Vista Ultimate Extras - Dreamscene puts in an appearance

You might have been distracted by the slew of patches that MS released today for Windows XP and Office 2003, but those of you who are especially eagle-eyed will have noticed that MS also released a ‘preview’ version of it’s Dreamscene Ultimate Extra add-on for Vista.

Dreamscene allows you to run video clips as animated wallpapers on your desktop, and ships with an example wallpaper, a clip of the Windows Energy screensaver. You can even add your own clips to use as wallpapers, as long as they are in MPG, WMV or MPEG formats.

This preview version of Dreamscene certainly is interesting, although from the promises that MS made regarding the addon not eating into the battery life of your notebook, it’s clear to see that there is still some way to go before the final version is released.

Early tests using a variety of video clips as desktop wallpaper put CPU usage at anything from 30 to 48% of maximum. If the video clip you have selected to use as your wallpaper has sound, this currently does not play back with the video. 

Still, it’s a very nice addon and will certainly get you a couple of cool points when you show it to your friends, but I do wonder if some might find it distracting.