Alright. A bit of a brain teaser here though not a real problem. I'm currently building a custom Windows XP machine to look as close to the Mac-SE desktop as possible and am wondering: is there is any way to change the colour depth of Windows to 4 or 8 bit grayscale (it currently only offers the choices of 16 and 32bit colour)? I've already implemented WindowBlinds to alter the window appearance, but I'd like to eliminate all colour entirely from the desktop and my two options are to either run one very large batch conversion of every icon on my machine to grayscale, or to find some way to alter Windows' colour settings so that it is grayscale across the board. Would much prefer to do the latter rather than the former so I thought I'd ask on here if anyone has heard of anything or any way to bring colour back down to the early eighties =)

windows xp allows only 16 and 32 bit by default. powerstrip allows to force 256 colours depth. but below? I don't think so.

why didn't you just buy a mac with windows already on it

I aquired a Mac-se case (nothing inside) and am putting a new machine in it. For various reasons I need to stick with WinXP so am curious if there was a way to wipe the colour out.

Go to the display properties screen where you can choose 16- and 32-bit color/colour. Click the Advanced button, then click the Adapter tab, then click the "List All Modes" button. You should see more choices. (My Laptop display goes down to 16 colors [4-bit], but maybe you can go down further.) Incidentally, if you go to Start > Shutdown and wait a few seconds, your Windows desktop should gray out. I don't know how to keep it grayed out, but there must be some way....

I just rememberd this program which, interestingly, is available for both Mac and Windows. If you play around with the balances, perhaps you could get something you want. Note of caution: To return my display to its default settings, I had to open my device manager, delete my display adapter, and reboot windows.