Customize your desktop now with these simple tools.

Many people on the internet today love to have their desktops in just that way. You know, the perfect wallpaper all the Rainmeter skins, custom start orbs, some like an icon for every program on the computer while others can do with only a few.

As far as wallpapers go, many use good ol, plain and simple, Google Image Search. Others go to DeviantArt, or the astoundingly large number of "wallpaper" sites on the web. Ive been to many, seen that I had to download a 500MB folder of wallpapers just to get the one I wanted, or even not been able to find a wallpaper that suits me. Then I StumbledUpon 4walled.org. Currently there are 400,000+ wallpapers available freely and with a little searching I am sure anyone can find a desktop background right for them. On that note, 4walled has several search options that you should look at. Keywords can be used to search for a specific type of background, i.e.: kittens, flowers, superman, guns, etc. Almost anything you could think of honestly. There is also a "SFW" tab. SFW for those who don't know stands for Safe For Work. This means that a wallpaper marked SFW can be opened at work, on a work computer, without fear of being punished. That being said, if you are surfing for wallpapers on 4walled at work you would be wise to open that tab and select the SFW option as many of the wallpapers on the site can be pornographic in nature. I can not be held responsible if you open a wallpaper deemed inappropriate for the work environment and your boss catches you.

This leads us to Rainmeter. Everybody knows about the Windows Vista sidebar. Most everybody also knows that one of the first things you did when you installed Vista, was to deactivate the sidebar. It just wasn't very useful. Thousands of people have found Rainmeter and know that it is perfect for everyone from the minimalist to the most extreme computer use who needs to know everything thats going on on their computer, at all times. I find myself somewhere in the middle. I have launchers, the weather, rss feeds, and information about my Computer including CPU/RAM load, HDD capacity, and Network speeds. Of course all of this is customizable to the users wants and needs and there are hundreds of preconfigured skins available online.

I have already talked about custom start orbs so next up is icon management. I use a little program distributed by StarDock called fences. Fences is a program that allows you to make areas on the desktop (fences) that are resizable, renamable, etc which house icons in a neat way that keeps your desktop from becoming too cluttered. Along with this application comes the ability to hide all your icons inside fences by double-clicking anywhere in the desktop area. So for those who like icons for easy access to programs and applications, but don't like the desktop clutter, you can hide or reveal all your desktop icons with 2 clicks. Very simple, very nice.

Throughout this post I have mentioned several programs. Following are links to download these programs.

4walled -Desktop Backgrounds
Rainmeter -Desktop Information
Fences -Desktop Icon Management
StartOrbz -Custom Start Menu buttons

This is a picture of my desktop with all the aforementioned items in use.