Laptop Mania

I got myself a Laptop this week, I got a Acer Aspire 5672WLMi that says Aspire 5670 on the monitor part.
Acer did what it usually did and formatted my one 100GB HDD into two 30GB FAT32 partitions and a 'QTPARTION' recovery partition.
This is apparently pointless as NTFS is better than FAT32 in everything but speed and having one 60+GB partition would've been a lot better than two smaller ones.
The installer installs a lot of crap onto the laptop that while beneficial, are not needed; Fortunately Norton 2006 was the only software that served no purpose for me.
The Laptop came with Windows XP SP2 installed, but newer ones will come with Vista.

Free Design Templates

Some web-sites offer high quality templates for the best price you would ever get - for free. You can download Flash-based templates as well as CSS-based layouts; furthermore, you can use them for your personal and commercial projects without any restrictions whatsoever. This article shows, where you'll find them.

~Ignore my comment


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WVTP6 Install Guide

Steps for a "Clean" install of Vista Transformation Pack 6.0


1. Install WindowBlinds

2. Reboot and Login

3. Reboot again, pressing F8 after screen goes black

4. Enter Safe Mode

5. Click Yes to enter safe mode

6. Run "Vista Transformation Pack 6.0.exe"

7. Untick "Set Windows X's shrine as default home page" and click Next

8. Click through the next few screens, agreeing to the licencse agreement

9. Select "Apply Vista UI transformation to system" and click Next

10. Select appropriate settings and click Next

11. Select "I want to perform system files transforming" and click Next

12. Tick all boxes, except those that you don't want to change and click Next

13. Repeat step 12

14. Tick all boxes, except "Install LClock"; "Install VisualTooltip"; "Install Blaero's Start Orb"; "Install thoosje's Vista Sidebar"; "Install Styler with Kaye's skin"; and anything else you don't want.

15. Select Transform and Yes to all prompts

16. Log into Windows after installer restarts computer

17. Open WindowsBlinds and select "Aero Style" and "Apply this skin now".

18. If after loading, UI reverts to classic interface; repeat step 17

19. Reboot

20. You should now have Vista Transformation pack 6.0 fully setup, if you want to install any of the options unselected you can now search and install them manually

Windows Vista Transformation Pack

I found an interesting app "Windows Vista Transformation Pack".
Currently at version 6 this app modifiies Windows XP resources to look like those found in Vista.

I found the best usage of this program, is in combination with Window Blinds; which allow transparency and a better looking start icon.

However, after searching I found little to no description or help with any of it's components and came to the conclusion that it was better not to install the "extras" along with it.

Incidently, when I removed this app I found none of my themes work; While System Restore fixes it back to a certain time, I had been messing around with my clock settings and the System Restore state at which I had installed WVTP had lots of changes with the system and apps, that I undid it and re-installed it.

I wrote a guide to help those new to installing it, to help them avoid unecessary restarts and installs/removals; so far I haven't hosted it anywhere so i'll post it as the next post; it'll have the same "wvtp" label as this post.