I remember back in the day when I was told not to use fullscreen wallpapers because they ate up too much precious memory and affected the system’s performance. Those were the days when we used to count RAM in MBs though. Now with gigs of RAM being so commonplace, the amount a high-res wallpaper image will use up accounts for mere decimals in the overall scheme of things. So why not then splurge a bit and get some awesome wallpaper images to show off that new LED backlit display you just upgraded to?
Now wallpapers come dime a dozen on the web today. The real trick is in finding the best of them and finding them often enough to keep the interest alive and have jealous eyes peeping over your shoulders all the time. Here then, is a list of top 5 sources to go to for an unlimited supply of awesome wallpapers.
1. Vladstudio
For years now, Vladstudio has been churning out a growing collection of some of the best illustration-based wallpapers. Minimalistic in nature for the most part, they never cease to inspire a ‘wow!’ when placed on the desktop. Also check out their wallpaper clocks category. It needs a software install, but the collection of clocks built shrewdly inside of their wallpapers beats any desktop clock widget out there by a mile.
2. Mike Swanson’s Wallpapers
For photography enthusiasts, especially those with an eye for macro photography, this one’s hard to beat. The updates are not very regular, but it’ll be a while before you use up the ones that are already there. You can also download the entire set in standard or widescreen format as single ZIP files. Great idea if you keep chaning your wallpapers often, or are using one of those wallpaper changer apps (or the one built into Windows 7).
3. DeviantArt
DeviantArt has been around for a long long time now, and continues to be one of the best places out there for the art & desktop customization enthusiasts. It’s wallpapers category is ferociously updated, so much so that finding good stuff from crap can be a task. My recommendation is to sort by popularity over a month or all time (look for the options in the top-right corner). You won’t be disappointed. Be aware though that the site does contains images depicting nudity as well. They’re not displayed by default though, so the site isn’t necessarily NSFW.
4. National Geographic Wallpapers
Straight from the horse’s mouth, you could say. Coming from the guys who invented the awesome in nature imagery, photography doesn’t get any bigger. If the most awesomest photographs out there are what you crave for, this is the place. A growing library of images from National Geographic, made available in the right size and shape just to adorn your desktops. Not all images are available in all 80 different resolutions that computer screens come in these days, but the sheer variety and quality of imagery makes up for that and then some.
5. Wallcoo
This one’s a little different. To start with, it’s chinese (or japanese or korean; sorry, can’t read can’t tell). But who really cares as far as it has good images one can use!? The collection on this site varies from photography to illustration to anime and spans every possible genre out there. There are literally thousands of wallpapers to be found here, and the list keeps growing by the day. Most of the images are pretty good quality too. If you’re not exactly sure what kind of an image you want, this is the place to be.
Well, just in case you haven’t already left for one of the sites above and did actually make it till here, I’ll not keep you waiting too long. Go grab ‘em!
