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Alternating desktop background program?
- Thread starter Visec
- Start date
I was looking for the same thing recently for two different systems, my netbook (running WinXP) and my main system (running two displays with two different resolutions), here's all the details of what I found:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1034118240#post1034118240
To sum it up a bit, the Microsoft Powertoy Wallpaper Changer is probably the leanest out of all the different programs I've tried for this... But I'm not positive it works on Vista, in fact I think it doesn't. The next best alternative I've found was John's Background Switcher which is not quite as lean but it works very well, has some nice extra functionality, and it's completely freeware. The dev is still pretty active even (I e-mailed him with a question and got a response within a few days). It'll even work with multiple displays, though not quite so well if your displays run at different resolutions. Windows 7 will actually have a built in random wallpaper switching feature too.
For details on some of the extra features it has see the thread I linked or the program's site.
If you run multiple displays, particularly if they're not the same res, you should really try something like DisplayFusion... The free version doesn't have all the wallpaper functionality but the paid version is well worth the $15 for heavy multi-taskers with multiple displays. It's equivalent to Ultramon if you've heard of that, it gives you a taskbar on your secondary display... But also gives you a lot of control over wallpapers. You can have a separate source/directory of wallpapers for each display (which JBS can't do) so you can divide the images by res, and you can set different scaling/sizing parameters for the wallpaper on each monitor too.
Jon the dev is pretty active as well and currently working on full Windows 7 support so the taskbar looks just like 7's. Even on Vista and XP it's proven to be much more stable than Ultramon for me (an old standby for a lot of people around here).
P.S. I can almost guarantee you that you won't find a better program than one of those three, I spent a while looking...
I'm surprised you didn't find even at 'least one freeware out there though as there's a whole bunch besides these, a lot looked rather shady to me though (some of those I didn't bother to try). There's a lot of random-self made apps for this too that people barely publicize.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1034118240#post1034118240
To sum it up a bit, the Microsoft Powertoy Wallpaper Changer is probably the leanest out of all the different programs I've tried for this... But I'm not positive it works on Vista, in fact I think it doesn't. The next best alternative I've found was John's Background Switcher which is not quite as lean but it works very well, has some nice extra functionality, and it's completely freeware. The dev is still pretty active even (I e-mailed him with a question and got a response within a few days). It'll even work with multiple displays, though not quite so well if your displays run at different resolutions. Windows 7 will actually have a built in random wallpaper switching feature too.
For details on some of the extra features it has see the thread I linked or the program's site.
If you run multiple displays, particularly if they're not the same res, you should really try something like DisplayFusion... The free version doesn't have all the wallpaper functionality but the paid version is well worth the $15 for heavy multi-taskers with multiple displays. It's equivalent to Ultramon if you've heard of that, it gives you a taskbar on your secondary display... But also gives you a lot of control over wallpapers. You can have a separate source/directory of wallpapers for each display (which JBS can't do) so you can divide the images by res, and you can set different scaling/sizing parameters for the wallpaper on each monitor too.
Jon the dev is pretty active as well and currently working on full Windows 7 support so the taskbar looks just like 7's. Even on Vista and XP it's proven to be much more stable than Ultramon for me (an old standby for a lot of people around here).
P.S. I can almost guarantee you that you won't find a better program than one of those three, I spent a while looking...
I'm surprised you didn't find even at 'least one freeware out there though as there's a whole bunch besides these, a lot looked rather shady to me though (some of those I didn't bother to try). There's a lot of random-self made apps for this too that people barely publicize.
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Oh yeah maybe I didn't state it explicitly, since I only mentioned the Powertoy probably won't work on Vista... But the other programs I mentioned will definitely work just fine on Vista and DF will work on Windows 7, not sure about JBS but you probably wouldn't need it there unless you grow attached to some of the extra functionality.