New WinCustomize Poll: Do you Help Family/Friends with Skinning?

I've got my son, brother, and a few friends hooked. All of them are now happy Stardock customers.

Just thinking about it, it would be great if Stardock had some type of referral bonus program. 

I gave my eldest daughter my old desktop and it still had all the SD products on it.  She loves that she can have a customized desktop.  Currently, she's running Vienna 2 by vStyler.

I had a fellow co-worker bring a laptop into my office for help with a file transfer and noticed he had ObjectDock installed and was using one of my themes.  I asked him some questions about it and he pointed me to StarDock and WinCustomize and told me I HAD to try it out.

My friends and family would e-mail me to ask for their usual free advise and to find out what's new in the PC world.  I sent them a screen shot of my customized desktop just to show them what I had been up to. 

They flipped over my shot of the Zippo suite. 

The big question was, how in the world did you do that?  My response was, do you want this on your desktop?  I can walk you through and show you how.  Are you interested? 

Let me see a show of hands.  Out of 100, 4 extremely green but brave souls stood up.

To make a long story short I ended up tutoring through e-mail, a novice group of 4 the science / art of maintaining their PC, navigation and functionality with customization as the learning tool, basically just using Windowblinds, Cursor XP, walls, Icon Packager and of course the K.I.S.S. principal.

Progressively 3 of the 4 became overwhelmed, disenchanted and dropped out due to self-inflicted information overload.

I'm happy to say that one of my friends hung in there, purchased Object Desktop, got a WC subscription, then went on to become a pretty dynamic shooter on his own accord.  That would be WC member Longdude0

Screen shot by Longdude0 from March '07.  The satisfaction for me was watching this guy's fear evolve into logic and confidence right before my eyes.

I don't know anyone around my neck of the woods that goes any further than changing the wallpaper.

I sent some screenshots to friends, which shocked them into total silence. I haven't heard from them since.

Same here... none of my family would consider it, saying stuff like: "So long as my puter works I don't care."  My niece reacted like I was suggesting she bastardise her machine with obscenities... so I gave up there.

Oh well, I had one success... got me missus into it.

I installed LogonStudio Vista for my eldest granddaughter, as she wanted to use a photo of herself as her Logon screen. Also setup Fences for a few friends, and installed the Nuonsoft Wallpaper cycler for another. However, its ObjectDock that draws the most wows, especially the animated docklets. But when they realise its not a simple one click setup, they promptly lose interest.

Everyone I know 'gets it' but no one... buys it

I set up a few family members with different Myolors skins (one each) but I hesitate going further. I already have to fix a couple user errors a week as it is.....usually for really stupid things......

"my printer doesn't work" ........Question #1 = did you make sure it's plugged in?......... "yes"  ........after question #50 I hop in the car....drive 20 minutes one-way.......the printer is NOT plugged into the computer........"oh, I thought you meant into the wall"

so......I don't mind pointing advanced users to Stardock but I've only got one relative that qualifies and he's a mac (and a bit of a putz)

Having had a little PC Tech training, I find this hilarious, but all too often, true. Most people I know, can't figure out how to delete temp files and cookies.

Hehe!  I wouldn't point my mother in the direction of MyColors, even.  No way I'd give her something else NOT to understand. It once took me over an hour by phone to explain to her how to show hidden files and hide known file extensions... something that's normally sorted with a few mouse clicks, but somehow she managed to be in an entirely different place than Control Panel> Folder Views, etc, and was totally lost.

Nope, I wouldn't inflict the torture of explaining to her the installation and running of customisation software upon myself.  I mean, she tries, bless her, but for some reason she doesn't follow the ways or or workings of PC's too well.

I installed a trial version of WB on the family office PC once, but it's really old (only 512MB of RAM and P4 processor)... It ended up further slowing it down, and I had to remove it.

I bought an OD sub for my best friend for Christmas once, but he didn't renew it after it lapsed.

I got a couple of fellow medical transcriptionists whom I had met at an on-line forum into it.  Stardock really should spend more energy advertising to MT's; we spend more time in front of our computers than the average individual, and we're all real picky about our stuff (a/k/a anal retentive) is a successful MT trait (most of them are more anal retentive than I am).  Also, I modded out the World of Warcraft CursorFX images so they would work on my daughter's computer which uses Windows 2000 for the OS.  She's really into WoW.

none of my friends understand it either...they all just dont care about looking at MS style and or aero...they all sit and aww at it but i guess they dont see it like i do...oh well...more for me

I've puzzled a couple of MD's with my interface...showed them how it works.....my older son was interested for awhile then drifted off. He now manages a database team for Verint, and can't wait to get off the computer.

The MD's thought it was weird...until I showed them what right click and DX did together. Then they said "Wow!". Gave 'em the URL, don't know if they became customers...I've moved since then.

yeah after the the fact i got sick and tired  hearing about it, Nah kidding yes at first I gave the reaction " why on earth would I want to do that" but now its a case I can't live without it

I had forgotten that my oldest son loved Windowblinds and DX when he lived here. He told all his friends at school how cool his Dad was, and showed them my site. Feels good to be appreciated by someone you love. 

Well, I'm building a WindowBlind for my wife, aren't I?

My mom is almost as bad as I am; She runs WB and ObjectDock, but where she goes overboard is with her 1,000+ wallpapers.

Hey, I have well over that number, wanna make somethin' of it?        

Yeah, wanna take this outside?