If you like the desktop animations provided with Windows Vista, but aren’t ready to trash Windows XP just yet, you might enjoy a handy lil’ freeware app with a strange name: Lebendig. Lebendig adds Vista-like animations to program windows in Windows XP. You can have windows fade in and\or out, spin in and\or away, or lots of other nifty combinations.
I really like this lil’ app, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to play well with Outlook 2007. Once you start Lebendig, minimizing Outlook causes the app to “disappear”. You can try to maximize it again (and you’ll briefly see the full-screen Outlook window), but then the Outlook window will simply “disappear”. The only way to get it back is to use Task Manager to kill OUTLOOK.EXE and start the program over again (but remember, you can’t minimize it again!). Also note that I’ve only seen this behavior with Outlook 2007 – other programs seem to work just fine with Lebendig (although I’ve only tested the few apps that are on my system).
I like Lebendig – I just wish they’d fix that Outlook bug.