You will want to keep Impulse installed because of the Games, both the Stardock games and the non-Stardock games.

Like Redneck said (and as you did), you want to get the Object Desktop apps either through SDC or the Stardock link he gave.  After you install from either of those places Impulse will quite likely indicate there are updates available for those apps because the Impulse version does not match the version you now have installed.  Ignore the Impulse messages for the Object Desktop software, you definitely do not want to "update" through Impulse at this point.

There are indeed several programs that fall exactly into that catagory. Replies #111 and #125 here discuss a lot of them if you want to have a look:

https://forums.wincustomize.com/409931/page/5/#replies

That was exactly the correct thing to do, good instincts on your part.

I decided to try this on my laptop as well but in this case I would COMPLETELY remove Impulse from the system since I didn't have ANY games installed (Stardock titles or 3rd party games installed thru Impulse/GameStop).  I first uninstalled all of the desktop applications I could through Impulse (although WindowBlinds appeared as "available" instead of "installed" (which it was)).  Then I rebooted the system, went to the Programs & Features control panel and noted which applications still appeared as being installed.  Then, using Revo Uninstaller I uninstalled the remaining programs and all traces from the registry of these programs (IconPackager, SkinStudio, WindowBlinds and a few others still appeared as "installed" although they were supposedly removed by Impulse...) as well as removing Impulse from the system.

Next I rebooted the system again, and used CCleaner and Glary Utilities to clean any remaining tracks of the installed programs from the system.  I also used Windows Explorer to delete any folders in the Windows Start menu and icons on the Desktop that failed to be removed.  Then after another reboot, I downloaded and installed the Stardock Central beta.

I was surprised to note that when I ran Stardock Central this time it found additional programs as being available to download (Demigod, Gal Civ II and Sins of a Solar Empire) as well as the various "current" components of Object Desktop - Gal Civ I did not appear on the available list (I'll download it separately). I also noted that some of the older components (including some that are not shown as legacy components (MyColors, LogonStudio, DesktopX)) did not appear as available downloads in Stardock Central - I'm assuming that these are not fully compatible with Windows 7 and therefore were not shown.

By the way, is there any difference between the applications downloaded thru Stardock Central and the standalone downloads available at the store at Stardock.com?  I had previously downloaded all of the applications I could from the site and it appears to take a long time for Stardock Central to download the applications again.  I can just run the standalone versions if it's faster and supply the serial number information as needed.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions - I'm trying to make this a clean a process as possible.

MyColors- discontinued, outdated, unsupported.  Best to not install it.

DesktopX- Not sure what to tell you, other than at the moment it seems to be problematic based on posts I've read.  I've lost track of which versions (Pro vs Standard, current versions vs previous versions) might be working on which o/s. Probably best to not install it right this minute, particularly if you are not inclined to deal with true betas.

LogonStudio - As far as I know it's fine for Win7 so I'm not sure what to say about that either (I'm running neither LogonStudio nor Win7).  If you're interested in it you might want to get some clarification.

The games showing on Stardock Central is new to me.

Wow, great posts on this!  I use Revo here as well and uninstalled My Colors which was stil on my system.  Like GraveDigger, I recently removed all of the apps that were installed with Impulse and reinstalled them using SDC.  I forgot about My Colors though and that is now gone too.  I am really liking SDC so far and no problems even if it is still in beta.  I hope as time goes on that the SD apps are removed from Impulse entirely to avoid confusion.  Thank you GraveDigger for bringing this up.  All of the info is greatly appreciated. 

I realize it's probably too late now, but for others, before uninstalling DesktopX 3.5, you must backup your widgets, objects, and themes. If not, you will lose them. Also, DesktopX 4 will combine the widgets and objects in the object browser. Also, there is no builder/client distinction in 4. They are combined.

NP, Dave! 

?  

The DesktopX gallery here at WC seems to show that it caught on.