Aero Themes The Aero themes at the top come with all the Aero features turned on. There’s also a “Get more themes online” link that takes you to a download-more-themes Web site.
Basic and High Contrast Themes If you scroll down, you find the Basic and High Contrast themes. If you click one of these, you shut down much of what makes Aero, Aero. Window edges are no longer transparent. The taskbar no longer offers thumbnail previews of open programs. The Show Desktop sliver (right end of the taskbar) no longer hides windows when you just point to it. Pressing w+Tab no longer shows a 3-D stack of open programs for your switching pleasure, and pressing Alt+Tab shows a much more toned-down, XP-ish program switcher. Notable here are Windows 7 Basic, which gives you the clean, modern look of Win7 windows and buttons, a rounded black glass look for the taskbar and Start menu, and so on; and Windows Classic, which returns your PC to the visual look of Windows Server 2003/Windows 2000. Note: The High Contrast themes in the list are designed to help out people with limited vision, who require greater differences in color between window elements. High-contrast themes do not use any of the Aero features and more closely resemble the squared-off windows and dialog boxes of Windows 2000.
The real fun, however, awaits when you choose one of the canned themes and then modify it. Four of the modification tactics are represented by buttons at the bottom of the window (Desktop Background, Window Color, Sounds, and Screen Saver); two more are represented by links at the left side of the window (Desktop Icons and Mouse Pointers). The following pages cover each of these elements in turn. frequently asked question
Interior Decorating the Starter Edition Man, when Microsoft strips down Windows, it doesn’t kid around. The Starter Edition of Windows 7, which comes on some netbooks and computers in poor countries, doesn’t have the Personalize control panel. It doesn’t even let you change your wallpaper, for heaven’s sake. In fact, personalizing the look of the Starter Edition pretty much boils down to what you can access from the Display control panel (StartÆControl PanelÆAppearanceÆDisplay).
For example, the “Change color scheme” link opens the Window Color and Appearance dialog box. You can choose from the Windows 7 Basic scheme, Windows Classic (for that Windows 2000 look), and four high-contrast schemes. The “Change screen saver” link lets you choose one of the built-in screen savers. In addition, you can change the screen resolution and make some low-level tweaks to your color calibration, ClearType font settings, and text DPI settings. But that’s about it.