Let the desktop background reflect your cheery mood

Your computer is an extension of yourself, and the background you choose reflects your personality. Popular psychologists and sundry TV know-it-alls say so, so, it must be the gospel.

So, why don’t you really spruce up a boring desktop?

Just right-click anywhere on the open desktop to call up the display options window. In Windows XP or earlier, click on ‘Preferences’ to get to the display properties. In Vista, you right-click and select the ‘Personalize’ option. The look and layout of the display settings window from Windows 98 to XP is pretty much the same, so we’ll focus on the XP layout, but Windows Vista is quite a bit different. In XP, you click on the ‘Desktop’ tab to get to the background options. In Vista, you get a lot larger set of options, from which you’ll select Desktop Background.

In XP, you can select a background from the list, or use browse to pick another picture on your computer.

In Vista, you have a window with a drop-down menu at the top. From this drop-down, you can select from a variety of options. You can pick from Windows Wallpapers, your own pictures, or even moving DreamScene backgrounds. Vista also allows for videos to be backgrounds, which is pretty neat.

In XP you can also chose to Stretch, Center, or Tile the wallpaper to fit your screen. Select OK to apply the new background. In Vista, you have a few more fitting options. You can also enlarge the image and crop it to fit the screen without making it look funny, or leave it as it is, with black bars filling out the rest of the screen. As with XP, click OK to apply the new background.

And there you are, a new snappy look for your desktop. There are a lot of websites that offer attractive backgrounds that you can use instead of what came with Windows.