Most of the programs have nothing to do with each other actually.

Hmmm, that's somewhat of a loaded question. IMO, stability is more often than not a combination of the OS you're running and the quality of your video drivers.

Skinnable apps tend to stress the OS in general and the OS's video capabilities in particular.

For instance, I use a W2K laptop with an ATI video card and drivers. While W2K is stable, my ATI drivers are terrible. I can't run any skinnable apps in 32 bit color mode without getting graphic corruption and (I suspect) GDI resource leaks.

In my experience, at first it's easy to blame a particular skinnable app, but it shortly becomes apparent that its the OS and drivers that are to blame as I start to have problems with all graphic-intensive apps.

Lastly, if considering comparing the functionality of each app, then you're sort of comparing apples and oranges with regard to WindowBlinds,NextStart,and DesktopX in that on the surface, yeah they're skinnable apps but each serves a different purpose. WindowBlinds skins the standard Windows and Windows Apps. DesktopX is a "freemform" object-based desktop enhancement.
NextStart (and Workshelf) is a configurable popup menu system/program launcher.

As I said, at various times I've run all three in some combination or other. The problems I have are not with the apps but with my laptop. On my desktop computer with an entirely different video card/driver, I have no such problems.

I would consider trying all three apps you've mentioned and see how they behave on your computer. You may want to verify that your video drivers are current. If you're running a Win9XChris OS you may want to consider upgrading to Win2K as its more stable OS with better memory/resource management.

Just my two cents.

Hmm. Funky red text including my name when I posted. Hmmm. Very strange.

hmm... maybe it's broken today....
I'll try that on it's own line:

/me

When I posted my response, the browser hung as if the scripting.wincustomize.com server was not responding or timing out. I killed the browser session so I wasn't even sure my post made it to the server. Maybe the wincustomize site is experiencing heavy load?

hey,
Phar0e that's pretty cool

hey thanks chris for the information..Well, i've tried nextstart and Desktopx together..nextstep works pretty okie but unfortunately, my desktopx keeps crashing my system.ironically, i was so impressed with desktop x intially that i purchased it.( i stii like it but so unstable on my system ) , from what you told me the problems lies with the system and not the program but i've tried installing it into my desktop computer but still the same unstablity ,nextstart works fine most of the time...oh yeah, could the problem be because i'm using ATI drivers with 8MB display ram for my laptop? ( chris did mention that he was using ATI drivers on his laptop right and it didn't work well..) oh by the way, i'm runnning win98 and display drivers are current..

Airwalker, I'm using a compaq laptop running w2k with 8 Meg ATI mobile (m3 Church) video card. I can't run wblinds,nextstart,desktopx,object bar in 32 bit (True) color.

IIRC:

With wblinds I start getting black menus, then lose window title bars.

With NextStart I usually get a subscript out of range error dialog box and /or a can't auto repaint/draw image error dialog box. Or I get black menus instead of skinned menus in NexStart.

Oddly enough, DesktopX has been pretty stable for me in 16 bit (High) color mode.

The corruption usually happens anywhere from within 5 minutes to a couple of hours.

If I catch the corruption quickly and close some apps, the corruption temporarily goes away.

Running at 16 bit (High) color is much better. I almost never get the problem. (Problem is, a lot of wallpapers and NextStart themes look terrible at 16 bit (High) color so I have to tweak them with PSP).

What also make the problem occur more is if I switch between a lot wb skins and nextstart skins.

As I said, I really can't blame windowblinds or nextstart for this. If you haven't done so already try switching to 16 bit (High) color and see if you have any better luck.

ah, the / me command, leftovers from IRC

Bobo The Clown is an IRC junkie herself.