One of the most heralded changes in Windows Vista is the

inclusion of the Aero Glass interface. The interface change in Vista is almost

as big of a change as XP’s Luna interface was over the old Windows 2000

Professional interface. Of course, to

get Aero Glass working properly, you’re supposed to have a ‘Gaming Graphics’

card with at least 128MB of RAM. And naturally you have to be running, or

waiting, for Vista to get it.

Or do you?

Recently I stumbled across the Vista Transformation

Pack. This is an integrated set of utilities that will modify Windows XP to

look and feel very much like Windows Vista. It will also do so without a huge

investment in computer horsepower. You can transform Windows XP into a Vista

lookalike with a graphics card with as little as 8MB of RAM. Best of all, the program is free.

How does it work? The author of the Vista Transformation Pack

integrates the Glass2K utility to allow translucency on Windows 2000/XP along

with some other programming magic to completely change the interface.

I’ve created a Photo Gallery that shows you what the Vista Transformation Pack does to your

Windows XP system. It’s not a complete transformation. You can still see the difference

in a few places, but overall it does a very nice job of emulating Vista. If you

want to get a taste of Vista without completely installing Beta 2, this might

be the way to go.