Yup, Stardock released Windows Blinds 6.0 some time ago. Needless to say, when I was asked to do a review of the 6.0 release, I was intrigued. After all, I spent many hours playing "Galactic Civilizations II" and had beta tested "Sins of a Solar Empire". So, I already had a warm spot in my heart for Stardock. Thus when presented with this opportunity to play with a product that can "improve" upon Vista's really uninspiring look it seemed like the right thing to do.

Well... to start things out for those of you not familiar with Windows Blinds, it's a skinning utility for Windows XP and Vista. Not to be confused with StyleXP which just patches UXTheme.dll to allow the use of non-Microsoft approved .msstyles files (a hack). Windows Blinds actually extends the Windows visual style engine, thus allowing for more visual features and a richer user experience.

Overall, I've always like Windows Blinds. With the 6.0 release, I still like Windows Blinds. For the most part it's a pretty solid utility which has only been problematic on several occasions since installing it about a month ago (even then the problems were drawing issues most likely not a WB problem but Vista related). Additionally, there are a fair number of tweaking features (a list that is too long to blog about on a Sunday night). But, if you ever wanted to animate your start menu, then this is the tool for you. :>)
After all its only $19.95, which isn't a bad price for making my desktop pretty:

BTW - I would like to send my congrats to the Phoenix Mars Mission team on successfully landing on Mars.