As a long-time (3 years) developer of a Windows shell (Serenade, at http://www.courtah.net), I have come across many times when things just break with new versions of Windows, and things go awry. Things like grabbing the system tray are extremely annoying to do, and it seems like they change little aspects of it with every new version just to aggravate us. Also, starting with Windows 2000 they integrated things like the dialup-networking icon into the shell, so it goes away when you install another shell.
For those who don't believe there are hidden Windows API calls, there are. Such as SwitchToThisWindow which actually sets focus to a foreground window (as opposed to SetForegroundWindow which just flashes it in 2000/XP). Combined with obscure things necessary to get shell hooks working and creating icons for InstallShield installers etc, they've successfully made it a pain to program the shells. But so long as people continue to use Windows, we'll keep hacking away.
Watch out for resource usage on some of these products. Especially on Windows 9x/ME, you can run into major problems because of the limited GDI resources Windows provides (Windowblinds can be especially bad about this, though it's better with newer versions) and its inability to deal with slight problems.
My experience with Stardock products is that they are fairly heavy on GDI resource usage and that's something that can be hard to monitor, especially when they are loaded into every program in your system (Windowblinds). Also sometimes things don't operate 100 percent correctly, but they do some neat things like alpha blending on OSes that don't natively support it (though it's shakey at best). The nice thing about Stardock, though, is that there's an actual company behind them, so you can pay some $$$ and get support -- then again, you have to pay $$$.
There's a surprising number of other shells out there besides just GeoShell and Litestep. Not just because I write it, but from what others tell me, Serenade is one of the most stable and user-friendly. As with anything under development, it's a work in progress, but it's very usable. You might consider checking it out at Courtah.net. There are some nice themes at Skinbase.
SharpE is also a nice shell, but lacks some customization abilities. I don't prefer Litestep because I think it's too disorganized (but it's the foundation of the community), and Geoshell is a nice shell despite forcing you to configure everything through the registry. In short, try many of them out, just make sure you read the directions on how to get your old shell back _carefully_.
Look on ShellFront or Desktopian for more info/links.
This is a really sad day. Most of the slashdot community can continue using encryption, but their PGP package was the only one I've seen easy enough for my mother to use. The integration with outlook/etc made it so easy to use. Hopefully they'll do the Right Thing (tm) and make it open source, so that we can continue making it compatible with OSes like XP -- which unfortunately people are using.
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As a long-time (3 years) developer of a Windows shell (Serenade, at http://www.courtah.net), I have come across many times when things just break with new versions of Windows, and things go awry. Things like grabbing the system tray are extremely annoying to do, and it seems like they change little aspects of it with every new version just to aggravate us. Also, starting with Windows 2000 they integrated things like the dialup-networking icon into the shell, so it goes away when you install another shell.
For those who don't believe there are hidden Windows API calls, there are. Such as SwitchToThisWindow which actually sets focus to a foreground window (as opposed to SetForegroundWindow which just flashes it in 2000/XP). Combined with obscure things necessary to get shell hooks working and creating icons for InstallShield installers etc, they've successfully made it a pain to program the shells. But so long as people continue to use Windows, we'll keep hacking away.
Watch out for resource usage on some of these products. Especially on Windows 9x/ME, you can run into major problems because of the limited GDI resources Windows provides (Windowblinds can be especially bad about this, though it's better with newer versions) and its inability to deal with slight problems.
My experience with Stardock products is that they are fairly heavy on GDI resource usage and that's something that can be hard to monitor, especially when they are loaded into every program in your system (Windowblinds). Also sometimes things don't operate 100 percent correctly, but they do some neat things like alpha blending on OSes that don't natively support it (though it's shakey at best). The nice thing about Stardock, though, is that there's an actual company behind them, so you can pay some $$$ and get support -- then again, you have to pay $$$.
There's a surprising number of other shells out there besides just GeoShell and Litestep. Not just because I write it, but from what others tell me, Serenade is one of the most stable and user-friendly. As with anything under development, it's a work in progress, but it's very usable. You might consider checking it out at Courtah.net. There are some nice themes at Skinbase. SharpE is also a nice shell, but lacks some customization abilities. I don't prefer Litestep because I think it's too disorganized (but it's the foundation of the community), and Geoshell is a nice shell despite forcing you to configure everything through the registry. In short, try many of them out, just make sure you read the directions on how to get your old shell back _carefully_. Look on ShellFront or Desktopian for more info/links.
This is a really sad day. Most of the slashdot community can continue using encryption, but their PGP package was the only one I've seen easy enough for my mother to use. The integration with outlook/etc made it so easy to use. Hopefully they'll do the Right Thing (tm) and make it open source, so that we can continue making it compatible with OSes like XP -- which unfortunately people are using.