Ever since its launch back at MWC, Microsoft's next-generation operating system for smartphones, Windows Phone 7, has enjoyed quite a high level of attention from the media and users alike, simply because this OS is considered the Redmond-based company's only chance of reviving its mobile offerings. The software giant provided further details on this OS during its MIX event, and they've even released an emulator, which, however, targets application developers in particular.

Installing the aforementioned emulator is not exactly the easiest possible process, and, for this reason, the number of people who actually got to see first hand what they should probably expect from the first smartphones to run Microsoft's OS is a bit limited.

But there are other ways of enjoying what we'd call a “near Windows Phone 7 Experience” right on your computer, one of the most interesting being discovered by our colleagues at Lifehacker and involving a free application and a custom-developed skin.

The application in question is called Rainmeter and is a customizable resource meter that can display various performance data in different formats. Rainmeter's output data can be displayed in a bar, a histogram, bitmap frames or just plain numbers. Rainmeter also includes a plugin interface, which means the feature set can be extended with third-party plugins.

And that's exactly where the Windows Phone 7-style GUI comes into play, because the WP7 experience is enabled via a custom-designed plugin for the respective app, created by fediaFedia, Xyrfo, Giblet, Varelse42 and a couple of other Deviantart users, and called Omnimo. According to the authors, the Omnimo is a “metro/zune UI inspired, highly functional and customizable complete Rainmeter desktop skin suite, the name is derived from the word WinMo (backwards it's OmniW), and has a latin equivalent Omnimodus which means universal, and universal is this project's middle name.”

Got you interested? Well, if that's the case, just follow the steps in order to get the Omnimo installed onto your desktop computer (Windows XP and above are a pre-requisite), and then come back for some thoughts of just what this customization has to offer.

Step 1 – Download the Rainmeter 1.2 Rev 357 Beta application, available right here on Softpedia.
Step 2 – Install the application.
Step 3 – Make sure that the installer has created a Rainmenter folder in My Documents.
Step 4 – Download the Omnimo custom UI (available here).
Step 5 - Unzip the archive and then run the Rainstaller.exe application, without changing the locations where various files will be installed.
Step 6 - Start the Rainmeter application, and, if necessary, select the WP7 theme from the menu.
Step 7 – Enjoy the Windows Phone 7-style GUI (setting the taskbar to auto-hide will also improve things a bit).

This is a very simple process, and you won't need that much technical expertise in order to get everything installed and working.

The results were, in fact, pretty impressive, as far as we're concerned, the UI looking well polished and close to the real Windows Phone 7 items. The Omnimo offers users a large number of customizable panels (links to various applications), which can be randomly arranged across the screen and whose background colors and appearance can be further customized.

By using these panels, you'll have access to a wide array of functions, including mail, Internet browsing (via one of the many browsers of choice – Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari), Twitter feeds, access to weather-related information and a calendar, a Zune panel, network info, etc. Furthermore, there are plenty of panels that let one monitor various hardware-related details, such as the battery status, RAM and CPU usage, fan speed, etc.

There's also an Office panel, plus a dedicated panel that lets you start up various programs. However, you'll have to remember that these are just customizable links to certain applications, and if the software was not previously installed on your computer, there's no way you'll be able to access them.

Nevertheless, the developers of the Omnimo have left a lot of space for customization, users being able to easily add their own panels and apps and change the existing ones in a very fast and easy manner. Once again, this doesn't require any advanced computer-usage skills, the whole interface being extremely user-friendly.

All in all, the Rainmeter and Omnimo make a pretty interesting pair, and we're pretty sure that they'll manage to help those users looking for a quick WP7 experience without the need to get all complicated and install the emulator.