News :: 15MR: Aston (1.9.2)

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application ia Aston by Gladiator Software—An application built as a desktop shell replacement.

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Aston Shell is a flexible and powerful Desktop replacement application, which lets you save your computer’s resources while giving your Desktop a unique look. Aston completely replaces your old Desktop with a new one, providing numerous additional features and saving computer resources for more necessary tasks.

By installing Aston, you acquire a lot more than just a fancy look, you get a more efficient way of using your computer. Aston looks similar to the Desktop you’re already familiar with, but its components offer much more functionality:”

Quick Pros

• Light on memory
• Themes & plug-ins extensive
• AltDesk built-in
• Looks great
• Runs very snappy
• Preview from the tasktray

Quick Cons

• Limited drag-n-drop support
• Only see personal icons in Start menu
• Very daunting and intimidating adding icons to any of the trays
• Does not retain icon position flipping back to Explorer

Expansion

This application showed great promise when I went into it. As mentioned, is very light on memory; 14MB when running without it managing Explorer instances, 24MB when managing Explorer instances. This is opposed to Explorer on my system by itself at 39MB RAM usage. Not a huge savings, but on a smaller system, can make a difference. I would recommend letting Aston manage the Explorer; It is the same thing, but you don’t have it’s bloat of 19MB running overtop of the 14MB of Aston. To top it off, the application feels snappier than Explorer, which was also very nice.

I went looking at the themes and plug-ins, and not only is there a huge selection, there is also instructions how to make more. Very nice aspect. Toss in the other pros, this could have been a killer application. I was excited to keep it. However, the issues at hand cropped up.

The lack of drag and drop support not only for the trays they provide, but also in the Start button and QuickLaunch tray was a major hinderance. To top the Start button woes, lacking all the icons that were installed to ‘All Users’ do not appear. This essentially kills this application for anyone who might use the Start menu at all for their applications. It is also daunting to add new icons to any tray, Start button included. I was also very disappointed that there was no desktop icon position retention when flipping back to Explorer, so you’re resorting your icons unless you had UltraMon and saved your icon positions.

Updated to 1.9.3.1 to try

Well, I had to try it. 1.9.3.1 is out at this time, however, the version provided by Giveaway of the Day provided is 1.9.2. I know the terms of GotD state that there is no upgrade support, but you can always hope. As soon as I installed it, a nag screen; No big deal. I was coming to see what, if any, bugs had been fixed. Only complaint I mentioned that has been fixed is the ‘All Users’ icons now appearing. Still no drag-n-draop, and no easy way to add icons rather than the daunting process.

Final Verdict

As it is, while it is free, I would steer you away from the Giveaway of the Day version (1.9.2) simply for the fact that no global Start icons are visible. If 1.9.3.1 was available for testing, I would say try it. I did like the application a lot and could have gotten around the lack of drag and drop support to gain the memory and snappiness I experienced as well as the ability to load up on widgets and more. While I was hopeful that this would be competition for ObjectDesktop by Stardock, with the bugs and lack of features, the difference of $20 more to ObjectDesktop is still worth it. If they make this a little more user-friendly, I may be able to recommend Aston; For now, I would recommend steering clear of 1.9.2, and if you want to try 1.9.3.1, download the trial from their site and try again.

Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, March 01, 2007