[Question] - why the classic?

[slimzky]

im just curious why other people prefer the "Windows Classic" look that having a themed one? right now i removed theme support & im using minimalistic xp look but i have to say i miss visual themes... specially when i browse onto oder forums about xp customization & i see the new updates...

Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on.

--Zxian

Edited December 13, 2005 by Zxian

[tom_vilsack]

P3 600...runs faster

made this one from a litestep theme i saw

Litestep.zip

[Zxian]

Some people simply prefer the good ol' gray to anything with colour. I've got it at work, and it doesn't bug me all that much. Some people say that their computers run "much faster" without themes, but I've never noticed a huge performance hit from them. Maybe on stone aged computers, but never anything recent (i.e. 3 years or less).

It's simply a matter of personal preference.

Please use the proper tags from now on. For more info, look at the posting rules at the top of the forum (it's a sticky).

[atomizer]

cause i'm color blind?

no, that's not it

cause i like to keep things simple and disable services i don't need (theme service)?

yep. that's it

[TravisO]

I prefer the XP "eye candy" look, in fact I use the Media Edition "Royale" theme because it's got more shine than the default XP themes.

But the only legitimate reason to disable it, is because your PC is low on ram or cpu power.

Outside of that, anybody with 1+ ghz of cpu and 256ram+ that disables the XP themes is just scared of change. But what are you going to do when the XP theme is the "classic" and the '2000 Classic' look isn't even an option.

One of you will somebody just create a theme that looks like 2000 Classic and people will use that :P

[TheFlash428]

It hurts my eyes!

To be honest, I have always found the classic theme to be the most aesthetically pleasing--to each his own I suppose.

[slimzky]

the problem i have when i have patched my uxtheme.dll is that i have to change my themes always.. its like im not contented with my themes... i always have to DL new one.. its very difficult to choose from them coz most are good... thats y i decided to remove shell service...

[Synapse]

I used the classic look about 6 months into windows XP.. mainly cause i didn't like the blue one that came (didn't even see the olive and silver ones..) then used the silver one and kept changing the "caption buttons" from 25 to 20 (making the titlebar and minimize maximize and close buttons smaller.

found out about the uxtheme.dll patcher from the monthly desktop shots section of this forum.. and haven't gone back since.

I just prefer the "new" look to it.. and have even got questions from relatives to where they could get the visual styles i use.

its more of a performance thing for me.. if your comp is ancient then turn it off.. if your comp is semi-new or somewhat old then i keep it on.. unless it slows down my games.

even with the theme service off i don't notice any diffrence in any of the games i play.. 1.9 ghz 1 gig of memory...

[xorg]

i was using the XP Theme 4 a long time. it's true that if u have a 1Ghz+ /256Mb RAM+ then u won't really notice the difference between having the XP Theme or no themes @ all.

my cousin convinced my that it was 'heaps' faster not to use themes.

now i've just gotten used 2 it, & i don't use any themes @ all.

i find things much more simple and less "pretty".

[LLXX]

To me, the themed look seems to be in excess. All the styled buttons, rounded corners, shiny effects, and in general all the eye-candy just irritate and distract me. A button is something that is meant to be clicked, it seriously doesn't matter what it looks like as long as it can serve its function, namely being able to be clicked.

Also, there's the unsettling thought of the memory required by every single GUI element being a bitmap picture instead of simple rectangles/circles (raster vs. vector). Turn off the themes service and see how much RAM you just freed up.

The fancy effects seem to make the machine seem slow - especially the fade-in/fade-out and animated minimise/maximise. Turn those off and it suddenly feels a lot faster.

I prefer the standard flat slate-grey look. It's clean, elegant, effective, efficient, and simple. The themed look is so outrageously excessive.

Edited December 18, 2005 by LLXX

[xorg]

i agree that the classic theme is better.

since i found about nlite, i have the themes service disabled by default, so i'm not sure how much of a difference it actually makes.

thanks anyway.

[cyberthug]

pentium 4 3.0 upped to 3.45GHz... removed themes so that it runs faster! lol..

not that i use all that speed.. sometime's put em back on.. but u can actually feel the difference!

just looks nice and simple too. don't like cluttering!

[Andromeda43]

Real men pray....

And they don't go in for all the fluff and glitz and glitter of "Themes" and eye candy like that.

If you're going to play, then you have to pay.

What's the price for running "Themes" and all that kind of stuff? System Performance, that's what.

Because every Service you have running all the time, takes up ram, CPU time and causes more HD action.

When I set up a new computer, I run a script that disables eleven Services in Windows XP.

This gives a real boost to System Performance.

Getting windows set up to properly use the installed ram is another big PLUS!

Getting rid of Norton, McAfee and other system hogs is another huge step toward a great running system.

Setting up XP to Classic view is just a Kindness to people who are upgrading from Windows 98 or ME.

It's much less confusing for them.

Good Luck and Merry Christmas everyone,

Andromeda43

[ender341]

the reason i use it is because my old computer (800mhz Duron) ran horribly so i squeezed it for what it was woth (which wasn't much )but once i upgraded my computer i activated themes again and found them horid, and i have yet to find a decent theme online (Aero looks amasing though) so i have stuck with classic mainly because there isn't anything better, it drives me nuts at school having to use luna. my other reason is im am mainly a function over form sorta person, and luna just doesn't provide as easy of function, wereas classic is esaier on the eyes and is functional.

Edited December 19, 2005 by ender341

[Zxian]

To me, the themed look seems to be in excess. All the styled buttons, rounded corners, shiny effects, and in general all the eye-candy just irritate and distract me. A button is something that is meant to be clicked, it seriously doesn't matter what it looks like as long as it can serve its function, namely being able to be clicked.

If the button can be found more easily by having it a different color than the background (blue-on-grey vs grey-on-grey), then you're getting more functionality out of the computer.

Also, there's the unsettling thought of the memory required by every single GUI element being a bitmap picture instead of simple rectangles/circles (raster vs. vector). Turn off the themes service and see how much RAM you just freed up.

A whole... 4MB maybe? I dunno... I can't really tell the difference in Task Manager or Process Explorer.

The fancy effects seem to make the machine seem slow - especially the fade-in/fade-out and animated minimise/maximise. Turn those off and it suddenly feels a lot faster.

That's just because it takes time to animate the maximizing/minimizing... if you could (for whatever reason) set the time taken to maximize/minimize to be the same with the animation and without, you wouldn't notice a speed difference... It's the same thing with the zoom effect of minimizing apps to the dock on OSX.

Real men pray....

And they don't go in for all the fluff and glitz and glitter of "Themes" and eye candy like that.

If you're going to play, then you have to pay.

What's the price for running "Themes" and all that kind of stuff? System Performance, that's what.

Because every Service you have running all the time, takes up ram, CPU time and causes more HD action.

It may take an extra few milliseconds to load the bitmaps at startup, but after that, they're cached in memory, so there's no extra hard drive access to have a theme loaded.

Setting up XP to Classic view is just a Kindness to people who are upgrading from Windows 98 or ME.

It's much less confusing for them.

Good Luck and Merry Christmas everyone,

Andromeda43

I'm just curious as to why you think this... it may look the same, but the actual location of the button on the screen isn't going to change depending on the theme. Like I said above, the various colours may make it easier to find the button, option, or setting that you want. If that's the case, then you're trading functionality for performance - something that people might want to decide for themselves.