Have many times have you kicked yourself in the head when you have discovered that a new Windows operating system has been launched on the market, right after you have purchased the previous one?

When Vista appeared, we could only dream about replacing our "old" XP with it, but that was not always possible.

If you still find yourself in this type of situation, then simply make your Windows XP desktop look like Vista - maybe it will make you patient before your purchase the real deal.

Vista Visual Styles Pack is a theme designed for XP (and 2003), that will make it look like the Vista interface. The pack contains a wide range of changes you can optionally enable for several masks of Windows XP.

Your XP will now look like Vista, and it will even have a few of its features and applications.

Styles included in this pack are Windows Aero, Windows Vista Basic, and Aero Style (WindowBlinds skin).

Features you can apply from Vista to XP include changing the appearance of the start menu, system font, taskbar, system tray, open windows, and dialogs.

In addition you can have the tray clock, icons, sounds, boot screen, cursors, and sidebar with widgets from Vista. There are new wallpapers, screensavers, as well as a customized media center.

In matter of performance, Vista Visual Styles Pack will eat a fair amount of your CPU resources, but there's nothing to worry about. Full installation requires an additional 50MB of your RAM.

So, if you want to cheat your friends into thinking you have Windows Vista installed on your computer when you actually have Windows XP, then you definitely need the Vista Visual Styles Pack.