Kevin,

First you should know that Litestep is a shell replacement, not an enhancer as NS and DX are. It's more powerful in some ways than either of the others. However, it always requires READING the manual (ya, sure...) or you may get that social life you've heard other people have when your computer won't boot anymore.

NextStart and DesktopX are easier to get running with but the choice is not an easy one. NS has some great features (hotspots, custom menus, etc) but DX begs to be played with... animation ability, object interaction and it gives you the feeling that it's replaced Explorer.

Of the two, I find NS less resource draining and easier to get going with. DX is more flexible but, unless you use a predefined theme, also requires more effort to suite your needs.

I switch between them. If you have the ability, I suggest you try both and decide for yourself. I don't think you'll go wrong no matter what you decide.

Oh, and please let me know if you end up with a social life. I've been dying to know what it's like but nobody around here seems to have one.

If litestep is more powerful than either of the above, but is a complete shell replacement, will one or the other be compatable with it?

I've used them all (and still do as I tend to rotate), but always refrain from these posts because it would take me a couple of hours to write a worthwhile reply. So instead of a legthy reply, here's a short version:

I'd say that the best advice is what fearoffours said - try them all and see what suits you. After all, in addition to making your desktop prettier, they have a major impact on how it's used. And since people like different things and like to work different ways, this is important. What may be my favorite won't necessarily be yours.

Pay particular attention to things that are important to you and see how each one stacks up for those categories. For example, I think the following are important:

- How quickly can I run my frequently used applications? It should take minimal navigation and only require a couple of mouse clicks.

- How configurable is it? Can I change/replace everything I can think of, or only a particular thing like the start bar?

- How easy is it to configure? Can I make a few changes quickly while modifying a theme, or is it a major effort? How quickly can I get a functioning theme up (including a woking task manager, systray, etc.)

- How easy is it to download and apply someone else's theme? Can you install and run it easily, or do you spend an hour fixing hard-coded paths and non-existant application shortcuts? Or worse, debugging the versions or order of .dlls as they conflict with each other or the theme contained old ones that don't do the stuff you're accustomed to since you normally work with recent ones. - ahem - sorry got carried away.

- How many plugins does it have and how useful are they?

There are a lot more things to consider, but that's a sampling. The last piece of advice I can give is to remember to compare all of their shortcomings in addition to their strong points. You'll get a better picture of their capabilities, and will prepare yourself for what could be a lot of frustration later. Sure product XXX can do this, but it might take you hours to get it work, and it stops working with every new theme you download. That's just a fictional example, but illustrates the point.

Brad is quite right - you can use them all together. Only thing I want to point out is that NextSTART, DX and LiteStep are very powerful programs with hundreds of different options and abilities, so it might take some time before you fully realize what each program can do. Reading through documentation is always important, more so in some cases than others, granted, but in every case it will enable you to better grasp the potential of each program.

Anyway, I can't speak about the other applications for obvious reasons (I'm sure Jafo will be able to describe LiteStep pretty well, though ) but what I can do is highlight some of the good points in NextSTART, some of them unique to it:

Easy to Install and Run: NextSTART is a desktop enhancement. It does not force you to replace Explorer - it just installs and runs like any other application. NextSTART can, in fact, run on top of any shell, be it Explorer, LiteStep or any other. Simply exit NextSTART for your Windows interface to be automatically returned to normal.

Familiar Default Interface: When run for the first time, NextSTART presents the user with the things the user has always relied on: A Start button, a Task List and the Systray. Everything is still there, but with a completely different (and much better!) look. Open the default NextSTART menu and all the things that were on the Windows Start Menu are there as well (plus some nice extras). As the user grows accustomed to NextSTART, he will be able to change the default interface so that it looks and behaves *exactly* as he wants it to.

Easy to Configure: Every single option in NextSTART can be tweaked via a graphical Preferences panel. No need to learn commands or hand-edit text configuration files. You can also preview changes as you go.

User-Independent Themes: NextSTART themes are totally independent from content. Just download a new NextSTART theme, import it and that's it! Your carefully constructed menus will still be there - but with a completely different theme. No need to re-do anything; it just can't get any easier than this. NextSTART themes are also screen resolution independent.

Hotspots: Hotspots are basically areas on your desktop (or other windows) which are associated to menus, actions or programs. They are a very powerful concept: You can, for instance, have one menu popping up when you click on a specific area of the desktop, another completely different when you bump the left screen edge, yet another when you click on the titlebar of an Excel window, etc... Hotspots can be attached to the desktop, screen edges and even other application windows! Each hotspot can be made to open a menu, run a program or run an Internal NextSTART command. As of NextSTART 2.50, you also have visible hotspot buttons.

Full Drag & Drop support: NextSTART fully supports drag and drop for adding applications, documents and other shortcuts to menus. You can also use drag & drop to re-arrange menu items or copy/move items from one menu to another.

Full Right-click Context Menu support: Just like you do on your Windows Start Menu, you can right click on a NextSTART menu item to perform all sorts of actions on it (Delete, Rename, Scan for Viruses, Show Container, Search, etc...). In fact, basically every option available on Explorer context menus is also available on the NextSTART context menus - all in the gorgeous look provided by your current theme.

Extended Functionality: NextSTART is no toy, nor is it just a pretty face. NextSTART will improve your productivity as well as provide an attractive and functional interface. Unlike with the Windows Start Menu, all your menus are completely configurable. NextSTART allows you to access control panels, applications, system tools, disks, folders, even the entire contents of your desktop or recycle bin with greater ease than before.

Theme Integration: NextSTART integrates very well with other Winstep applications such as WorkShelf. Change a theme in NextSTART and the same theme is automatically applied to WorkShelf (and vice-versa). WorkShelf context menus also use NextSTART skinned menus.

There are, of course, hundreds of other features besides the ones described above. For more information regarding NextSTART, you can read the online User Guide at:

http://www.winstep.net/help/help-ns2/help-ns2.html

Jorge Coelho
NextSTART 2.70 - A user interface that you can actually use!
http://www.winstep.net - Winstep Software Technologies
IRC Chat: #winstep on AustNet

craeonics thinks Jorge's got a macro for that

Jorge....send me your Nextstart and I'll spell-check you at no charge...
I'm betting you DO have a macro for that response....
All I have is a 'Listen to fathom' one....but he hasn't said anything here....

Main thing to remember is that all the skinning/theming proggies/shells are intended to do the same basic thing.....change the User Interface of Windows.
They all achieve this via differing philosophies, with varying ease/success/practicality.

Try them all....you will enjoy the experience of wonderous creativity potential afforded by them.

Depending on how many hours you personally can squeeze out of a day depends on how many proggies you focus on with your endeavours.

Unfortunately [or not], I got into LiteSTEP many years ago, so, much to Jorge's eternal frustration, will always promote LS over NS...[but bribery works]....

'STEPping is, or can be, an on-going voyage of discovery...there is just so much it can do....after 4 years, I'm still finding ways to do things....

Anyway....just check them all out.... ther's bound to be one that suits you perfectly....