I have been researching another possibility that may help alleviate some of the frustration and hassle that I have been running into under VB, and wanted to run an idea by you guys.

Has anyone considered LiteStep as a possibility? I mean, it's a completely customizable shell replacement. What better way to get a lightning-fast system than to make the shell into the controlling interface with a custom shell theme? I'm envisioning some custom modules and scripting that turns the Windows blah desktop into a completely interactive control solution.

The Windows desktop is nothing more than a representation of a directory on the drive, where LiteStep throws that junk right the hell out the window (so to speak) and displays a set of modules that act as your interface instead. For example, I can get a completely configurable taskbar that can be detached from the border. I can have live system monitoring positioned anywhere on the screen, or even set as the background itself.

I was wondering if any of you had tried it or considered it for what I'm thinking of.

It's certainly an appealing concept...