Show & Tell – My Desktop

I was feeling a bit bored the last couple of days, my semester exams not withstanding, so I decided that my desktop needed a makeover. My previous desktop sojourn was fairly simple which was probably why I was feeling that itch again. After a lot of reading, browsing, downloading, editing and tinkering, here's what I came up with:

Looks amazing right? right?? oh well, it works for me. It didn't take that long to get it looking like this either. The row of icons on the left was achieved using Rocketdock. The system stats on the right is courtesy Rainmeter (a very small but useful app). Now just to show how easy it was for me to get this screen and for anyone who wants this for themselves (once you get the apps, play around with the options, there are plenty), I'll give it the old 1-2-3. So here goes.

For Rocketdock:

Download the two apps I mentioned earlier and install them, usually they would go into your Program Files folder
Now get the Reflections Icons pack from here and extract them to a location you remember.
Fire up Rocketdock, get rid of all the default icons given there (just drag-n-drop out of the dock) except for the settings icon (you will be using it a lot) and click settings.
For styles, select blank and check the box where it says 'minimize windows to dock', this enables the previews you can see in the screen above.
Add shortcuts to your favorite folders and change the settings for each, using the icons from the pack extracted (accessed by a right click).

For Rainmeter:

Rainmeter skin Geosans Light minimal has the same style of icons, so get it, extract it to \Program Files\Rainmeter\Skins folder
Right click the rainmeter icon in the system tray and click config and select the skin you want.
Each one of the counters is a separate config, so you can enable and disable them selectively if you'd like and even move them around (they appear at the top left corner by default)

Et Voila! You're done.

It may seem overwhelming at first, but once you explore all the options, its pretty easy to configure the apps the way you want them. If you like more eye candy, especially with rocketdock, you can go to their website and browse through their add-ons collection. Many of them are quite awesome! I would personally recommend the 'Stacks' docklet by Matonga and the 'KKmenu' docklet which emulate the 'Stacks' option from Leopard like this:

Bouquets welcome! (Brickbats a lil' less welcome)...

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