Since the regular windows shell often takes up to 200mb of memory, running on alternative shells might smoothen your gameplay...
I used blackbox a long long time ago. linkage: http://www.bb4win.org/news.php
It's minimal, very elegant, can look very nice on if set up with right themes... Some screens here:
http://www.lostinthebox.com/viewtopic.php?t=484&postorder=asc
and one here
http://www.geocities.com/d4vidb/desk_big20030223.jpg
Like I said, clean and elegant. I had a realy nice theme back than which a copied from a guy called dreamer... Anyways, the desktop is highly costumisable just like the right click menu. There are all sorts of plugins including some that can show hardware readings on the desktop which are also 100% costumisable.
As for preformance, back when I used windows xp build 2600 (with services tweeked for minimum resource consumption), only 79mb of memory was consumed with the antivirus on (on a pIII 800mhz system, norton 2002 or 01, cant recall)! Loading into a regular explorer shell would use up to 150mb, and on a system which had only 256mb of ram to spare, cutting memory consumption in almost half ment a lot.
As for bugs, I did experiance some issues (mainly with windows not fitting to ICQ window, system bar staying on top of games, and knights & merchants game desplaying at 256 colors only :\), but none of them involved crashes or anything... It was a smaller source for errors than the explorer shell was actually.
But I should note again that the last time I used blackbox was about two years ago.... So I'm almost sure those bugs mentioned above are gone, and it might be possible that memory consumption is even lower (I seriously doubt that though).
To sum everything up, Blackbox for windows offers an elegant, minimal shell that will save your reasorces and will allow you to use windows more efficiantly with costimisable menus and desktops. Defenetly worth a try.
PS. It'll take a while to get used to blackbox... But after a while (especially after getting your menus in order) it'll fit you like a glove.
I wanted to mention another shell called aston, but it just sucks IMO... If you guys know any other good shells, post link and personal reviews here.
I used blackbox a long long time ago. linkage: http://www.bb4win.org/news.php
It's minimal, very elegant, can look very nice on if set up with right themes... Some screens here:
http://www.lostinthebox.com/viewtopic.php?t=484&postorder=asc
and one here
http://www.geocities.com/d4vidb/desk_big20030223.jpg
Like I said, clean and elegant. I had a realy nice theme back than which a copied from a guy called dreamer... Anyways, the desktop is highly costumisable just like the right click menu. There are all sorts of plugins including some that can show hardware readings on the desktop which are also 100% costumisable.
As for preformance, back when I used windows xp build 2600 (with services tweeked for minimum resource consumption), only 79mb of memory was consumed with the antivirus on (on a pIII 800mhz system, norton 2002 or 01, cant recall)! Loading into a regular explorer shell would use up to 150mb, and on a system which had only 256mb of ram to spare, cutting memory consumption in almost half ment a lot.
As for bugs, I did experiance some issues (mainly with windows not fitting to ICQ window, system bar staying on top of games, and knights & merchants game desplaying at 256 colors only :\), but none of them involved crashes or anything... It was a smaller source for errors than the explorer shell was actually.
But I should note again that the last time I used blackbox was about two years ago.... So I'm almost sure those bugs mentioned above are gone, and it might be possible that memory consumption is even lower (I seriously doubt that though).
To sum everything up, Blackbox for windows offers an elegant, minimal shell that will save your reasorces and will allow you to use windows more efficiantly with costimisable menus and desktops. Defenetly worth a try.
PS. It'll take a while to get used to blackbox... But after a while (especially after getting your menus in order) it'll fit you like a glove.
I wanted to mention another shell called aston, but it just sucks IMO... If you guys know any other good shells, post link and personal reviews here.
