Stardock Curtains

Does anyone here use Stardock Curtains? What do you think of it?

I just installed the free 30-day trial. It seems nice enough, but I
don't think it's worth $9.99, and I don't expect to keep it.

I can do almost everything it does manually, at no charge.

--
Ken

Ken Blake wrote:

Does anyone here use Stardock Curtains? What do you think of it?

I just installed the free 30-day trial. It seems nice enough, but I
don't think it's worth $9.99, and I don't expect to keep it.

I can do almost everything it does manually, at no charge.

To me, it's fluff, like bedazzling a pair of jeans. Doesn't make the
jeans last any longer or add more pockets. But then lots of users like
to pretty up their Windows desktop with wallpaper or even slide shows
making it busy and making recognition harder (but their desktop is a
mess, anyway). I like solid color or white painted walls, and never lay
wallpaper over my home's walls. Before Microsoft added the dark theme,
I had already switched to a solid black wallpaper (and on my smartphone,
too), and some programs already have skins you can choose, so I picked a
dark one, before Microsoft provided a dark Windows theme. I don't like
flashlights shining into my eyes, even during the day. White on black
has more contrast with less light output than black on white (which was
used for books because it was cheaper to use bleached paper than dyed
black paper). There are times when I'm trying to read a book outside
and find the glare from the sun bouncing off the book's pages to be a
nuisance. Same for a mostly white screens glaring bright light into my
eyes. In bright daylight, I can see white on black text without having
to up the brightness level to get black on white to be visible.

The only products I ever considered from Stardock was their Fences
(freeware) to organize the desktop icons along with restoring their
positioning after a screen resolution change (often caused by games,
especially since they crash a lot leaving the wrong screen resolution
for the desktop) and Start10 ($5) to get a Windows 7-like Start menu.
Eventually the games got better (didn't crash as much, but they still do
because adding graceful error recovery adds code and hits performance,
and they often use libs they didn't build and are poorly documented).
DesktopOK (freeware) works well enough to restore the position of the
desktop icons along with restoring the original screen resolution (but
not automatically, so a couple mouse clicks are needed with its tray
icon) should a game crash and leave the wrong screen resolution and the
desktop icons end up off screen or positioned elsewhere. I decided to
learn the Windows 10 GUI instead of lingering on the old Windows 7 GUI,
especially since I help others. Not learning the new GUI means I would
be clumsy on Windows 10 to help others or even myself when using Win10
computers that weren't mine. So, I found a sufficient freeware
alternative (DesktopOK) to Stardock Fences, and didn't bother with their
Start10, and instead decided to learn the Windows 10 GUI (plus "Dummies"
[e]books are free at the public library).

On 8/7/2020 8:45 AM, VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:

Does anyone here use Stardock Curtains? What do you think of it?

I just installed the free 30-day trial. It seems nice enough, but I
don't think it's worth $9.99, and I don't expect to keep it.

I can do almost everything it does manually, at no charge.

To me, it's fluff, like bedazzling a pair of jeans. Doesn't make the
jeans last any longer or add more pockets. But then lots of users like
to pretty up their Windows desktop with wallpaper or even slide shows
making it busy and making recognition harder (but their desktop is a
mess, anyway). I like solid color or white painted walls, and never lay
wallpaper over my home's walls. Before Microsoft added the dark theme,
I had already switched to a solid black wallpaper (and on my smartphone,
too), and some programs already have skins you can choose, so I picked a
dark one, before Microsoft provided a dark Windows theme. I don't like
flashlights shining into my eyes, even during the day. White on black
has more contrast with less light output than black on white (which was
used for books because it was cheaper to use bleached paper than dyed
black paper). There are times when I'm trying to read a book outside
and find the glare from the sun bouncing off the book's pages to be a
nuisance. Same for a mostly white screens glaring bright light into my
eyes. In bright daylight, I can see white on black text without having
to up the brightness level to get black on white to be visible.

The only products I ever considered from Stardock was their Fences
(freeware) to organize the desktop icons along with restoring their
positioning after a screen resolution change (often caused by games,
especially since they crash a lot leaving the wrong screen resolution
for the desktop) and Start10 ($5) to get a Windows 7-like Start menu.


I agree with all the above. I like and use Start10.There are free
alternatives that are almost as good, but I prefer and use Start10,
especially since it's so inexpensive.



--
Ken