Sneak Peek: Natural Desktop...

/me has visions of people everywhere staring at their screens.....watching grass grow....

On of my colleagues just had to have it so it's now installed on his PC.

What are the available features of this build?

It seems a little limited right now, i.e no obvious options for customising the wallpaper etc. We're in Sydney Austalia and it's displaying a scene reminiscent of Antartica! Sure it's just out of winter here, but it's not that cold! (unless you're in Melbourne maybe )

Is there any further config doc's available anywhere?

Jafo has visions of people everywhere staring at their screens.....watching grass grow....

And just imagine if there was a way to mown it

Chris - the point of it is that it takes care of those things.  The wallpaper, sounds, animations, etc. are all based on time of year, location, time of day, and weather.  As you can imagine,there' are a LOT of wallpapers in there and that weather portal is dynamically animated. Check out the rainbow in one of the screenshots.

 

the point of it is that it takes care of those things

I understand that, and I also realise it's early days yet but still... Antartica? In Sydney (Australia!) ? It'd be nice to be able to define a subset or pool of backgrounds that will get used.

Also is there a way to reposition the weather portal or is it hard coded to top right corner?

Chris...I'm sure that would 'come'.....though we may still be in peril of having Roos bounce across the scenery to remind us we're in Oz-time....

Frogboy, are all the wallpapers, sounds and animations, preset or they can individually be set by the user? and also, can new wallpapers and sound be added?

It would be nice to be able to change the background color of the weather object.  Right now it is showing a lime green with an orange dominated background and it is really distracting.

Sounds are nice.

It would be nice to have some of the same options that the fish tank had... more user choice.  That's what makes an object stay on my desktop longer, if I can *make it mine*.

It's definitely not the direction I thought computers would go when I first started playing with them, but what can you do?

in peril of having Roos bounce across the scenery

And that's a glaringly obvious omission from the avilable widgets (DesktopX or otherwise). Time to get busy I think

I can't wait for the sun to go down and the moon to come up.  I hope it rains tonight so I can see a storm.

Does it change the desktop background at that point?

Or is it only in the weather portal that these changes occur?

I think the wall will change through the day.  Prolly a day, evening, night one...

I got it Is there music in with this? It is supposed to be Stormy tommorrow, I'd love to see how my Desktop changes with the weather. The Crickets are going on right now, and I think...I hear some frogs too

Are the sounds supposed to be continuous or intermittent like it is on my Puter? It would be a nice feature to toggle between the two.




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hehe... would be fun to pull up a good ol thunderstorm if I wanted, or maybe snow... so I could remember why I moved to this expensive place.  Some people in Hawaii never did see snow... 

/me starts searching for different areas of the World to see how his Desktop changes




Ya Have to change your time zone in the Date and Time properties and weather to see the changes to full effect.
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elvee starts searching for different areas of the World to see how his Desktop changes

And.... ???

Tried it here and the results are, well... nothing !

Changing hemispheres does seem to change the wallpaper.

What happens at your end? Does the wallpaper change?

Could there be some active desktop settings that have to be in place first before it works nicely?

You guys never cease to amaze me...guess what I'll be buying next!

According to The Natural Desktop this is Punta Arenas in Chile.

I live in Maryland, USA. I changed a few things to make Natural desktop think I am in Chile.





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I 'should' be using this....I've still yet to see snow falling.....50 years on.....

According to The Natural Desktop this is Punta Arenas in Chile.

Hmmm.. I set it to the same location (already in the same hemisphere!) but the desktop stays the same. The data 'today' selection of the configuration panel shows the correct weather/time details, but nothing else changes.

Does it change immediately? Or do you have to wait for the weather feed to update?

I changed time and location. Switched to southern Hemisphere, and changed the weather to match location. The Natural Desktop set itself accordingly.

Hmmm... It don't work here! What background do you get for Sydney, Australia? Antartica with the penguins?

Yes and the animation has a rainbow with light rain. You have to remember though Our Feedback to Brad and the rest of the creators will help this product become better

You have to remember though Our Feedback to Brad and the rest of the creators will help this product become better

Oh, yes I know

My first Stardock product was ObjectDesktop for OS/2

It's just not logical, Captain . It'd be nice to get it going correctly.

Oh WOW! I'ts after 1am here. I will be dragging in the morning at work, but I had to fool with this before going to bed