I don’t usually have time to beautify my desktop. I seldom even change my Windows desktop wallpaper. But for those of you who like to be pampered with a different wallpaper every once in a while, there are plenty of tools out there to do just that. In this post, I would like to recommend the free Desktoptopia. What’s special about Desktoptopia is that, it actually gives you designer-quality wallpapers , instead of those mediocre ones by average-Joes. I have tried a couple of times, and have yet been disappointed by the wallpaper it provides.

When you start the program, a little   icon appears in the system tray. Click on it to get to the settings screen. You will want to set it to ‘Start at Login’ so that you don’t need worry about starting it up manually. Next you can choose the interval at which the wallpaper is renewed. Normally we set it to auto change every 1 day. You can even set to auto change up to every 1 second! But that’s just a bit crazy. This thing even support multiple monitors if you have one (I’m jealous!) via the ‘Multiple Monitors’ selection.

You can further customize the type of wallpapers you like to receive in the Feeds tab. Unselect the categories you don’t prefer here.

When done, click ‘Save’ and let the wonder begins.

At anytime if you don’t like the wallpaper, you can just right-click on the systray-icon and choose ‘Next Background’. Another nice wallpaper will come grace your desktop in no time!

As a bonus tips, Desktoptopia stores all its downloaded wallpaper in the %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Desktoptopia\Desktoptopia\cache folder (for e.g. ‘C:\Documents and Settings\administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Desktoptopia\Desktoptopia\cache’). This means that you can browse to this folder to reuse the previously downloaded Desktoptopia wallpapers even when you’re offline.

Below are a samplings of wallpaper Desktoptopia provides.

 

If the wallpapers provided does not suit your taste, or if you prefer to manually dig for wallpapers, some of the popular sites are Wincustomize, DeviantArt, Shifted Reality, and Wallpaper Stock.