Enhance your desktop with trendier visuals

The free tool Rainmeter, which
you can download from www.rainmeter.
net/cms, provides special skins for your
desktop; you can have it display the
current CPU and hard disk utilisation as
well as display the time.
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TIPS & TRICKS
Sachin Pandit
DECEMBER 2012
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Tips &
Tricks
Use this simple command to determine a time
interval after which the PC will shut down.
1
Use the Legal Notice fields to display a customised
message while starting up.
2
TIPS & TRICKS
HANDS ON
Open the website, click on the
Rainmeter link and save the fi le
“Rainmeter-2.3.3.exe” to any folder on
your system. Start the installation by
double-clicking on the downloaded
fi le and follow the instructions of the
installation routine. After the installation,
activate Rainmeter through “Start | All
programs | Rainmeter”.
Now if you click on a skin with the
right mouse button, you will see a
context menu for confi guring the current
skin and Rainmeter itself. To infl uence
the skin behaviour, activate, for example,
“Click-through” in order to be able to click
through the skin on your desktop. Now
you cannot reach Rainmeter anymore
and must use the relevant icon in the
notifi cation area for further changes.
With the command “Rainmeter”, you
can change entire themes or activate
additional elements from a theme that is
not up-to-date.
You can close the tool using
“Rainmeter | End.” “Close skin” removes
the skin from your desktop. In addition
to the standard skins, you can download
more skins from the internet. You can
fi nd the best upgrades at the website by
clicking on “Discover”.
You can use the new look of Windows
8 even with Windows Vista or 7 with the
skin "Omnimo for Rainmeter 5.0". For
this, download the fi le “omnimo_5_0_
for_rainmeter_by_fediafedia-d2mhn7l.
zip” from the website www.omnimo.
info/download.html. Unzip the ZIP file,
then double-click in Windows Explorer
on “SETUP.rmskin”, and then on “Install”.
Follow the prompts of the setup wizard.
During the course of the installation,
select a schema like “Windows Phone 7”
or “Windows 8 Start Screen”.