This is a somewhat outdated tool that brings one of the most significant aesthetic upgrades of Windows Vista to Windows XP users. Vista Rainbar V4 gives you the Vista Sidebar, a collection of gadgets meant to enhance your computing experience. You get things like a camera, a clock, notes, a very basic system resource monitor and a weather monitor.

Vista Rainbar V4 looks pretty good although it's not quite as attractive as Vista's own sidebar. The program gives you nice, glossy gadgets that you can click on to configure. You can also connect to Rainbar's website to download more gadgets. Unfortunately, if you're familiar with Vista or Windows 7, the gadgets options will seem quite limited to you. There's nothing really worth having that doesn't come pre-installed.

We tried editing the features of each gadget and had a little bit of trouble. Unfortunately, some of the gadget options don't seem to take effect right away although they seemed to work when we restarted the program. Vista Rainbar V4 supports a number of themes, and after a restart we were able to change themes several times in one session without any difficulty. There's an excellent variety of themes, so you'll enjoy this program if you're a desktop customization junkie.

On the plus side, you can install Vista Rainbar V4 in a matter of seconds to see how you like it. If you've been yearning for Vista's optimized user interface but you're unwilling to pull the trigger on an official upgrade, Rainbar V4 works for adding your favorite Vista features to your XP machine. It's not perfect, but it basically works.