NextSTART Editor's Review

NextSTART is a component for Winstep Xtreme. It improves your Windows Start menu by adding skinning abilities and nicer menus. The component is designed to be ergonomic and nice looking. Winstep Xtreme is included in the software package which you can download from our site here.

Winstep Xtreme is a desktop theming component. Each aspect of your desktop, including sounds, animations, and icons, can be easily modified just by choosing another theme. The application doesn't eat up too much memory (about 20MB of RAM), but it uses your processor and video card a lot.

If you have talent, you can design you own themes. However, there are quite a few sites which distribute free themes for Winstep. When you install this software you can choose between 6 themes. Installing a new theme is done by accessing the application's preferences dialog. It took me a couple of minutes to get used to the program's user interface because it uses graphic buttons without any text on them. Sometimes, I had to wait for the tooltip to pop up in order to understand what a button does.

Pluses: Several widgets are available. You can activate any of them, giving your desktop a Vista or MacOS look.

Drawbacks / flaws: Winstep Xtreme uses a lot of system resources and is unstable sometimes. I had to restart my system after the program crashed, because I couldn't access "My computer" anymore.

In conclusion: NextSTART, along with the Winstep Xtreme package is, in my opinion, for people who care about looks more than performance.

version reviewed: 4.1