Aston and AltDesk

Aston is a new Desktop and Shell replacement for Windows 9X/ME/NT/2K/XP.
It replaces the standard Windows Desktop and provides you with a host of new features, such as Sidebars, clock, weather monitor, animated buttons, transparency effects and much more.
Aston also supports Themes, which allow you to change its appearance and functionality according to your mood and needs. No matter what visual style you like: XP, Aqua or something else; you can always download hundreds of Themes, created by professional designers or amateurs from Aston's homepage or one of numerous other skin sites.
Aston features a powerful and user friendly interface, which lets you change your new desktop's appearance and behavior in few seconds. No need to learn complicated configuration files, everything can be configured in a simple graphical interface.
A great balance between performance and appearance allows you to launch Aston even on out of the date PCs or its enjoy many advanced features on more modern computers. Aston is very stable and has a small memory footprint and low CPU usage, so you can free your processor time for other tasks.