One of the things I want to stress prior to continuing this article, is , there are some elderly skins that seriously dislike new technology. It is with a stern warning to back up your stuff first, I give you this week's reviews.

Having said that, I want to tell you there are some really neat skins in the libraries that no one see's anymore.Some  of those skins will work just fine on your system with the newest windowblinds build. (I also warn, I have XP sp2 , don't know what happens on Vista).  Though if you go beyond 2000, you'll find skins listed as uis1 these will NOT work with your current version.

So having said that , I travelled through time this past week and uncovered some treasures I thought I'd share with you .

One of Blinds I downloaded was ruinedinc vr2 all ruinedinc stuff here , by ruined%20inc.  This blind is a real treasure to those of us who have difficulty viewing some text in other blinds. It's a "lumpy" high contrast dark skin, with light text on dark background. The colors are a bit out of the ordinary, Midnight blue and Neon green. I paired it with the Vista Glass tiles dock background which has the identical color borders.(thank you wizard1956 for the tip!) This skin just begged for a vlad wall. I had to oblige! I chose Cant sleep by vlad  can be found here  Shrek Cursors by Benjiman cursor found here seemed to fit the blind to a Tee. Mrnomust by thinkcear worked the best for me with this blind. It's simple and cartoony and the colors blend nicely.

When you're using an elderly blind, some of the transparency features are lost. Thankfully, this one still has a transparency so all is not lost by using old.

Have you tried any of the older skins by ^^Gabriel?

If not you should! They are minimalistic, sleek and run fast on systems even with minimal ram. I dragged out an oldie but goodie today just for fun and  my computer wore x360 by ^^Gabriel. I chose the fun but  simple IP to go with it Mrnomust by thinkcear. Again the cartoony style and flat look compliments this skin nicely.(who'da thunk it! ) I played for a while with different cursor packs and chose  platinum by stardock design for it's simple sleek style. It really works well with this skin.

Some skins that are Vista only are meant to be Vista only. Case in point, KittyMalone's (now called Jeckyll!) Rise of the Mezanine. I love Kitty's Goth skins, they really speak to my darker side, and I decided I had to try this last skin. Well, it doesn't like XP at all, sad too because I really love the "please wait" medallion. It hinted at a really well detailed skin.

But xp hates it and breaks the start menu in wierd ways. I had to uninstall this one so I wouldn't use it again. *Thankfully Kitty took pity on us XP users there is an xp version so we can use it too. Of course I didn't know this at the time and was bummed out.* ( I will include in next week's reviews the MezanineXP skin)

To make myself feel better, I opened Kitty's Wednesdays nightmare skin. I did feel better !! Though it's a bit purple-y to me, the graphics are really detailed and fun. cjshadow_ghost by cjshadow IP package really likes this WB and plays well with it, making the Goth theme look sweet. I used  the cursor azul3d by the AVMAN recolored to match the skin.I wanted something that looked caged and that cursor fit the bill. I also tried Blade 50 by Rycher it had that goth feel to it that complimented the skin, though the I bar really didn't suit me as it changed bright colors.
For the wall, I used pollen by inception8 , recolored to match the colorscheme. Also looked ok greyscaled.
This is another of the skins I have that doesn't work well with my hourly wallpaper change , as many of my walls don't look as nice with it.

I apologise for the lack of links and screenies  beyond the first review. I had already written up the others and  at that time didn't have a screen shot or all the links for those skins. I promise to do better next review!