Wallpaper Slideshow is a wallpaper changer, a great utility for displaying your favorite photos as your desktop wallpaper. Wallpaper Slideshow offers you complete control on your wallpapers collection and allows you to easily set your favorite images (JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP) as desktop wallpaper. Wallpaper Slideshow is simple to use, intuitive and complete with full context-sensitive help.
Comments (2)
software that allows the user with muliple monitors to
specify a different desktop "wallpaper" image for each
display.
I encountered two problems, however.
First of all, Gianpaolo Bottin, the developer, states that the
program is compatible with Vista. Unfortunately, a program
with an option to load and/or run automatically at system
startup, but is blocked by Vista (because it is not compatible
with Vista's UAC), forcing the user to right-click on the
blocked applications icon in the notification area of the
taskbar and to select each blocked program, manually
allow it to run, and then confirm this decision when the
UAC prompt/dialog appears on the screen.
I have encountered too many freeware and shareware
programs that the developers (which, in many cases,
are substantial, commercial teams -- and not simply
an individual who develops software) describe as
being compatible with Vista, apparently because the
software runs under Vista and does not crash. If
the software is not compatible with all of the basic
features of Vista -- and UAC is a critical, albeit
annoying, component of Vista (but Microsoft has
"trashed" the 'su'/'sudo' security models that
work successfully with Mac OS X -- which is a
much more user-friendly and intuitive OS than
Windows, and has used 'su' successfully and
without inconveniencing users for over nine
years -- Linux, the BSD UNIX server and
desktop distributions, Solaris (and, now,
OpenSolaris) and the few proprietary UNIX
distributions that are still around) because
UAC is a key security component.
Obviously, one wants to minimize the number of
programs and services that are running in
the background -- and only programs
that are necessary, such as security
software and networking, should load
at system startup, but boot times
quickly become intolerable if users
have too many loading at startup.
I have deleted several freeware and
evaluation versions of shareware
and commercial software
that need to load at system startup,
but end up "backlogged" in the
notification area, waiting for me
to launch them manually. If
a program is supposedly compatible
with Vista, then it does not suffer
from this problem (and I often find
these same programs generate the
"no longer responding error"
because they have other compatibility
issues with Vista.
I'm sorry, but I do not have time to be
a beta-tester, especially for a program
that is an evaluation version for which
I am being asked to pay a license fee
after the trial period.
Second of all, Wallpaper SlideShow LT
(and its shareware counterpart that
will randomly change the wallpaper
on each display, based upon the
user's preferences), suffers from
the same problem as almost ever
similar program that I have tried,
or the problem is a limitation of
Windows: Getting Wallpaper
Slideshow to work if each display
does not have the exact same
resolution is not possible -- or,
if you get it to work, your setup
fails the next time you reboot,
and you end up wasting your time
on what is probably a futile task,
unless you have no actual work to
do on the computer.
I need to contact Gianpaolo Bottin,
but he is on a list of about 15 developers
who have similar issues with Vista.
Finally, Wallpaper SlideShow ST
(the dynamic, shareware version
that I tried) puts white text
across each display advertising
itself and is perhaps the most
obnoxious form of "nagging"
that I have encountered,
because users who are so
aesthecially inclined that they
are particular enough to
want to use a product such
as Wallpaper Slide Show
(although I personally believe
that there are better uses of RAM and
CPU cycles than having one's desktop
wallpaper change dynamically,
especially at absurd intervals such
as once per hour) certainly
will find constant "nag-papers"
("nag-tops"?) to be especially
irritating.