Imagine the comfort of multiple desktops in a single session. Now picture almost absolute control over every pixel that you see on screen. Believe that you can give your desktop almost any interface that you’d like.
Now know that you can do all of that without uninstalling Windows and without installing Linux.
(Yes, you can even fulfill that wish of turning off all those “mystery” applications that run under the IE shell.)
It’s possible and it’s 100% free. It’s called “LiteStep”.
Check out LiteStep:
dev.litestep.net/news.php (Very detailed information on its development.)
To download it:
gnuwin.epfl.ch/apps/litestep/en/index.html (A general overview of what it is.)
For a huge library of themes (even a mock-KDE theme!):
(I noticed a huge difference in system performance immediately after I installed it. I had 2 giant art programs open, Winamp, and a memory-eating 3D application running at the same time and I didn’t even hear a skip in a song. That setup had crashed my system before.)
Highly recommend - especially for those who, like me, may not like Windows as much as other operating systems (Knoppix and Gnoppix to mention a couple), but you have to use it anyway.