Winstep Xtreme 8.9

Publisher's Description:

Winstep Xtreme is a complete integrated Desktop Environment featuring the next generation of award winning Winstep user interface enhancements: NextSTART and WorkShelf. While most Windows customization software focuses on eye candy, Winstep applications raise the usability bar to another level: they give added functionality to Windows and complete control over every aspect of the user interface.

NextSTART is a complete Start Menu, Taskbar and System Tray replacement, famous for its unmatched flexibility. WorkShelf is a desktop replacement and tabbed program launcher. Like a dock, but better. It enables you to organize your most often used applications and documents into categorized shelves while taking as little screen space as possible.

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Latest User Reviews:

Reviewer:	spot1701	Sep 8, 2006
Version:	1.0 Beta 4
A joy to use. No performace hit. Easy to use, easy to configure and tweak and creating skins is just simplicity. I can't remember what my normal windows taskbar and startmenu look like anymore ;)
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Reviewer:	milo2112	Sep 7, 2006
Version:	1.0 Beta 4
First of all, WSX is not a shell, it is an add on for Explorer. If you want a dedicated shell, this is not for you. Second, this is far from being an alpha release! I have run winstep everyday for over 4 years and have never had any major issues. This app is not for the current generation of users who want effortless satisfaction. This is a hard core organizational tool that takes more than the length of a sit com to master... but it is really worth it. For what its worth, I would spend a lot more for a yearly subscription than what is charged...
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Reviewer:	BurtPorter111	Jul 3, 2006
Version:	1.0 Beta 3
I'll confirm what jcrabbit has to say. I use this on a PII 300 Mhz machine with W2k. Even with extensive transparency, it works very nicely, and without hogging system resources. gchenry, this product isn't a shell. For me, that's part of the attraction. I can use its improved menuing without having to mess about with an alternative shell. Winstep provides a remarkable degree of customization with a minimum of effort on the user's part. IMHO, you can't say the same about must of the shells out there.
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Reviewer:	JcRabbit	Jul 2, 2006
Version:	1.0 Beta 3
igoldsmid, the *apparent* 'performance hit' you are referring to only happens at the beginning when Xtreme is busy accessing the net to get the time and weather information, check for updates, etc... I say *apparent* because it is not actually 'stealing' CPU cycles from other applications, it is just gobbling up all the *available* CPU cycles (different thing). And, as I said, this only happens for a few seconds - you would have noticed this yourself had you not removed it within minutes of installing. :-) To prove this, Winstep Xtreme is quite snappy on a very old PII 350Mhz machine I have here.
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Reviewer:	gchenry	Jul 1, 2006
Version:	1.0 Beta 3
If you are interested in using a shell go to... shellcity.net http://shellcity.net/cgi..._search=yes&topic=A
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