We are coming to the end of the month, and a great way to end it is to have the latest Weekend Impulse Buys sale!  We have a great mix of applications and games this time around, some starting as low as $1. 

Check out this weeks specials!

ObjectDock Plus	$10.00	$19.95
System Mechanic Pro	$40.00	$48.97
Sword of the Stars Ultimate	$20.00	$29.99
Europa Universalis Rome Gold	$9.99	$24.99
LIghtWeight Ninja	$0.99	$4.95
The Corporate Machine	$0.99	$4.95

See the Impulse Buys and other items on sale at www.impulsedriven.com, and if you don’t already have Impulse, grab your free copy from there as well.

The end of the month is just about here, and another weekend is upon us.  This is an especially great week as we have the TWiS icon contest voting going on.  If you haven’t seen the finalists, head over to this thread to check them out and vote.

Now for this weeks picks!

	CEP by Richard Mohler A beautiful cursor set that has a design that can match so many themes.
	Naked Clocks by theAVMAN The Naked WB skin has some great accessories, this one is a set of clocks to match.
	Motion by NGTV This is an awesome, subtle .dream that makes great use of colors.
	Little Chromys by ahabkaba This is a sleek set of tiles for ObjectDock.  Great job!
	Dark Horizons by welshdragon I just really enjoy the design of this.  Looks great on the desktop.
	Skyui Offical Theme [XP] by skyui08 This WindowBlinds skin is from the ‘08 GUI Champs, and I really like the bold colors used.

From the Windows Team Blog:

Over the weekend, some of you may have received an email from us reminding you that the Windows 7 Beta expires on August 1^st, 2009. In that email, we ask that if you are still on the Windows 7 Beta that you should consider moving to a “non-expired” copy of Windows such as the Windows 7 RC or Windows Vista because bi-hourly shutdowns will begin June 1st.

The Windows 7 Beta does expire on August 1st, 2009; unfortunately the date for when bi-hourly shutdowns will begin for the Windows 7 Beta was incorrect however.

Bi-hourly shutdowns for the Windows 7 Beta will begin July 1st, 2009 as we’ve stated both here in this blog post on May 5th and also in the Windows 7 RC FAQ.

Some people seem to have been confused by this.  This applies to the pre-RC releases, not the actual RC release.  If you haven’t downloaded the Windows 7 RC release, head over and do so now.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Long weekend!  I think Fridays that are before a long weekend are always much better, and to end off this week we have another edition of This Week in Skinning!  We have some great skins from the past week, so lets get right into it.

Now for this weeks picks!

	Naked DX by RedneckDude Naked is just an awesome new WB theme, and here is a just as awesome DX theme to match.
	Peipir by PiscDong This was an entry in the ‘08 GUI Champs, and it’s a beautiful icon pack that works well with many themes.
	The Traveling Tree by vlad Another amazing wallpaper by vlad.  Just download it and see for yourself.
	Molten by Richard Mohler The colors in this wallpaper is what really caught my eye.  Great job!
	serenity (XP) by lleonbox Another GUI Champs ‘08 entry, which is a very clean and smooth WindowBlinds skin for XP.  Nice job.
	Modern Elegance by kittycat670 Here is a really cool Winstep theme, with a slick design.

In this edition of Impulse Tips and Tricks, I thought we could cover Tabs and Views in Impulse.  There are several ways to customize your tabs and views inside Impulse, and it’s quite easy to change the views to suit your preference.

Download your copy of Impulse from www.impulsedriven.com.

Tabs

Impulse has four main tabs that you will always see:

Explore – The store and product pages in Impulse

Community – Where all community based features are, like chat, friends, etc.

My Software – This is where all your non-gaming applications will be.

My Games – This is where all your games will appear.

Other tabs such as Updates will often appear, but these four above should always be available to you, but you can add your own tabs as well.  Since Impulse is almost always open on my desktop, I can add tabs with shortcuts to my favorite or commonly used applications or games.

Just click the + button to the right of the tabs, and  you will be prompted to either create a new tab, or manage existing ones.  Since I do a lot of blogging, I created a tab where I can put a few of my most useful blogging applications for quick access.

If you need to move, delete, or rename tabs, you can do that in the manage tabs box.

Views

There are several different ways you can view your installed or available applications/games inside Impulse.  Clicking the View dropdown menu will give you a choice of options that you can choose from.   You can change your views to either a tile-view, list-view, or details-view. 

My personal favorite view is the Detailed view, as it gives a bunch of information, but as always, choose what works best for you.

You can even refine your view even more by selecting the Edit Column option.  Here you arrange and hide/show the various columns of information that is available to you.

By default you will see your applications/games in alphabetical order.  That is something else you can change by selecting the Organize dropdown.

The tips above should give you the basic info on how to customize Impulse to work and look the way you want it to. 

I was reading a very interesting article over at istartedsomething.com this morning.

Link

It seems Windows 7 incorporates Virtual Wi-Fi technology, which is in the current RC release, but there are no drivers yet that can take advantage of this, so we just have to wait a bit longer to try a hands-on test.

More from istartedsomething.com:

“You might be wondering why anyone would ever need multiple WLAN adapters on the same PC, well to be honest, you don’t need but its sometimes good to have. In any case where you’re connected to an existing wireless access point and want to connect to another network whether that be a separate access point or even set up an ad-hoc connection, Virtual WiFi will allow you to do just that. But perhaps the scenario that is more appealing is the idea of a mesh network. In a mesh network, every client becomes a repeater, growing the network organically as more clients connect. Virtual WiFi enables this, since every client can become an access point too.”

Those are certainly some interesting uses, and I can only imagine some other uses that haven’t been realized yet.  What do you think about this feature?  Would this be something you will use?

The end of the week at last!  We had a great week, and a bunch of new skins, including some additions from the 2008 GUI Champs.  The wallpaper and WindowBlinds galleries were really moving this week, so be sure to check those out.

Now for this weeks picks!

	More Ribbons by CarGuy1 This is a real nice animated wallpaper, very smooth and nicely animated.
	Fortune Box by sc5vtuqi This icon pack is from the ‘08 GUI Champs, and it’s a beautiful set of icons.
	Magic Hat by ahabkaba This is just a beautiful wallpaper, simple but very creative.
	Bluebells by vlad This is another simple design, and like the one above, it looks stunning on the desktop.
	Criterion by essorant The latest Master skin from essorant is another winner.  Smooth lines and a slick design make this a must have.
	Waterwalk by TomRichter I can’t say much about this skin.  It’s just fantastic.  Download it, that’s all you need to do.

LogonStudio 1.5 was released not too long ago, and many people have been asking if they can change their Windows 7 logon screens with it.  The answer is yes, but right now Windows 7 support is only provisional, so it is possible you may encounter an issue, but overall it has been performing extremely well

First, add LogonStudio to your Impulse account, and download it from there.  This way you will have the latest version available.

http://www.impulsedriven.com/LSV

Oh, did I mention it’s free?

Once you have it installed it’s very easy to use.  You can jump right in and use one of the included logons, or download one of thousands available at WinCustomize.com.  Just select which logon to use, hit apply, and it’s done!

A new feature is the ability to easily use your current desktop wallpaper as a logon.   It’s also easy to get back to the Windows default logon if necessary.

If you have an image you would like to use as a logon, you can create your own just by dragging the image into the LogonStudio window.  You can even save it to share with others.

LogonStudio also works on Windows Vista, so be sure to give it a try!

Last year, Zoomba and I experimented with a podcast for WinCustomize called the SkinCast.  It got some decent coverage and we had a great listening audience.  Problem was, is that we did it on a weekly basis, at home after a long day at work.  That doesn’t include the post work like editing, getting on iTunes, etc.  We enjoyed it, but it just got to be too much for a limited audience.

Since then, Impulse has taken off and we have often toyed with the idea of doing another podcast based on Impulse.  It of course wouldn’t be all about Impulse, but it would give us a good tech base as we deal with both games and software.  Stardock also has some great partnerships with companies like AMD, Microsoft, etc. and we would have some great opportunities to include them as well.

In our preliminary discussions, we have come up with some ideas.

• Hardware and software reviews, especially when dealing with gaming.
• Talking with game developers.
• Taking questions directly from users.
• Tech/gaming news discussion and analysis.

These are just some things we have been talking about, and as always, community feedback is important to use, so we wanted to share what we were up to.  We want to hear your opinions on the idea of an Impulse Podcast, and things you would like us to talk about.

If you are interested in seeing if Windows 7 will run on your current PC, Microsoft has provided an Upgrade Advisor tool to help you determine just that!

From the Windows Team Blog:

“A beta of Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is now available to help people analyze their PC in preparation for a Windows 7 upgrade. Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is a free tool that people can download as of today to help them determine if their PC is able to upgrade to and run Windows 7. The beta can be downloaded here (English only at this time).

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor examines a PC’s processor, memory, storage, and graphics capabilities, identifies known compatibility issues with installed software and devices and finally provides guidance on how to resolve those issues if possible. Please also note: as previously stated on the E7 blog, Windows XP users are required to do a clean install of the Windows 7 RC as well as the final product. Only PCs with Windows Vista can be upgraded to Windows 7. “

Download Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor