Almost everyone sees the wallpapers as simple images that sit on your desktop. Most users think that the only way to improve the aspect of their desktop is by getting all sorts of complicated shell replacements that change absolutely everything beyond recognition. This is one way to do it, but the majority of shell replacements and desktops cost more then they should and most times don't even do their job well leaving the registry clogged with files that affect your system. In some cases your system won't even boot right and a system restoration or a clean install of the operating system is the only solution to the problem.

Wallpaper softwares are generally regarded as applications designed to spread around all sort of malicious code strongly determined to ruin your machine. Experience proved me that in 90% of the cases malware is hidden in apparently harmless applications. And yet, some programs from this category are spyware free and 100% safe to use.

This is the case of BioniX Wallpaper, one of the most downloaded desktop changers. It is a free software with a simple aim: to change the way your desktop looks at a user defined time interval. This way your computer screen will no longer look monotonous and the images will automatically change from time to time.

BioniX Wallpaper is actually a wallpaper player as the controls are similar to a regular audio or video player. The interface is not great looking and to tell you the truth testing it was quite a challenge as its transparency prevented me to clearly see the options available. But for a home user the settings are not a thing to be changed daily so there will be little hindrance. Besides, the number of skins available for download can greatly improve the appearance of the application and transparency/opacity level can be changed from General tab under Settings menu.

As I said before, BionoX looks just like a player and the controls available are play, stop, next and previous. You also get to shuffle the wallpapers in the playlist editor or let the application play them in the current order. Adding more images to the playlist is an easy task. The playlist editor is equipped with a menu bar and File shelters the options for appending either files or entire folders to the playlist. Creating new playlists is also available, however, you may not have more then one.

Deleting the items in a playlist can be done in several ways: simple Delete key will erase the item from the playlist while Ctrl+Delete will wipe the file from the hard drive as well. Moving pictures around on the disk results in BioniX not being able to play them. This is why the program contains the "Delete dead path files" option. Duplicates can also be eliminated from the playlist so that the same image will not be played twice (one after another).

The Show menu of the playlist editor really baffled me as the options available are truly amazing for such an application. The user can enable displaying the extension of the file, path, image size, drive letter and rating (these last two options are locked for the moment).

Sorting the items in the playlist can be done by path or by filename or they can be in total random order or reversed. All the options available in the menus are accompanied by the corresponding keyboard shortcuts for a better handling.

The Settings of the application are not as few as I expected. In the contrary, the list is rich and diverse. You can set BioniX to act in three ways when it starts up: change the wallpaper instantly, change the wallpaper after the specified time or leave the current wallpaper. At changing the desktop image BioniX can be set to alert you with a "ding" sound and the user can change the fade speed and window opacity (the interface is transparent). The playlist can be configured to look differently by means of font and background color changing (a little bug prevents the background color to take effect on the fly and you will have to click inside the editor).

Smart tiling and stretching are two of the most important features of the application. You can set the files with dimensions smaller then a certain value (in pixels) to be automatically smart tiled. And stretching functions the same way as tiling, but the values are in percentage related to desktop resolution.

The last option in Settings is Screen Saver. The first time you are going to try it the result will be utter failure. Restart the application and try it again as this behavior has been favored to avoid writing in the registry (it is cleaner this way).

Sliding the control panel of the application (the flashing down arrow in the bottom right corner) will reveal three more options: Resampler (the default), Enhance and Info. Enhance can optimize the quality of the viewing of the wallpaper by adjusting the saturation, contrast and brightness of the image. Unfortunately the preview is not available yet and there are some more options that do not work in the beta version I tested. Info tab displays the amount of free space available on each partition of your system (hover the mouse over in order to lear the information).

The Good

Simply amazing. A light application that should do only a mere wallpaper change on your desktop comes with options that help you manage the wallpapers, play them at certain interval (seconds, minutes or hours) and gives you details about the space on your disk.

The Bad

There would be much to talk about in this section. There are several mischiefs that prevent the application from working right. Slide configuration panel for instance will display all the tabs in the bottom left corner, but after viewing Info the only way to get to Enhance is restarting the application.

Many options are greyed out in this version (in control panel, playlist editor and settings window). But this is a beta version and it is normal for these mischiefs to happen.

The Truth

I will be watching for the final edition of the software as the beta was only an appetizer. The software does not need an uninstaller to eliminate from your computer (a simple deletion of the files will do) but it will leave some traces in the registry.

BioniX is pretty low on resorces. On my computer it took almost 12MB. I know it is quite a lot for a regular wallpaper changer, but consider the options available here.

NOTE: With each version the application gained more and more improvements one of them being related to computer resource usage. With the latest release Bionix seems to spare computer resources as instead of the 12MB of RAM as it scored during our first testing, the program has now reduced resource usage to 4.3MB. Testing it on an XP machine Bionix diminished its resource usage even more (a bit over 2MB). It seems that Bionix is only getting better with each released version.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: