I bought a renewal for my OD-suite subscription, but its not reflected in my account, is that something I should worry about or will it sort itself on its own before my old subscription runs out mid-November? :)

I bought a renewal for my OD-suite subscription, but its not reflected in my account, is that something I should worry about or will it sort itself on its own before my old subscription runs out mid-November? :)

I'm hoping you've already implemented the colorization and texture support a'la WB7 in the next generation OD+? :) Here's something that would be super to add to it: Automatic OD+ themeswitch along with WB. OD+ could (optionally obviously) automatically switch to a theme with the same name, and use the same texturing/colorization, as the applied blind. Ideally I would like to be able to choose a background style, and it will autopick the appropriate one determined by kind of dock (if a corresponding background is installed in OD+ obviously). So if I pick Meridian in WB, OD+ would automatically switch theme to "Meridian Zoomer" for all zoomer docks (alternatively "Meridian Tiled" is a tiled background is active), and apply texture and colorization accordingly. It would rock my world. :)

I'm hoping you've already implemented the colorization and texture support a'la WB7 in the next generation OD+? :) Here's something that would be super to add to it: Automatic OD+ themeswitch along with WB. OD+ could (optionally obviously) automatically switch to a theme with the same name, and use the same texturing/colorization, as the applied blind. Ideally I would like to be able to choose a background style, and it will autopick the appropriate one determined by kind of dock (if a corresponding background is installed in OD+ obviously). So if I pick Meridian in WB, OD+ would automatically switch theme to "Meridian Zoomer" for all zoomer docks (alternatively "Meridian Tiled" is a tiled background is active), and apply texture and colorization accordingly. It would rock my world. :)

Every now and then someone complains about being charged for skins. It just bugs me alot, so here's something for you to consider:

You buy a car, do you expect to get a new custom paintjob for that car for free?

You buy a house, do you expect to get free wallpapers, furniture and gardening?

You buy Microsoft Office, do you expect to get all your documents typed up for you for free?

You buy Windows 7, do you expect to get all software for it for free?

You buy a stereo, do you expect to get all the music for free?

No, you don't. You KNOW people like to get paid for the work they do.

Now ask yourself: Why do you expect ALL skins to be free?

 

All UIS0 skins I apply end up looking like this on the shutdown button, per pixel skins works just fine:

 

A keyboard/mouse button shortcut to hide the cursor would be quite handy. :)

A keyboard/mouse button shortcut to hide the cursor would be quite handy. :)

Ok, for starters, I have this same issue on both Vista and W7 (x64)

If I apply a skin in wb7, live messenger (build 14.0.8089.726) disconnect me instantly after log in. When I switch to aero again, it works just fine.

 

Your computer has a Windows Experience Index base score of 5.4
Your Windows Graphics Experience score is 7.1

WindowBlinds version : WindowBlinds 7.0 (build 211 - Windows 7 Edition) - 64 bit OS

WindowBlinds is installed correctly on this PC
WindowBlinds appears to be activated on this PC
(SyncMaster 206BW(Digital)) 1 is attached to ATI Radeon HD 3870
(Generic PnP Monitor) 2 is attached to ATI Radeon HD 3870

Wblind.dll         2009/10/02 14:41:20
Wblind64.dll         2009/10/02 14:41:03
Wbsrv.dll         2009/09/25 15:41:52
SevenConfig.exe         2009/10/02 14:41:23
Wbload.exe         2009/09/25 15:42:10
Wbhelp.dll         2009/09/25 15:42:07
Tray.dll              2009/09/25 15:42:19
Wbload.dll              2009/09/25 15:41:29
Screen.exe         2009/09/25 15:42:05

Yepp. It is released, and it's the best thing since sliced bread... It REALLY is. It's a lean, mean anti-malware machine.

If you're still one of them "norton is a resource hog"-advocates, either TRY IT, or just stay ignorant (I'm writing this post mainly for YOU. It's time to wake up ;) ). If it bogs your computer down, there's something wrong with your computer, not the software. If my old box (athlon X2 6000+) can run it without me even noticing it, then yours should too.

As the main computer tech for pretty much every non-tech-type I know, I hugely appreciate some of the new features. The online database... It's just incredibly smart. It monitors all software you download and run, checking it against an online database. If anything you try to run is not in there, it'll alert you on the fact. It'll tell you there are very few other people with that particular software installed and because of that it's fairly untested, even though scanned clean by the software. It's an AWESOME feature for people who install crap all over without knowing what they are doing. That'll keep them alerted when they installed software (or the latest version of whatever) that's not widely used yet. It can be disabled, but I actually found it handy to be alerted about that during the beta. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they start to add reliability info into that feature, so I'll get alerted about unstable software before I even install it ("this software is known to be unreliable on windows 7"-style popups). By the way, this feature actually does add noticable lag when installing/running new software (takes some time before the alerts pop up and I can decide wether to actually install or not). But since I don't install software very often, I find that a minor inconvenience, and keep it activated anyway.

As for catching malware, it still remains to be tested, but I really can't see it doing any worse than NIS2009 and 2008, which had top results for every test thrown at it (only lagging slightly behind on the heuristic bit, but  seriously, with being updated dozens of times/day, the risk of getting a 0day virus on a home computer is slim to none unless you're playing with 0day warez, and we all know better than doing that, don't we? ;) ).

I'm not much of a review writer, so I'll just hush up now. :P

 

EDIT: By the way... If you're running a NIS 2006 subscription (or later), the upgrade is free... You're a fool to not upgrade, this is by far the best version yet.