Stardock has started to deliver the DeskScapes 2.0 Preview yesterday to anyone that wants to give it a whirl. Previously DeskScapes was a way for Vista Ultimate users to extend the functionality of Dreamscene, but now it works on any version of Vista without needing Dreamscene. It’s a great way to have an animated desktop background on your Vista machine, oh, and did I say that it’s free?
DeskScapes 2.0 Preview is shipping with three different Dreams (that’s what the backgrounds are called) to test different aspects of the application. As we’ve shown you in video demonstrations there are a ton of amazing Dreams available to really make your desktop shine. The dynamic ones are especially nice, but you’ll have to fork out a few bucks to get some of my favorites.
Using the application is virtually dummy-proof. Once setup you can run DeskScapes, and you’ll see a window similar to this one:
If you just want to checkout the Dreams that it comes with click the Choose an Animated Desktop to get started right away. Once you’ve tinkered with those I recommend going to WinCustomize and downloading some of the others that have been created. Almost all of the Dreams are free, and I’m sure you’ll have a good time trying them out.
DeskScapes 2.0 is expected to be released at the end of March with Object Desktop 2008.
Download the DeskScapes 2.0 Preview
Get Additional Dreams for DeskScapes
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Tags: Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Applications, Customize, Deskscapes, Downloads, Dreamscene, Windows Vista
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I played with it last night right after they announced it. I have a Quad6600 overclocked to 3.0 and it was still using up a noticeable amount of CPU on my core monitor while using the waving grass dream. Up to 15% on all cores, while normally the computer runs at 1% at idle without dreams. I really want to use Dreams, but FPS in games is a little more important. Also, I am running dual monitors, but that isn’t supposed to affect performance much.
Bamboo:
The .dreams such as the grass are video based, so they will use more CPU. Dynamic .dreams such as the cube should have very low usage.
As far as games goes, when you play a game or full screen an app, DeskScapes stops so it does not affect performance.
Spencer
Thanks for explaining Spencer!
REALLY?????
Then I will keep it around till the full version.
Was disappointed when I found out I couldn’t try out any of the other dreams from the gallery other than the 3 it comes with.