I have always believed that there is too much desktop space that remains unused, unless you like crammed places, which I don't. And since I am that kind of person who tries to find a solution to every problem, I started looking for functionality for my desktop background, one that wouldn't eat up my barely surviving RAM and that would still look nice (predictable for a girl, I know). My solution is called Beautiful Earth, so it is bound to follow at least one of my requirements, the aesthetic one.

Analyzing this software closer, it turned out that it could be easily installed on all PCs, as its size is quite small (less than 3 MB) compared to the features it comes with. Furthermore, you will have the possibility to set Beautiful Earth as your default screensaver before even completing the installation process, thus making sure you will enjoy its entire functionality. Besides the common icons you can choose to place on your desktop or in the Quick Launch toolbar, you set it to run at Windows startup. All these settings are meant to reduce user hassle once the app is fully installed because you can leave it running in the background without bothering anyone.

This application does not address to a certain type of user, so beginners and experts alike will surely find their way with it. For example, rookies will probably just choose their city and timezone from the drop-down menus, then enable the wallpaper or screensaver, whereas advanced users will play around with cities' location and names on the map, changing their English names to the native ones, thus making the map a more professional one. Furthermore, let's not forget to mention that you can choose to view the weather details for your current location only (i.e. where you live or where you plan to travel to in the near future), and the forecast covers a whole week, day and night being displayed separately.

It’s extremely easy to use and most of its features can be completed just by pressing a mouse button – for example, you don't have to select the screensaver separately, you simply press a dedicated button in the Options window. Also, Beautiful Earth can automatically change your wallpaper to the specialized one when you launch it and will immediately display timezones or local weather.

There is also the possibility to use another wallpaper while using this application, so those of you who like their regular desktop background, but want only a new screensaver will surely be happy with this option.

A great feature of this software is that you do not have to settle for exploring the world weather – you can choose the continent you are interested in, according to the area you reside in or you want to visit soon. Also, to make everything more realistic and suitable for each of your needs, you can enable or disable clouds on your map; personally, I prefer seeing the clouds because it helps me get a better perspective on the weather conditions.

To sum up, it appears like I have found one piece of software that meets my two initial requirements: it looks good, the images are even great, and it does not need a lot of computer resources to function properly. I also liked the fact that I was able to evaluate it for as long as I considered necessary since the only limitations were a nag screen at startup and a (rather large) red watermark on my desktop.

The Good

I don't know whether this was their goal, but it seems like the developers of Beautiful Earth have invested a lot of energy in creating a highly customizable application: you can change the font type, size and color for every area that has text, choose the cities you need, add timezones or weather details on your desktop, and so on. All these offer a lot of flexibility to users who get the chance to personalize the appearance of the app or maybe even making it match the PC's color scheme, assuming it is a special one.

The Bad

The major drawback of this software is that it does not provide any localization, even though dealing with the entire Earth would have required a multilingual approach. Not everyone speaks English, so language packs would have been more than useful and increase the number of possible buyers.

The Truth

To put it frankly, Beautiful Earth does exactly what it claims, and a little more, due to its customization options. If your journeys require you to constantly know the weather conditions around the globe or on a certain continent or you want to know the exact time in the other part of the world without browsing the Internet for it, then Beautiful Earth might just be the solution for you. If you add that you also get a wallpaper and a screensaver in the package, maybe $19.95 will not seem such a big sum.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: