The Black Marble Desktop

Not every featured desktop is on someone’s work computer in an office somewhere. This one, submitted to us by Flickr user Adam, is actually the desktop on his home theatre PC, and he has it loaded with useful at-a-glance information and quick access to his favourite applications.

The beauty of this one is that it makes it really quick access to apps such as Windows Media Center, XBMC, VLC and his other music and video entertainment applications. Want the same look? Here’s what you’ll need:

• The wallpaper from NASA’s Earth Observatory
• The Rainmeter ystem configuration and management utility for Windows
• The Before Dawn RM Bar from DeviantArt for the shortcut and application bar in the centre of the screen
• The Enigma Suite (built into Rainmeter) for the “now playing” and music control sidebar and replacing the taskbar with system uptime
• The Faded Launchers skin for Rainmeter to create the launcher buttons in the centre, using custom icons
• The Omnimo UI for Rainmeter to add the hard drive and system information on the right
• The Metro Simple skin for Rainmeter for the network information, CPU status, and weather information
• The Roboto LT theme from Google for the system font

That’s a lot of components to put together, but the end result looks pretty sharp, and serves as both eye candy and a great launcher to get you right to the apps and information you may need on your HTPC. If you need a little help getting around Rainmeter, check out our getting started guide for suggestions, or head over to Adam’s Flickr page to ask your questions.

The Roboto Earth Desktop [Flickr]