If you’re one of those people who spends most of their free time tinkering with your mobile phone ringtone or reorganizing your bedroom, then StyleXP could become your new favorite toy. The application promises to expand the customizability of Windows XP and gives you the power to install new themes that break the mould of the existing XP shell.

The program works by patching your operating system to accept unassigned styles, scores of which are available for download from the web. Once you’ve applied a style you can tweak virtually any aspect of the appearance, including the font size, screensaver, colours, menu transparency, or even the boot screen. What’s more, if you’re particularly artistically minded you can create your own elements in a graphics editor and apply them to the skin.

Although the developer has made strides towards making the interface as simple as possible, there are so many customization options that it can be a little daunting for new users to the program.

There’s no doubt that the temptation to make Windows look like OSX or apply a ‘Windows Pirate Edition’ boot screen is pretty appealing, but pimping your OS in this way does come with a risk. It’s worth bearing in mind that because of the way the application writes files to your System Folder you could end up doing damage to your machine, especially if you install a patch or a new service pack.

Having said this, we’ve experienced no problems yet (touch wood) and also found that it runs pretty smoothly without sucking too much RAM. You can choose to keep Style XP locked in the System Tray, or release it so that it uses no resources, which is a refreshing thing to see from a developer. With so many themes and customization options available, Style XP is well worth a look if you fancy a change of scenery on your desktop, but keep in mind the risks involved in using a patching program such as this.

Download Style XP 3.19 Men in Softonic

Theme Manager s a program for Microsoft Windows that allows companies to provide branded desktops. Theme Manager OEM can change virtually every part of the Windows environment -- title bars, Start bar, push buttons, icons, wallpaper, media players, and much more.

Stardock can provide both the software technology and the art resources to turn the Windows desktop into whatever you would like it to be. Your users can optionally turn it on and off with just a few clicks. It's a great way to promote your product or service, website, film, game, or just to have a branded desktop in your company.

Download Theme Manager 2.3 in Softonic

For the first time in Windows XP, Microsoft introduced the Theme Manager component that enables users to customize the visual appearance of all applications that run in Windows. You can customize literally all visual attributes, including colors, icons, fonts, headings, borders, buttons style and so on.

StarSkin allows you to change the view and appearence of your Windows XP box with the use of publicly-available themes.

Key features of the program include:

• Quickly change the visual appearance of the Windows
• Select custom styles, icons, fonts, colors and themes for Windows desktop
• Change boot screen
• Change log-on screen
• Enable themes support for older applications

Download StarSkin 2.5.2.5 in Softonic

Providing one of the easiest ways to change Windows into a fully skinnable OS, TopThemes manager allows you to apply popular desktop themes that can completely change the appearance of Windows, especially Windows XP Service Pack-2. It changes the wallpaper, appearance, icons, cursor, sound, logo, logon UI and screensaver much more with just one click.

Top features:

• Replaces, deletes & makes the desktop themes for Microsoft Plus
• Support for free desktop themes from TopThemes.com
• Supports automatic installation & uninstallation of desktop themes
• Create and edit a desktop themes package with just a few mouse clicks

Download TopThemes Manager 2.0.0 in Softonic

If you’re one of those people who spends most of their free time tinkering with your mobile phone ringtone or reorganizing your bedroom, then StyleXP could become your new favorite toy. The application promises to expand the customizability of Windows XP and gives you the power to install new themes that break the mould of the existing XP shell.

The program works by patching your operating system to accept unassigned styles, scores of which are available for download from the web. Once you’ve applied a style you can tweak virtually any aspect of the appearance, including the font size, screensaver, colours, menu transparency, or even the boot screen. What’s more, if you’re particularly artistically minded you can create your own elements in a graphics editor and apply them to the skin.

Although the developer has made strides towards making the interface as simple as possible, there are so many customization options that it can be a little daunting for new users.

There’s no doubt that the temptation to make Windows look like OSX or apply a ‘Windows Pirate Edition’ boot screen is pretty appealing, but pimping your OS in this way does come with a risk. It’s worth bearing in mind that because of the way the application writes files to your System Folder you could end up doing damage to your machine, especially if you install a patch or a new service pack.

Having said this, we’ve experienced no problems yet (touch wood) and also found that it runs pretty smoothly without sucking too much RAM. You can choose to keep Style XP locked in the System Tray, or release it so that it uses no resources, which is a refreshing thing to see from a developer. With so many themes and customization options available, Style XP is well worth a look if you fancy a change of scenery on your desktop, but keep in mind the risks involved in using a patching program such as this.

Download Style XP 3.19 Ladies in Softonic

A Desktop Theme is a collection of wallpaper, mouse pointers, sound effects, colors, fonts, screensavers and startup/shutdown screens, all bundled together into a convenient package. It lets you totally alter the appearance of your desktop in one go. There are thousands of themes available for free on the Internet. As well as being a theme manager, Desktop Themes is also a full theme creator and editor, letting you create themes to give to your friends, family or the world in just a few easy steps!

Download Desktop Themes 1.89 in Softonic

You can sometimes get tired of the default Windows theme and if you don’t have enough money to dish out for Vista, how about using a theme customizer? TopThemes XP allows you to create your own themes and give your PC a fresh new look.

The first time you launch TopThemes XP, you can choose between loading a theme and creating a new one. You can download a theme from dowthemes.com and automatically set it if you don’t want to be bothered with creating one. Otherwise, move on to the central part of the program, to create and customize your own theme. The tabs at the bottom of the interface make it easy to quickly personalize elements like style, wallpaper or sound events.

The theme creation process is fairly straightforward. After adding a title to your theme, you are able to set a style. You can customize your style by modifying colours and font size but can only choose between two styles, Luna and Royale Type. With 12 different possibilities, changing the start button seems more promising. However we were left unconvinced when we realized most of the Start buttons were of poor quality and looked like they were pasted onto the toolbar. Once you’ve decided on a style for your theme, you can choose a style from your window shells from the 11 different options available. Just like for the theme you can change the colour of your window shells.

The next step is to adjust your wallpaper, but TopThemes XP merely lets you browse for an image and set it as centred, tiled or stretch: nothing you can’t do in the Windows display control panel. Similarly, setting desktop icons and sound events is limited to browsing in your PC for new icons or sound files.

We only really enjoyed three features in TopThemes XP. The boot logo can be customized with an image of your choice and you can set the positioning of the progress bar on the window. TopThemes XP also lets you personalize your logon UI, by adding a background image, positioning the icon and adding colored frames at the top and bottom. Once you’re through just click “create theme” to finish off. The schedule manager is also very easy to use and can randomly set how your wallpapers or themes appear and when they change.

Once you’ve created a theme the supposedly exciting part is seeing what it looks like on your PC. Unfortunately we never managed to make this work with either of the different themes we created. We even downloaded some themes from dowthemes.com, but TopThemes XP refused to load these too.

TopThemes XP seems like a very exciting and simple to use application but its general feel leaves much to be desired. The fact that you can’t load themes is already fairly alarming, add to that the multiple spelling mistakes in the program ("adavanced", sound “evenes” instead of events) and you start to wonder how finished the application really is. The theme creation tools are easy to use, but most of them are already available in the Windows Control Panel. TopThemes seems like a promising application, and we hope that future releases will correct these shortcomings.

Download TopThemes XP 2.8 in Softonic

With this simple application you can easily patch your Windows Vista system to use custom styles, similar to the UxTheme patch for Windows XP.

After that you can modify your Aero style to use the glass transparency effect on maximized windows.

Download VistaGlazz 1.0 in Softonic

I don't know about you, but I quickly grow tired of a Windows appearance. This is why I was happy to find MyColors, a simple theme manager with which you can completely customize the way Windows looks.

MyColors is another product from the Stardock company, which seems to have specialized in customizing software. MyColors features a sleek interface divided into several tabs, from which you can manage your themes, adjust the program's settings and select the wallpaper, among other options.

MyColors includes a few themes and allows you to easily download a few more from the Stardock website. Be aware though that only a few of them are free, while the most attractive ones are only available after paying 20 bucks.

The best thing about MyColors is how easy it is to install new themes. Simply click on the "Apply" button and wait for it to complete the process. Also, going back to Windows standard appearance is as easy as re-installing the Windows standard theme from MyColors.

If you'd like to give Windows a completely new look, you should give MyColors a go, although the theme selection is not precisely very wide.

Download MyColors in Softonic