Look Like A Mac, Get Infected Like A PC

After you are through with installing the following programs you will have your pc looking like a mac and running like a pc! It's just a couple of programs that hide the usual pc stuff while the mac stuff is running.

The first program is RK_Launcher. This program put a movable, expandable, customizable doc on your desktop. It utilizes high quality dock icons, that you can pick and choose yourself, to represent all the programs that you click and drag onto the dock. Don't bother trying to edit the itemlist.conf file to get your programs on the dock or to move the around. You can just drag the icons around on the dock, or just click and drag the quick launch programs onto the dock. The latest build can be found on their forums, and does contain vast differences between the earlier builds. This is still in beta, but is a very good program. And with an already impressive beta version 0.41 out now, I think we will be seeing a lot of innovative add on's by the time 1.0 comes rolling out. You already have the option to move it on any side of your desktop, and it does a great job on hiding the entire task bar.

The second mac-like addition to the pc is yahoo's widget engine. With everything from a fuzzy clock widget to an air fare widget, you can find anything to your liking.

Along with the above programs some needed desktop cleanup was a necessity One of the standards that comes with my new dock is a recycling bin, so the old xp one had to go. The best, and quickest, way I found to do this is with this simple registry edit. After the edit is complete, go over to your desktop and do a rick click and refresh. Your recycling bin is now gone! Another thing that I did was add gaim to my collection of programs on the dock. I was a fond user of trillian, but it kept minimizing to the task tray instead of the task bar. When things minimize to the task bar, they will minimize to your new dock. However, they will not minimize to the dock if they minimize to the system tray. A trillian thing that might be fixed with future releases of RK_Launch.

And the final program added to the desktop was Brutus, a one click application for shutting down, locking or logging off. The window key button on the keyboard does still work, but if you want to keep the illusion of having a mac going you might want to give this a try. And for the one-click shut down just drag and drop the Brutus shut down button onto the dock and your good to go.

All of these programs are free to download and use. I did not spend one cent on getting them and they are all full releases, not a timed trial. And, after a bit of searching for icons, I found that deviantART had the most complete and best selection of icons. All of the icons that I found at deviantART were free. The site, however, was blocked at work, so i had to wait till i got home to find all of the good free icons.

So now you can just sit back and enjoy your new mac, only you can play your favorite pc games on it and have all of the security flaws as well! Besides, it will give you something to do over the weekend!

Some before and after pics: