Stardock vs. Astonshell.

Whelp, as far as I know, they all ahev shareware try-before-you buy versions. So <b>you</b> should download the lot and find out which suits you better. <br /> <br />/me merrily cruises around on his custom LiteStep theme

I&acute;ll try to explain....... chickie, I can not compare &quot;Stardock&quot; VS/AstonShell because Stardock is the &quot;Brand Name&quot; of many programs. <br /> <br />So let&acute;s take Stardocks &acute;DesktopX&quot; VS/ AstonsShell, I personaly don&acute;t like DesktopX, I had to many problems with it being compatable with many other programs I have, so I like AstonShell Best, no bugs, very compatable and can do a whole lot more on your desktop..........

/Red is used to talkin to himself lol j/k <br /><b>ChiChi:</b> I&acute;ll take that into account. 8) Thx for the tip. <br /> <br /><b>Chickie:</b> In 98 open up My Computer. Then select the C drive <br />If the web view is on, you will see a pie chart with dirve&acute;s size and other info. <br />If you don&acute;t see that, alt+double click on the C drive icon. It should bring up the pie chart & info. <br />You want to look for total drive size or &quot;Capacity:&quot; as it will be shown. Tell me how much is in use too. I&acute;m curious how badly you are in need of space. <br /> <br />As for CD&acute;s, a blank one will only work in a writable CD drive. A regulate one just can&acute;t do it. You could ask around if some had... <br />a) an external cd burner they could bring over for you to use. <br />b) an external zip drive (or something) that they could use to transport skins to a computer with a cd burner. <br /> <br />As for skins, tell me about how you have them organized. If they are in one folder, you can alt+double click it and find out how much space they uses. If they aren&acute;t all organized under one folder, it&acute;s a bit more tricky. <br /> <br />I actually haven&acute;t tried Aston, so I can only speculate. It seems like an easy to configure LiteStep-like shell. GeOShell is also easy to configure, but works differently. Everything is in lil bars. You control how they are show, and what&acute;s in them. A screen shot will show you what I mean. Most sites have a section for it. <br /> <br />Let me know if I can clarify anything for you. Maybe we should e-mail, or try to chat/IM. Might make it easier. 8)

chickie..... just a suggestion, watch what your deleting off of your c/drive, make sure you know what it is before deleting anything..... You could very well crash your computer or cause some programs not to work properly by deleting .dll etc that are sharing files???? But skins, music, icons, cursors, themes you go girl, I know you have a TON on your computer LOL

Cut, umm, I mean Red, is a sysop, so he speaks in jargon. IBM-compatible usually means &quot;machine that runs Windows&quot; as opposed to Macs or workstations (which run *nix). <br /> <br />Anyhow, your diskspace is minimal. 2G is nothing these days. So it&acute;d be best to get a second drive. With prices these days, you&acute;d be able to get a 40G drive cheap (well, relatively cheap). But I fear installing it could cause you some problems (not to mention the damage it will do to your fingers). <br /> <br />Installing a drive isn&acute;t too hard... if you know what you&acute;re doing. Best to let someone comfortable with things like that handle it. Unless you feel adventurous.

IBM compatable I ment. ^.^; Sorry about that. Gateway is an IBM compatable machine, but Gateway is notoriously incompatable with other parts. I stear clear of them. Seems your&acute;s has lasted you awhile though. <br /> <br />As for the commordore 64, good machine that won&acute;t do you any good. :P

I have Gateway comp. Bleh! I don&acute;t like IBM. The more I clean the junk out of C drive, the more space I have. :) I have a Commordore 64. It still works, but it&acute;s not good. ;)

Chickie: wow, that is barely any space. o.o; Is this your first computer, or did you have another IBM compatable before it? Heck, ask around. A friend might have one beter than that from an old machine they don&acute;t use. I wish I lived near you. I have a spare 2 gig just floating around and no place to put it. You should be able to get a really cheap one second hard from someplace. Don&acute;t pay more than ten dollars for it. Actually, you might be able to get a whole computer second hard from a college. You could just gut it for parts. It might be better than what you have even. Don&acute;t pay more than 20-30 bucks tho, and ask to see if it will turn on. <br /> <br />As for the skins folder, you can use the alt+click trick on it to find out how much room it&acute;s using. It&acute;s always a good idea to keep track of info like that. Btw, seceral resource monitors will tell you how much space is used/;eft on your hard drive. Sysmetrix, Rainmeter, Samarizer, and possibly Sysmeter2 include it I believe. I actually use label.dll to show it in LiteStep, and find it very useful information to have. Not something that &quot;needs&quot; to be on all the time, but an easier & skinnable way to check it. 8)

Now, I understand, Red. LOL Last night, I deleted themes & etc what I don&acute;t use. <br />The skins are oraginzed & alpahbetized in the folder. Yahoo skins goes with Yahoo skins folder & etc. :) <br />C drive - Capacity - 2.00 GB. <br />Free space - 114.69 GB. Used space - 1.89 GB. <br />Still got more to spring clean the C drive. :D <br /> <br /> <br />

Hey Red she doesn&acute;t skin....... and your a little to deep in explanations for sweet little chickie :-) <br /> <br />Just tell him chickie you don&acute;t understand what Red is telling you, he&acute;ll explain it until you understand....... Red is very smart :-) and tell him you don&acute;t understand the differences between the programs he is talking about and not to use skinning language :-)

Red, The skins are space hogs! LOL LOL I download lots of skins. Cartoons, animals, nature & holidays. :p I dunno how is the hard drive. I don&acute;t have a CD burner. Will blank CD work? I&acute;m not planning to purchase Astonshell yet. Is GeOShell like Aston or vise versa? <br /> <br />

Oh ya... where you been? You can call me Red. :P lol

Cool. GeOShell is free and easy to configure. Very minimalistic though. If you like that, than you&acute;ll like GeOShell. It does make skinning it very easy. If you aren&acute;t the minimalist type, it may be too basic for you. Really, that&acute;s what it comes down to for GePShell. Just from this info you problly can tell if it&acute;s for you or not. What is it that you find lacking in the others though? I&acute;m just curious. I have an interest in interface design, and always like to here what ppl want. ;) <br /> <br />How about the storage? What are you planning to do with that? How big id your hard drive, and how much room are the skins taking of it?

Cut, I&acute;m satisfied with WinBlinds & IconPackager for now. :) Astonshell is next. I tried the shareware apps - NextStart, Stardock&acute;s Desktop X, ObjectBar. It&acute;s hard to decide which is the best. Maybe, I&acute;ll get Geoshell in the future. :) Thanx for helping me. ;)

Chickie... <br /> <br />Shells Aston has a trial, and if you skin it, you can get a free copy. GeoShell is worth a try too. Great shell. I&acute;m willing to help you creat rhe XP style LiteStep theme I&acute;ve seen you (and others) ask about. :D In the mean time, have you ever sheck out the set ups at modzine http://www.modzine.net before? You can do a lot with just explorer and a few tweaks. <br /> <br />Icons: You can changle them malually, and set up things to automate it. Such ass iff you had them pointing to the same folder or icl file. That&acute;s how I like to do it, and is worth a try. Ok ok... iPhile is the real way to go (and free), but I&acute;m the manual type. 8) <br /> <br />Storage: I HIGHLY recomend a CD-WR drive. CD burners are great for this kinda stuff. A single cd is also pocket change in bulk (and trust me, you use them), where as a Zip disk is $10 each in bulk. The drives for CD burners are cheap now too. It&acute;s a great time to buy them. Each can hold 650 to 700 megs of data. I put files on one disk, then a second backup, and finally delete the original file. ANother option is new/second hard drive. DOn&acute;t spend more than a dollar a gig. Like go for a 40 gig for $40, or a 60 gig for $60 (which is what I did). It&acute;s easy to install, and I can explain in detail having done it more than once (I&acute;ve recieved on the job training to do it). <br /> <br />Let me know if you&acute;re interested in any of my suggestions and I&acute;ll give you more info. 8)

Alrighty. I purchased IconPackager. I love those little icon themes. :D I&acute;m addicted to WinBlinds. Sometime, I will get Astonshell. WinBlinds & Iconpackager is a space hog. Where can I keep skins for storage? My C drive gets full of themes & skins. :o Right now, I&acute;m happy with IconPackager. :) <br />

I never really liked windowsblinds since its such a resource hog. Aston does a nice job of memory management and is much more skinable so i&acute;d gowith Aston.

Hey there. Throwing in my Two cents! ;) <br />While Stardock&acute;s products are nice and easy to use with loads of theme support, and Aston is also very cool and well supported, they are BOTH sharware, not Freeware. geoshell as well as BlackBox for Windows are both excellent freeware shells. I only use Flarp!Bar and xRun as my shell or else run with geoshell. As most can tell by my themes, I&acute;m into minimalism. <br />ShellWm works just as well for me as WindowBlinds EVER has. And I&acute;m currently stuck on a 333Mhz Windows ME machine. :,

*ahum* groove, take a look at the date of the last post made before you. Yes, you&acute;ve resurrected a six month old thread. <br /> <br />Let the dead rest, my man, they deserve the Sleep of the Eternal.

and dead is is....