Imitation Mac

For those who know me, perhaps you've heard me say at least once how much I love Mac design but at the same time how I cannot live without Windows (sigh). Today, I mucked around with Windows XP themes and realized (much to my delight) that there are loads of stuff out there that can make your Windows desktop look anything but! Don't believe me? Check out the screen shot below:

Did you do a double take? If you don't look at the task bar, this looks just like a Mac...but wait! What's the Windows-looking taskbar doing there?? Haha...! This is actually my Windows XP desktop after the makeover, isn't it the coolest thing? ;)

In case you're interested, here's what I did to get this look:

1) First of all, I downloaded a patch to enable Windows XP to use unsigned themes (i.e. themes not created by Microsoft). You can follow these steps, or if you can also do it with a Multipatcher like this one.

2) Before proceeding, you need to have finished Step 1, otherwise it won't work. Then go online and google for your favorite theme. I used this, the Jaguar theme. For additonal visual styles (you can use the Jaguar theme and combine it with another visual style if you prefer another look), you can check out this awesome site. Iceman's site has some pretty good installation instructions to refer to.

3) After you've copied the theme and visual style files to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\ folder, you should be able to use them by right-clicking your desktop and then click on Properties > Themes. You can choose your theme here, and for your visual styles, click the Appearance tab and choose from the Windows and Buttons menu.

4) There are more cool stuff that you can do. For example, like the dock at the bottom of the screen? ;) You can get it here. Like the shadow beneath your windows? Try this. To make them appear everytime you boot up, though, you need to drag the executables for these two programs to your Start > Startup menu.

5) Can't get enough? I even went as far as to get Messenger:Mac skin for my MSN Messenger 7.5, hehe! You can get that here.

There are still countless things you can do, like getting the Y'z Toolbar so that your taskbar looks more convincing (I'm happy enough the way mine is now though). You can also get Mac icons, just google.

So...yeah, it's kind of sad, haha, that I have to have a fake Mac, but hey at least it looks pretty! ;)