the forest was beautiful, however once activated i could not move around any icons on the desktop

Hmmm, on examining the file, this animated wallpaper is created with "Desktoppaints Animated Wallpaper Maker 2.3.1"

(Click my name for their website)

So this is basically an off-the-shelf tool and a design team whom don't appear to be very adept, which explains it's crudeness, a shame as the examples given by the desktop paints website actually seem quite decent.

GAOTD, if that creation software is offered however, I'd be very pleased!

Same thing goes for this screen saver that I made comments on regarding the "animated fish" except this one actually is slightly better as there are no terrible animated "fish" in your way.

Like many others, Animated wallpapers are not my thing but I thought I’d try it.

Sadly, I was horribly disappointed.

The good:
It only used 12MB on my system, WinXP Pro legal.

The bad: Everything else…

The image had terrible colours and horrible clarity. Pictures that my quite basic phone camera takes look far, far better than this.
(Click on my name to see the actual grainy image)

The background is not dynamic at all, just a plain fuzzy static image with some moving dots that are moving up and very poorly rendered “light” effects just slapped crudely over it.

I could not quite figure out why there were dots and why they are moving upwards but moving like jerky falling snow???

Sorry, but this is terrible and I really forgive anyone that actually paid for this.

Downloaded and installed fine on Windows XP SP3 Just like the Goldfish one did the last time it was offered. Still wish a couple of their otheres were the ones offered.

rather boring compared to goldfish wallpaper :-(

works great.

Installed on Vista Home Basic. Did not run. Vista told me that the program was having a problem. Uninstalled.

Tried to start it, a settings message box came up and then it stopped working. I have no idea why. This happens with both the goldfish and the forest versions.
Anyone?

It's like belly button fluff, every one has it, no body wants it.

Hey Fubar, just curious, are you connected with 4freeOnInternet? If so, tell them "you have no proof about everything you said about dotTech". Thanks. 'Cause I tried to say that but they keep on deleting my comments knowing that they don't have proof at all. :)

~Joji~

I find that if I put one of these animated wallpapers on in my Windows 7 that its gone right away because Windows 7 has a wallpaper changer that keeps changing your wallpaper. So I took it off.

I don't know why some people are reporting high CPU usage from these. The Vista Reliability and Performance Monitor, which has the most accurate average CPU usage of any tool that I know of, reports the Gold Fish Animated Wallpaper, running stretched across a 1920x1200 and a 1600x1200 monitor, as using 0.38% of total CPU (across all cores) of my PC at startup, when it minimizes all application windows. That drops to 0.04% of total CPU when the Reliability and Performance Monitor window is maximized. I suspect that some people may have video driver problems (I always use the latest nVidia drivers).

I don't care for this one as much as the gold fish. There is not as much animation for me. As others have said the cpu and ram use is a little high. Too much for me to want this to run all of the time. As with the gold fish I will use this at times when I don't want to wait for my screensaver to activate. Thank you GAOTD team for all of your efforts. Thank you to the publisher, AnimatedWallpaper7.com, for the offering. I think the way that you responded to the issues with the gold fish wallpaper will earn you some visits and purchases from the users here. I know I will look.

Works fine on WinXP-SP2 (as does GoldFish.. now). I was glad to see the changes to return right/click menu on desktop, but they still have bugs interacting with the 'show icons on desktop' function. When you turn off the icons in animation menu and then exit, you have to turn them off and back on again in desktop right/click menu to get them back. And if you launch the animation with the icons turned off, there's no animated background showing. I am very glad to see the programmers working so quickly to improve their product. I think the drastic reduction in cpu usage when covered by a working window is the key feature.. how DO they do that? :) Thanks,

Works well on my ZX81 Sinclair. Thanks GOTD.

As number 7 John already said, it's a resource hog. Had my dual core cpu running at 35 to 40%. Also if you have dual monitors then forget it, the only choice you have is to stretch it across both or have it sit half way between both monitors.

P.S. How bout sharing the animated wallpaper maker next time? Just a thought... :) :) :) :) :)

I also put this comment on the goldfish wallpaper page...

Here is my analysis of both wallpapers given away today. I am running XP SP2. What I have open: 2 IE windows; Outlook; Media Player; Cleanse Uninstaller; and notepad. With the goldfish wallpaper running (with visible icons) my CPU is at 43% and the app is using 30% of that. Without icons, my CPU drops to 26% and the app, 8%. The Forest wallpaper is giving me almost the same results, maybe running 2% more of the CPU %. I would suggest right clicking the app in the task bar and hiding the icons, just make sure to unhide them before exiting the program. The only glitch I’m having (which is really minor) is that when I hide my icons and then hover over my task bar, everything is blinking. Not that big of a deal, but a glitch nevertheless. It is running much better than the last install, 2 weeks ago.

My recommendations for the creators: Put more cute fish of more color into the wallpaper and you’ll have an app worth buying in my opinion. For the Forest wallpaper, I would eliminate all the specks flying around and maybe add some fireflies, dragonflies, birds, and maybe some cricket and frog sounds (that can be toggled off). To me, the aquarium is really cute and a keeper, but the forest is pretty boring. I do appreciate them though so thank you very much.

For anyone that may not know this, you can hide your icons and then right click on your taskbar and click ‘desktop’. This will add the desktop to your taskbar so you only have to click that to get a list of what is on there without ever having to go to the actual desktop. I always have this feature turned on and it is a real time saver.

Thanks GAOTD for all the great apps you find for us daily. I’ve been downloading for a few years now and just think you guys are the greatest!!!

It changes (lowers) the screen resolution on my Windows 7!!!! The icons on the left also get a bit off the screen (can only see 'mputer' instead of 'Computer' and so on...)

No setting to adjust screen resolution.

@Brewster (6) & John (7):

Memory and cpu-usage are high when nothing else is happening at your pc (just watching the desktop-screen).
I get max just below 40% CPU-usage.

But this is not telling anyone anything. All processes also have a priority level which is very important.

As soon you start doing something like opening a browser, the amount of cpu-usage (used by the wallpaper) suddenly drops way under 10 percent due to a low priority-level.

This means, when you are dong nothing it uses quite a bit of CPU, but who cares when you are doing nothing.
As soon you start something, cpu-usage drops substantially, which means the wallpaper is not in the way of the things you are doing.

This is a mistake very commonly made, just taking a quick peek in the taskmanager and that's it. But you always have to be aware of priority-levels and check while doing some other things too.

Fubar @3 already stated "it works well with very low overhead on my Vista PC". I wholeheartedly second that.

The wallpaper is made to not interfere with the things you're being busy with. That is rather quite good, isn't it (no more resource-hog stories).

Ofcourse in order to run, it will take resources perse, but this is meant to be eyecandy not to speed up your pc. When you like eyecandy, like I do (computers have to be a bit of fun too) this wallpaper is not to bad on resources an rather nce to look at when you return to your computer.
Only when your computer is still combustion-driven with stone components from the prehistory you might have an issue. -lol-

I like both wallpapers. You have to expect animation to take a little more memory. You can turn them on or off very easily if 60meg memory is critical. Both run fine on Win7 64bit. No problems installing. The icons change when running but recover when the wallpaper is turned off.

Thanks to GOTD.
Downloaded ok.
Activated no problem - ok.
Ran on vista64 but is - as far as I can tell - only suitable for single screen - not dual/triple etc.

Holiday weekend, so was hoping for something like this. Not as active as the fish but still a nice novelty, for free. Thanks GAOTD!

I absolutely love this! No problems or bugs in any way. Installed on Vista 32bit. The picture an animation are beautiful - just my visual cup of tea. I asked for an animated autumn wallpaper the last time an ani wallpaper giveaway was posted, so I'm thrilled to have this one.

Thank you to both Giveaway of the Day and the Creator of this beaut software.

Installed ok on Vista Home Premium.
Uses over 60 megs of ram when running (uninstalled)

Fantastic. I have been waiting months for this. It's an answer to my prayers! Installed and works great on my TRS-80. Five thumbs up! Everyone else, please also share your excitement!

Animated wallpaper? Well yes, if you consider tiny dots floating around as an overlay to a static forest scene. I cannot see why anyone would use this let alone buy it. In my opinion this has no use whatsoever. The only saving grace is that the static pic is kinda nice, but with a web search one can find many scenes like this.

While this isn't a very interesting scene, it works well with very low overhead on my Vista PC, but I did have to set XP SP2 compatibility. Minimizes applications on startup, which is annoying.

I don't use it often, but I rather liked the Goldfish animated wallpaper given away before, so color me interested.

May 15th we had the "goldfishes animated wallpaper". I liked that one and I'm very pleased to see this "forrest aninated wallpaper" today.
It is pleasant to look at. Little flies catching the sun are the animated part. Very realistic and good atmosphere.

The makers really paid attention to the critics last time (comment 30, may 15th) because there are some improvements also.

Your background gets restored on exit, even if the background was stretched (with the goldfishes they got tiled)

Settings were only remembered when "start with windows" was checked, but now settings are remembered independant of that (exception is the "stretch" option).

There was no interaction with the background but now there is; rightclicking shows the appropriate menu (sometimes it hesitates though).

Icon-background still gets changed and transparancy still gets lost though.
Compatibility with "fences" is still troublesome.

A new bug, focus somtimes gets lost (flashing tasks in the taskbar) when more tasks are runninig in the taskbar.