Business Services Industry

Turbo Charge Your Windows Desktop with Widgets, Animated Icons, and Themes Stardock's DesktopX 2.2 Released

Business Wire, August 25, 2004

LIVONIA, Mich. -- Software developer Stardock Corporation released DesktopX 2.2 today. DesktopX is a desktop enhancement utility that lets users and developers add new features to their Windows desktop. These features can increase productivity, usability, and even make the Windows desktop more fun to work with.

DesktopX is used primarily for three things:

1) Add and create mini-applications to their desktop called "widgets".

2) Add "live objects" to the desktop that can enhance or replace existing Windows icons.

3) Build complete desktops from scratch.

What makes DesktopX special is the ease of creating content for it. Popular widgets such as weather monitors, stock tickers, system information, search bars, calendars, calculators, etc. can be created by end users with the integrated GUI based development tools.

Things that would normally take weeks or months to develop using traditional software development tools can now be created in a matter of hours using DesktopX.

Once created, these mini-applications can be exported as widgets and shared with others on the Internet via websites such as WinCustomize.com. DesktopX 2.2 includes a powerful graphics engine that allows for fluid animation and high performance while using very little memory or CPU creating endless possibilities for content.

DesktopX 2.2 also introduces a new feature called Overlays. An overlay is a series of widgets used together to create an alternative desktop. When the user hits a hot key, the overlay appears on top of the user's applications allowing the user to make use of those widgets. When done, hitting the hot key again will make the widgets disappear. This allows users to add a great deal of new functionality to their existing Windows desktop without it interfering with the way they are used to running Windows.

Users can download DesktopX at http://www.desktopx.net. DesktopX Basic is free. DesktopX Enhanced adds support for advanced widgets and objects and is $19.95.

DesktopX Professional is $499 and adds the ability to export content as stand alone programs and includes desktop security. The enhanced version is also available as part of Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancement utilities (www.objectdesktop.com).

Screenshots:

Widgets in action: http://www.desktopx.net/dx-sept04.jpg

Animated objects in action: http://www.desktopx.net/dx-sept04a.jpg

Custom Desktop design in action: http://skins2.wincustomize.com/Frogboy/dx/bob.jpg

More information & video demos at: http://www.desktopx.net/info.asp

DesktopX

Version 2.1

Price: Free (for DesktopX Basic), $19.95 (for DesktopX Enhanced), $499 (for DesktopX Professional)

DesktopX home page: http://www.desktopx.net

Stardock Corp. (www.stardock.com)

17292 Farmington Rd.

Livonia MI 48152