February 15, 2004

removing the Shell

so last week in the background I had The Screen Savers on. I wasn't actually paying it a ton of attention, I was playing a game at the time, but I did hear Sarah Lane talking about Litestep a replacement for the Windows Shell.. also known as Explorer. Last night I was particularly bored and I realized exactly how much I truly hate explorer. I mean come on, it's a resource hog, it's not particularly special, and most inappropriately it is standard and unoriginal.

What did I do about it? Why I remembered the name Litestep because I had heard about it before, I mean in the past, and then again just the last week. My next step of course was researching it a little without wasting too much time actually reading. My first stop was at The Screensavers article found here which then of course led me both to Litestep.com and to Litestep.net

after a little download (practically nothing in the day and age of DSL and Cable) I had the shell ready to install, and so I did. Next step, going through themes to get a feel for whats out there.

There were a few good ones that I liked;
Symax - the one I am currently using
Aquazone which looked cool but wasn't great for my needs
and
Wise Dragon which just look awesome, but could use a little tweaking for my taste

those were my starter themes, although I'm still looking for better/cooler/different ones. I'll probably spend some time in message boards tonight. That is of course if I can pull myself away from Neverwinter Nights.