I got Longhorn XP Pro free, and it isn't stealing

Do you want the next version of Windows Free? Then head over to Soft32.com to download your free version of the Longhorn Desktop Enhancement 6.0 Software. I’m only the 151389th one to download it. What it does is changes your desktop to look like the Longhorn Professional screenshots you see on the Internet now-a-days. It’s also supposed to fix some bugs in Windows XP. Interesting enough it looks just like the screenshot in my Longhorn entry. Looks can be deceiving since the Microsoft team may develop a more stable version that’ll cost 200+ dollars when it comes out. The interesting part is Longhorn Professional XP’s (Freeware Version by unknown third party)About box. The About box gives all the credit to Microsoft. Longhorn is patented by Microsoft isn’t it? I know Longhorn runs on top of WinXP. I look at the Windows version it is still 5.1.2600, same exact number it was in Windows XP. I hope Microsoft doesn’t track down the developers of the Freeware application and sue them. They did give Microsoft all the credit. No names appear from anywhere.







Features in the Longhorn Pro XP Mod available at http://www.tcmagazine.net/ and http://Soft32.com

• You can change your Start menu to have 5 different themes

• It’s a lot like Windows Blinds except more stable.

• 5 themes that look like the screenshots that changes the taskbar, the scroll bar, the Start menu, the color of the toolbar, the outer rims of the graphical user interface

• Puts a drop down menu on top of each directory window. If you don’t like it, you can always remove it.

• The ability to go back to the WIN XP PRO theme and WINDOWS Classic theme without uninstalling the Longhorn Pro XP Much of Win XP Pro stays intact

• Changes Boot Screen to that nice Green Hills, Blue Sky theme with the Longhorn Logo on it.



Some very cool sites to check out ….



1. Fasterfiles.com - Here is a very, very cool site for downloading UT2003, UT2004, Quake 3, Half-life, Far Cry, Neverwinter Nights mods (includes maps, skins, models, uploaders)

2. Soft32.com – This is where I found the Longhorn tweak for Windows XP. Counter-strike 1.5 and 1.6 can be downloaded here as well!

3. IGN.com – A site that specializes in reviewing games, movies, cars, models and supporting RPGs with http://nwnvault.ign.com, http://ffxivault.ign.com and such.

4. Sourceforge.org – has a TON of open source software. Some programs carry over from Linux like Gimp 2.0, and Gaim and make a 1st appearance on the x86 Windows OS. Other programs like CDEX use Sourceforge.org as their primary server. Most of the downloads there are supported by phone company servers and university servers so you’re likely to get the best bandwidth 90% of the time.

5. lame.sourceforge.net – the only open source MP3 encoder and in my opinion one is enough because it does compress mp3s at a good ratio and does sound as good as any other MP3 encoder. Computers are fast enough now-a-days that speed isn’t an issue. An example would be on my computer, a 3 minute 50 second song compressed at 128 KBPS takes approx. 23 seconds. Real.com says Xing is faster. I don’t need an encoder 5 or 6 seconds faster than LAME that makes you pay 40 dollars for it. In fact you don't have to pay for Xing, but it's really hard to find the MP3 encoder. I just found the Xing MPEG encoder.

6. http://www.tcmagazine.net/ - Full of hardware / software reviews and top downloads for the latest software.



[#2 Topic] Like I said before, gamers like to go all out and they can’t do that with the game lagging, that’s why we have the wonderful thing called patches! While patches don’t necessarily make the game more fun, most of the time it does. Patches are made famous by fixing those crash bugs that are no fun at all. I know I’m getting a little off topic but the difference between Diablo 2 v1.0 and v1.7 was enormous. I know the v1.03 patch is famous because Diablo 2 Battle Set comes pre-loaded with it.



The famous game, Planet Side, became famous when the patches made the game much worst than the retail version. It started off very popular and it got less and less popular as the patches were released. This is an example for the industry of what not to do when making patches.



I went to school to download Counter-Strike 1.5 and Counter Strike 1.6 off the T1 server right before I wrote this entry. It wouldn’t be a great idea to download over my modem. :) The CS 1.5 is about 150 MB and CS 1.6 is 340 MBs. I have them on CD if anyone wants to play them with me. I find that Counter-Strike is by far the most downloaded mod on the Internet. I know when I go to Soft32.com, it is amongst their most popular downloads. I wonder when Ritrual will develop CS 2.0? Perhaps when Half-Life 2 comes out? Who knows…maybe there’ll be plenty of Mods of HL2 for anyone to be trigger-happy for over a year? HF2 popularity has only increased keeping in the #4 place at Gamestats.com. I pretty much said all there is to be said on Half-life 2 right now (AKA I had 4 blog topics on the subject). Some people like to play CS 1.5 on X-Fire so I wanted to download both versions. I have to install both one of these days and check the servers. I’m not going to play CS now. When I downloaded 50 maps for Unreal Tournament 2004, I know I was interested in it for 4 days straight. Will I have to learn a whole new learning curve with Counter-Strike?



I'll end this up by showing the top 10 software picks of last month:



10.) Microsoft Office Professional 2003

09.) Gimp 2.0

08.) JASC Paintshop Pro 8.1

07.) Digital Sound Recorder (records sound from your desktop and can convert them to MP3 format)

06.) Quintessential Player 4.51 (mp3 player also rips shoutcast music or any mp3 / OGG based broadcast)

05.) eMule 0.42g (person / person file sharing unity)

04.) Namo Webeditor 6.0 (it's like Macromedia Dreamweaver)

03.) Longhorn XP Professional 6.0 (Desktop Enhancement Mod)

02.) CDEX 3.51 (MP3 Ripper also has Ogg Vorbis and Monkey Audio encoders)

01.) Mozilla Firefox 0.8 (web browser)