare.

very true, I guess I was more taken aback at the hard hit that it took in some benches. I would say that yes, overall I didn't notice any ill effects while using windowblinds, although I did host a couple GR games that started getting choppy through my LAN and that had never ever happened before. Granted it was an intensive co-op map with lot's of enemies, but that may very well have been what put it over the edge. I'm not running a slow system by any stretch of the imagination. I've got a top of the line KT333 MB with an AXP 2100+ and 512MB DDR. I guess I'm just too damn fussy.

I just want to put in my 2 cents and say... windowblinds not only runs faster than style xp, it also skins more of the windows, and more even than windows xp by itself... and when window blinds 4 comes out you are going to wish that you had subscribed to a object desktop subscription if you didn't and that is to everybody... I first used window blinds back in like 1997, and even back then it didn't slow down that much... since then stardock has done every thing they could to make it even faster... like the smart paint feature in wb4 which will make it faster than even windows classic... amazing how they do that...