Alright, so you're interested in building a better user experience in XP or Vista. If you're willing to take the leap required away from what you're used to, the first step toward a better, brighter future, is to change the shell.
The default Windows shell, as I've mentioned before, is Explorer.exe, and while it has its good points, it is classically a memory hog, and even once you've taken the steps needed for good quality skinning, like Visual Styles or even the purchase of StarDocks excellent WindowBlinds. . . there's only so much you can do to tailor it to your needs. IF you're like me, anyway, you wind up with a bunch of other programs designed to make things easier and more friendly for yourself running on top of the shell, and sooner or later you have to cut corners. One of the fastest ways to do that is to switch to a lighter, more minimalistic shell to build your experience on top of.
The best shell replacement I've yet tried, having tried several, is emergeDesktop. It's lightweight, with a low memory footprint and enough customization options to give you all the functionality you need from it while keeping it out of your way. One of its primary stated goals is to maximize screen size, so if you've got pretty wallpapers that you like looking at it's a good way to go.
Some other options include litestep and other shells in its family - while these shells are perhaps a bit stronger on number of features offered, they're also more difficult to configure. If you're interested in that, go here: www.litestep.net/
Otherwise, you'll be wanting to know about emerge, and as it's the shell I actually use, we'll be discussing it below. Emerge has one other strong advantage going for it over some of the other decent minimalist shells out there in that it's still being actively developed by the fantastic ironhead. It also has the advantage, from my mind, of being very stable; I've never had it crash on me in day-to-day activities. Once, when I was putting undue strain on it anyway. But not a common thing. Anyone else using Explorer getting used to the 'routine crash'?
(You know, it also helps if you pull out anything that you don't need that wasn't made by MS and run all your updates; but sometimes you're just better off changing horses.)
You'll start by downloading the latest stable release of emerge from the aforementioned website. If you can't figure out where to get it from there, you really shouldn't be trying to change your shell, now should you? Wink, wink. Seriously, people, I see this step listed all the time, and half the time there's photos. Do we really need that much instruction for a download?
No? I didn't think so.
The process of changing your default shell is made very easy by the emerge install process; the included program, Emerge Desktop Shell Changer, makes it a simple matter to change back to the Explorer shell if need be.
So, you run the install, you change your shell, and you either reboot or log out and in again. What now?
Well, you'll see the standard emerge applets. Yeah, I said applets. . . each applet is a mini-program that makes up some feature of the shell. You only use the applets you actually need, so anything that's replaced by some other program you can just turn off. Neat, huh?
As opposed to Explorer, which basically loads practically EVERYTHING, even if you don't use anything on your taskbar at all.
Plus, you can drag the applets anywhere on the screen (Ctrl + Click 'n' Drag) and Ctrl + Click to change the settings.
Wanna know where your icons went? Rightclick the desktop, and you'll see the emergeDesktop applet, which is basically a fancy context menu. You DO know what a context menu is, right? The menu you see when you rightclick on something? You do? Good.
Mess around a little. You'll figure it out. If you don't, you can always go back . . . there are some really nice, fancy EXTENSIONS to the Explorer shell you could try instead, but they only ADD memory consumption, not reduce it.
The default applets are emergeDesktop, Tray, Tasks, and I think Command - between them giving you all the basic functionality of the taskbar and then some. Including a clock!
Now that you've got your neat, minimalist desktop, it's time to add some flare to it, and make things more usable for your day-to-day. We'll start talking about software to add in my next entry; until then, just. . . don't forget to be awesome, ok? Good luck!
PS; if you're feeling edgy, you might also try one of the blackbox variants for windows. Google it; BBlean, BBclean, bb4win, and others. They're linux based, and have their good points. . . but they couldn't beat emerge for me, and they have occasional stability issues when run as a shell replacement.
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