So. Does any one here get into this? I have tried many programs in the last several years. Not only to make the GUI a little nicer to look at (Explorer is functional, but not very pretty), but also to free up resources. Litestep does that fairly well. Just doesn't seem to have the user base it use to. A lot of the sites are drying up. I have also tried Hoverdesk, Talisman, Nextstart, ObjectBar and DesktopX. They are nice to look at, but pretty memory intensive and CPU hungry.

Anyway. Just wondering if anyone else has messed around with any shell replacements or customizations, and if so, which ones and what was your experience with them.

I tried Litestep briefly about 2 years ago. Not sure why I never went back though. Haven't tried any others. Windows Explorer certainly is not the best. It is a resource hog and really not designed that well.

99.99% of the people I've known use the default shell. Only one NT users I've known used Litestep. There are probably more though.

I might try Litestep again. Haven't given it any thought. I think the reason most people don't switch is because they are so used to Explorer and they don't want to learn something new. I could be totally wrong though.

Nope. I would say that you are pretty much on target. Another factor being that it does have a somewhat steep learning curve. While it is extremely customizable, you have to be comfortable with editting configuration files and I just don't think a lot of Windows users are. You also have to edit system files to switch your shell, which can lead to real issues for most users.

For anyone interested though, there are some really nice themes to be found here - Litestep at Wincustomize (http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=6). Just be sure to read the FAQ's and ask a lot of questions.