Vista Basic Transparency

I don't think it's possible because Vista Basic doesn't have the required drivers (WDDM) and for Windowblinds to display transparency on Vista, Aero is required.

Even if you have WDDM drivers you get the Aero theme but it's not transparent. There is no possible way to get it to work with fully supported DWM effects.

It's unfortunately a very peculiar situation where Vista Basic is a "downgrade" from XP, at least with respect to the capabilities of the GUI. Anyone who wishes to use skins with Aero-like transparency should either stick with XP or be sure your version of Vista is Aero-capable. A really odd marketing approach, but MS does many odd things, most of which are designed to increase the amount of money they can manage to pry out of your pocket.

Yeh, that Microsoft evil empire is something ain't it? I mean Apple and every other corporation in the world is the antithesis of Microsoft. None but Microsoft has the bottom dollar as its prime interest. Personally, I couldn't care less what Microsoft's internal policy is nor it's goals. All I care about is product quality and service, both of which I have found to be #1 over the years. Microsoft is a BUSINESS, not a government social program for misfits, although I have met my share of them.

I'll ignore the misfit jibe, but don't get me wrong, Hap. I obviously use MS products & find them generally of very good quality. I don't begrudge them their profits - no one puts a gun to our heads, though MS lets you know they have ammo available if needed. As a consumer of Microsoft's products, however, I find their leveraging techniques very annoying & customer unfriendly - most businesses try to satisfy their existing customer base & win new business by making their new products better enough to entice them on the basis of improved quality & functionality. MS seems to prefer intentionally breaking things in prior products in the process, giving you the Hobson's choice. Let's just say Moore's Law does not seem to apply with them. If they had any serious competition, their attitude toward their customers might be different. Tough to vote with your feet when there is nowhere to go. There's no "faster, better, cheaper" mentality in Redmond.

1) The "misfit" comment was NOT directed at you personally. IF you misconstrued it to be so, that's unfortunate and I do apologize if I somehow gave you that impression.

2) Your negative assessment of Microsoft's business policies is not one I personally share. I have found Microsoft to be more than amiable, helpful and surprisingly generous in all the times I have contacted them over the years, albeit those times being few. Do I think that there is no room for improvement? Of course not. hehe But compared to many other companies whose software I have purchased, I would have to rate Microsoft near the top of the scale.

Maybe it's just a matter of perspective, but their customer service can be as friendly as can be, even really good, but that's not much consolation when they do things like intentionally cripple Windows Defender on Win2k when it was working perfectly well (as MS AntiSpyware) and was perfectly capable of running on that OS. It's that kind of nearly pointless leverage that annoys me the most.

Having said that, I think this horse has breathed its last.