Object Desktop Network

Wanted to post a bit about my experience as a new user of various Stardock apps, including the Object Desktop 2007 Network, some freebies from Stardock/wincustomize, and Cursor XP Plus.

1) Bootskin BSOD. Yes, I realize it's not supported. It's still broken and deserves to be fixed or removed from the site. Part of the issue/complication may be that there are at least four versions available. 1.0, 1.02, 1.03, 1.05/b 1.09. I've read that the 1.09 version may actually work, but since it either a) doesn't exist, or was never released outside of beta is no longer available to new/current subscribers, I'll never know.

2) Website and newsgroup posts in the Stardock Central app. Why does EVERY SINGLE PAGE have to have a java script run urchin tracker? At least try to make it so that if a user has scripting disabled/off (rightfully so) you don't get an error on every page hit. Makes the site/forum experience suck unless you give up on security/privacy.

3) Cursor XP. Or is it Cursor XP plus? I paid for something. But I'll be damned if I can register it. There's apparently some special/unique thing that I have to do with this one single Stardock app in order to successfully register it.

4) Windows system File Protection alert. I never figured out which Stardock app hooked into a protected file/.dll, but one did try. Why? I see stuff like that and the first thing that comes to mind is 'auto-dialer'. When I'm not running Stardock Central, do any Stardock apps phone home? If so, what information is transferred?

5) Run as .dll rundll32 application faults. Often. God help me if I want to apply a new suite or DesktopX skin set. I like to think I'm pretty well in tune with how to setup a nice stable XP system. I really get ticked off when I run across the exceptional app that spits out an exception every time I try to do anything with it. Do Stardock devs get the MS application exception reports? You've got about 20 of them just from my system in the past 2 or 3 days. I'd like to think that there's enough data to fix the problem.

6) Programs menu spaghetti. Ok, so there's an option to have the installers from each applet prompt for both directory and program menu location. This is good, because the default installs will leave with 3 or 4 links to cursor XP, 20 or 30 links to website URLs that you can get to from within Stardock Central - and they're all a bit redundant since the info for the couple of dozen applets are actually also found all on one single url/page of the stardock site. But the real kicker is that so few of the applets can find their way into one Stardock subfolder on the file system or program menu. I mean I've got stardock crap all over the place now. So I uninstalled everything... which you have to do one at a time duh... and reinstalled. I made sure to tell it that I wanted the shortcuts on the Programs menu to be just on my user account and not on the All User profile. I made sure to tell it that I wanted the shortcuts all to go under the Start | All Programs | Stardock folder.

It did nothing of the kind, and shortcuts were put into the All Users profile AS WELL AS MY OWN... and again I've get more Cursor XP links (among others) than any sane person needs/wants. Doesn't look like any of them are for Cursor XP Plus though, I can't really tell.

Taken as a whole, I'm left with the impression that this is really a bit of amateur work. Sorry if I'm being harsh in my assessment, but this is my New User Experience and I wanted to share with others.