Bring a little Bing into your Windows 7

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The team over at Bing wanted to show off their support for the launch of Windows 7, by putting together the top images on Bing in June, July and August into a Windows 7 theme pack. The 20 very stunning photos are available for free, directly from Microsoft's Personalization Gallery.

Microsoft's Bing team managed to group these images to help show off some of the Windows 7 features, with the personalization gallery feature. Windows 7 makes it easy to download, install and run a brand new theme pack with a few clicks of the mouse.

The dynamic background theme packs interchange every ten seconds to one day (default 30 min), depending on user's preferences. With the new personalization backgrounds, users get a difference image and experience every time they sit down at their machine.

Users can create their own background theme set with their own set of pictures within a folder on their PC.
Right click Desktop > Personalize > Desktop Background > Browse and find your desired folder > select all or some of the images you want and click Save changes.

View: Windows 7 Personalization Gallery

Download: Download Bing's Best Theme Pack

Preview:

(3 replies) #1 chemaz101 on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:09

The theme pack link just links to a small picture instead of the pack. Btw wots the res on the pics?

#1.1 Andrew Lyle on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:19

chemaz101 said,

Odd... The link is fixed now, cheers!

#1.2 Boxster17 on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:21

Just click that first image and you'll see the link to the download pack. All the images are hi-res as well it appears (1920x1200).

#1.3 Boxster17 on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:22

Can't edit, but I meant link not image (here's a direct link anyways):

http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/5...dows7.themepack

(1 reply) #2 undu on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:16

No porn images? I doubt these were the most popular :p

#2.1 toadeater on 22 Oct 2009 - 22:16

undu said,

These very the 20 most popular images out of the 20 in the Bing gallery.

(5 replies) #3 signalpirate on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:22

uhhh why only download a couple pics from bing? why not just setup the rss feed?

1.Copy this text into Notepad:

[[Theme]
DisplayName=Bing

[Slideshow]
Interval=1800000
Shuffle=1
RssFeed=http://feeds.feedburner.com/bingimages

[Control Panel\Desktop]
TileWallpaper=0
WallpaperStyle=0
Pattern=

[Control Panel\Cursors]
AppStarting=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_working.ani
Arrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_arrow.cur
Crosshair=
Hand=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_link.cur
Help=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_helpsel.cur
IBeam=
No=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_unavail.cur
NWPen=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_pen.cur
SizeAll=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_move.cur
SizeNESW=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nesw.cur
SizeNS=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ns.cur
SizeNWSE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nwse.cur
SizeWE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ew.cur
UpArrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_up.cur
Wait=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_busy.ani
DefaultValue=Windows Aero
Link=

[VisualStyles]
Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles
ColorStyle=NormalColor
Size=NormalSize
ColorizationColor=0X6B74B8FC
Transparency=1

[MasterThemeSelector]
MTSM=DABJDKT

2.Save the file as "Bing.theme"
3.Activate the theme. Double-click on the Bing.theme file to launch it. In the Subscribe to RSS Feed? prompt, click Download Attachments.

#3.1 Beastage on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:42

The resolution is horrible

#3.2 neodorian on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:43

I did that a while ago but the lower-res pics were all stretched and scaled to my desktop and looked like crap. At least these are larger.

#3.3 lflashl on 23 Oct 2009 - 01:31

thanks man i was wondering how that worked! the images are too small for my screen.

#3.4 Roadrunna on 23 Oct 2009 - 08:54

Is it easy enough to set it up to use images in specific folders on your hard-drive?

#3.5 Electric Jolt on 23 Oct 2009 - 11:55

These are high resolution. Come on, who has a screen smaller than 1024x768. That's a joke.

I have a 24" iMac, that won't work for me.

(1 reply) #4 Viserov on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:27

I'm waiting for my copy of Windows 7 to arrive from Amazon. Is there a way to get these Bing photos (automatically) as a screen saver? What about on Vista?

#4.1 Electric Jolt on 23 Oct 2009 - 11:58

Who uses screensavers anymore. Screensavers are the pathway to viruses/trojans/etc on the Internet. Not useful when keeping your computer secure, come on, desktop slideshow is good enough.

Plus you need to save electricity in this day and age. Not waste it on screensavers, lol.

(1 reply) #5 zagor on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:30

These images are stunning.

#5.1 _dandy_ on 23 Oct 2009 - 13:17

zagor said,

Yeah, as opposed to the claimed "very stunning". I'm only a little stunned.

#6 max84 on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:34

I'm loving these theme packs. All of them contain HD images, which is great.

#7 Beastage on 22 Oct 2009 - 21:42

Well done MS, theme pack insanity, so many and all great

(7 replies) #8 x-byte on 22 Oct 2009 - 22:00

To bad the pictures are ruined by a Bing logo...

#8.1 marc2003 on 23 Oct 2009 - 02:39

indeed. completely ruined it for me. i won't be using them.

#8.2 PaulDr on 23 Oct 2009 - 02:45

#8.3 Electric Jolt on 23 Oct 2009 - 11:59

You're too picky, I thought that was neat, and it's good for the company.

-1

#8.4 Lexcyn on 23 Oct 2009 - 13:25

x-byte said,

-9000.

I find the Bing logo to be quite visually appealing. Doesn't bother me one bit.

#8.5 Guol on 23 Oct 2009 - 14:08

Too bad you have poor grammar

#8.6 x-byte on 23 Oct 2009 - 14:38

Guol said,

Want a cookie?

#8.7 Peas on 26 Oct 2009 - 04:32

Agreed. Bing logo makes these otherwise excellent photos look cheap & trashy. If they're going to use me for advertising, they'd better pay me for it.

Maybe I can crop out the edges with the Bing logo in a way that maintains the aspect ratio.

(3 replies) #9 Phacoid on 22 Oct 2009 - 22:24

I checked some of the pictures their properties under the details tab you can find "Program: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh"...

#9.1 BigBoy on 22 Oct 2009 - 22:31

I am trying hard to figure how this matters and nope, coming up with nothing...

#9.2 Phacoid on 22 Oct 2009 - 22:34

Well you'd at the very least expect Microsoft employees making content for Windows 7 also use Windows 7, or any other Windows installation for that matter.

#9.3 ixne_hombre on 23 Oct 2009 - 00:29

Don't think all of this kind of content is created by MS - independent artists/photographers sell or license some of it to MS, so seeing Mac attributes on the content isnt so surprising

#10 dyreryft on 22 Oct 2009 - 22:40

microsoft develop software for the apple, would make sense they would have some mac's in the building

#11 +Xerxes on 22 Oct 2009 - 22:55

Awesome, will definetly have to grab this

does it work with the RC as well? if it doesn't, that is ok as I should have my final copy of 7 next week sometime

#12 freak180 on 22 Oct 2009 - 23:26

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows...ads/personalize

More themes to download there. Some of them have new sounds too!

#13 freak180 on 22 Oct 2009 - 23:53

Sorry to be off-topic but here is some inside footage of the New MS Store http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN9F_D3fhCM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVtLCWCHn-I

#14 Saint Shiv on 23 Oct 2009 - 03:43

All of the pictures are at 1920x1200 in the Bing theme pack... I extracted a few.

(2 replies) #15 Critical Error on 23 Oct 2009 - 05:06

They should release this packs every month!

#15.1 winlonghorn on 23 Oct 2009 - 05:10

I agree! They are easy to make, so why not?

Game themes, Movie Themes, Music Themes (I want an Alan Jackson theme), and on and on....

There is a lot of opportunity here! I don't care if they charge a small amount for some of them either (as long as they have special screensavers, icons, and look really nice)!

#15.2 Electric Jolt on 23 Oct 2009 - 12:07

Come on guys, fees? This isn't Windows XP Plus Pack. We're past that phase of paying for themes and stuff. They encourage us to make our own themes to share. I'm great with them making more themes, they probably will too. But the entire screensaver, icons, etc, not working for me. Sounds like hackers' new way to infect people's computers.

Maybe they can come out with some more Zune themes featuring certain artists. Maybe more companies like Pepsi and Milk can make themes so there can be 'got milk' and pepsi fizzing backgrounds.

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