What would you do if you wanted to know what the weather is like right now? Naturally you would take a peek out the window.
YoWindow Free is a free interactive weather reporting app that takes this concept and flips it on its head;
it will show you the current weather or the weather forecast as a virtual visual representation of what the landscape would look like if you looked outside.
YoWindow Free delivers the weather forecast as well as a host of other meteorological info. It runs as a desktop app and in the system tray, but can also be set as the default screensaver.
See this program in action in the video below:
More notes on this program as follows:
- An interactive timeline: clicking anywhere on the timeline on top of the screen displays a visual representation of the weather at any point of the day. The virtual window will reflect the time as well, with darkness enveloping the scene at night, etc.
- Four days of weather forecast: YoWindow Free can display the weather forecast for the current day as well as 3 days into the future. (The paid version will give the whole week).
- Store up to two city profiles: for quick weather forecast retrieval. The paid version allows an unlimited number of cities.
Instant weather in the system tray: mouse over the system tray icon for a quick report (see screenshot to the right).- Changing the scenery: is possible, although the free version comes with the single village scene you see in the screenshots above. I am unsure as to whether other scenes are or will be available for download.
- Memory use: 9 megs running minimized in the system tray. Which is not a lot.
- Differences between the free and paid versions: free version restricted to reporting 4 days of weather rather than the whole week, and storing 2 city profiles only.
The verdict: a cute little app. The restrictions on the free app are somewhat annoying (and a mistake in my humble opinion), but I decided to post this program on the merits of the screensaver alone (and because I like the concept).
Overall YoWindow offers some good entertainment value, and at 9 megs in memory it will not tax your system resources. Give it a try.
Version Tested: 2.0 build 267
Compatibility: Windows 7, XP, Vista.
Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 2.66 megs).
